Boycott of Arizona

[Christopher Valen]

It's being suggested that conventioneers, entertainers, even spring training for major league baseball boycott Arizona because of the unprecedented immigration law that just passed. Given the number of Latino players from Mexico, South America, Puerto Rico, etc., it should be interesting next spring, particularly if any of them are stopped at random. Any thoughts from writers? Should we avoid events, signings, etc., in Arizona as a protest? I recently blogged my thoughts about the law at: http://open.salon.com/blog/christopher_valen

[Jon Loomis]

I've never been to Arizona, so my decision to boycott by not going there would have literally zero impact on its economy. But yeah, stupid, terrible law and one that lots of people have good reason to be upset about. The good news is that it will no doubt be overturned in the courts in short order. Latino voters aren't likely to forget this one anytime soon, either.

[John McFetridge]

So, they'll leave illegal Canadians alone? I guess we mostly only go to California anyway....

[Jon Loomis]

Assuming you're blonde and blue-eyed, probably. Funny thing--my father-in-law is a short, olive-skinned Jewish doctor who lives in a ritzy suburb south of LA and drives a pickup truck. The guy's lost track of the number of times he's been pulled over for DWM, even though he's not. I guess in Arizona now he'll have to show his passport, or something.

[Christopher Valen]

Maybe, John. But Canadians are going to have to get rid of that accent:) Of course, then you have that whole French Canadian thing going on. And you know what certain members of the U.S. population think of the French.

[Jack Getze]

Seems over the top comparing Arizona to Poland in 1939. Nobody's getting gassed.

[Jon Loomis]

True enough, Jack. Still, what do you call a law that makes it legal to detain U.S. citizens simply because they look "illegal?"

[Christopher Valen]

Jack,

I was not making a comparison between gas chambers and the immigration law. Rather the fact that in both Poland in 1939 and Arizona in 2010, people could and can now be stopped and asked to produce "papers" based on their ethnicity or "how they look."

[Jack Getze]

Stopping people based on ethnicity goes on now all over America. Ask any black person. They know where they can stop for cigarettes and where they can't. Pointing at a whole state, essentially calling them Nazis for passing a law seems over the top to me.

[Jon Loomis]

The fact that it goes on all over the country doesn't make it okay, though. And Arizona's unique in having enshrined racial profiling into a law that specifically targets Latinos. My guess is that the political blowback is going to be ferocious, and deservedly so. I don't think anyone would argue that all Arizonans are Nazis--but the business of demanding that certain citizens produce their papers or risk detention does bear a whiff of the totalitarian. It's also stone racist, but that goes without saying.

[Christopher Valen]

Jon,
I couldn't have said it any better. Thanks.

[Jon Loomis]

No disrespect to you, Jack. And no pie-in-the-sky belief that as a country we should open the borders and blow the whistle and say "come one, come all." But if we want to stop the flow of illegal immigrants, we have to turn off the big suckola that's drawing them across the border--and that's jobs. Ultimately it's a labor issue: if the penalties for hiring illegals were significantly stiffer, including jail time for employers who could be shown to have knowingly, repeatedly hired illegals, employers would be more reluctant to take a chance, and it would make economic sense for them to pay a higher wage to legal workers. Prices would go up in some sectors, and it would be harder for my in-laws' neighbors to hire a cheap yard man or maid service, but the benefit would be less illegal immigration and a better living standard for legal workers.

[John McFetridge]

John Sayles made a movie called Silver City that deals with some of this. Well, I suppose many of his movies deal with this kind of thing, Lone Star, Sunshine State almost all of them really, even Brother from Another Planet.

I wonder if there will be much crime fiction dealing with this stuff.