Ever since Arizona governor Jan Brewer signed the new immigration enforcement bill into law, the press has been in an uproar. The Economist called the law "hysterical nativism", and warned that Arizona was on the path to becoming a "police state". The Huffington Post said that the new law could lead to "racial profiling and other abuse". Newsweek agreed, adding that the "vague" provisions that disallow racial profiling is "a recipe for confusion and disputes". The President himself called the law "misguided".
The talking heads on CBS, NBC, CNN and the like have been blasting the new law for days. MSNBC's Rachel Maddow named her new segment on the subject "Papers, Please", a carefully crafted reference to the Nazi secret police.
But is all this really true? Is the new Arizona law going to create mass discrimination and the violation of civil rights for Latinos? After all, if we're to believe the media, anybody with brown skin is subject to a police investigation. And considering that Latin Americans comprise as much as a third of the Arizona population, that's a pretty significant infringement on civil liberties. Right?
This article appears in Apr 21-27, 2010.