Arizona Is Now Home Of The Brown Codes (It's Called 'Immigration Reform' In Arizona)

This attempt to legalize harassment (some would say racism) of Hispanics in Arizona, in the name of battling illegal immigration, is causing quite a stir.

It all made me think of a class I took in college where we had a brief opportunity to study apartheid in South Africa. This guilty-until-proven innocent approach to battling illegal immigration made me think of "pass laws" in South Africa.

First, this foundation part from the Omaha World Herald:

The law, which both opponents and critics called the broadest and strictest immigration measure in the country, makes the failure to carry proof of citizenship or legal immigration status a crime. It also gives police broad powers to detain anyone suspected of being in the country illegally. Opponents have decried it as an open invitation for harassment and discrimination against Hispanics, regardless of their citizenship status.

This brings me back to the "pass laws" of apartheid South Africa. Here is a brief description of "pass laws" from Wikipedia:

Pass laws in South Africa were designed to segregate the population and limit severely the movements of the non-white populace. This legislation was one of the dominant features of the country's apartheid system. The Black population were required to carry these pass books with them when outside their compounds or designated areas. Failure to produce a pass often resulted in the person being arrested.

Seems there are similarities between the "pass laws" of apartheid South Africa and current immigration laws being pushed in present-day Arizona.

Here is an interesting piece of information:

By the time the increasingly expensive and ineffective pass laws were repealed in 1986, they had led to more than 17 million arrests.

It's so sad that people in our country, in Arizona, are doing something very similar to what oppressors and racists in South Africa were doing for centuries - up until 1986.

Then, it was black people as targets. Today, in Arizona, it's brown people in the crosshairs.

I'm not suggesting what is happening in Arizona is as bad as what happened in South Africa to black people under apartheid, but to not learn from that lesson is disturbing to say the least.