Arizona’s Senate Bill 1070: Targeting the Other1 and Generating Discourses and Practices of Discrimination and Hate William Arrocha Monterey Institute of International Studies ABSTRACT The state of Arizona, through its Senate Bill 1070, has made legal the practice of profiling as one of the key tools to regulate migration and differentiate those who are presumed to be residing in the state without legal documents. The state is encouraging xenophobia and empowering the groups with a strong anti-immigrant sentiment to become directly involved in the monitoring of such practice. History has shown us that when the state and large sectors of civil society exclude the “other” and criminalize his/her presence, hate toward the “other” is the most common result. The consequences of such a dynamic can result in an increase in racism, segregation, and an intensification of social violence and state repression. By tearing down the social and economic relationship between those who can legally reside in the state and those who are excluded, a future of a common ethos of inclusion and mutual respect is seriously jeopardized.
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INTRODUCTION
The very relationship with the other is the relationship with the future. —Emmanuel Levinas (Levinas Reader, 2001, p. 44)
On May 6, 2010, a 44-year-old, third-generation Mexican-American native-born U.S. citizen, Juan Varela, was watering a tree in his front yard when Gary Thomas Kelly confronted him, pointed a snub-nosed revolver at his face, and fatally wounded him with a single shot to the neck. According to initial police reports, Kelley, who also threatened Varela’s brother, Antonio, had shouted, “Hurry up and go back to Mexico or you’re gonna die” (quoted in Ferraresi & Kiefer, 2010, p. 1). Much to the dismay of the Monterey Institute of International Studies is a Graduate School of Middlebury College. Correspondence concerning this article may be directed to William.arrocha@miis.edu. 65