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Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Gov. Jan Brewer needs to get her facts straight

 Opinion
Arizona Republic
Jun. 29, 2010 12:00 AM


Gov. Jan Brewer got instant national attention by signing Arizona's controversial immigration law. Obviously she did not gain an equally fast understanding of the issue.

To avoid making the state look foolish, Brewer needs to educate herself and stop making statements that are incorrect and potentially damaging.

Her most recent mistake - saying that most people coming across the southern border illegally are involved in drug smuggling - contains no more than a kernel of truth.

Here's the kernel: Border-security measures did not stop illegal immigration, but they did force migrant laborers to hire criminal smugglers to get them across the desert. Drug cartels began to get involved when smuggling people became lucrative. Criminal smugglers turned humans into valuable cargo and turned Phoenix into a national distribution hub for illegal workers. Smugglers set up drophouses where migrants are held for ransom, sending Valley kidnapping rates soaring.


This is an instructive example of the failure of the border-enforcement-only approach, which has been the federal government's default setting since comprehensive reform stalled.

It is not evidence that a guy who pays a smuggler for passage to a job washing dishes is a big, scary drug runner.

"The vast majority of those whom we arrest are not smuggling drugs," Brandon Judd, president of the union of Border Patrol agents in the Tucson Sector, told the Associated Press.

It is irresponsible and reckless for Brewer to suggest that migrants who come here to work are routinely smuggling drugs. It plays into the systematic vilification of illegal immigrants that extreme anti-immigrant groups use to poison and polarize talks about immigration reform.

Sen. John McCain, who traded his former leadership on the immigration issue for a bizarre election-year call to "complete the danged fence," stuck his neck out far enough this weekend to disagree with Brewer on the migrants-as-drug-mules statement. We need more straight talk from both McCain and Sen. Jon Kyl.

The problems of the border will not be solved by vilifying migrants or simply building a fence. Immigration reform needs to include tough, enforceable employer sanctions and a method for migrants to legally enter the country and provide needed labor. Reform also needs to provide a path for illegal immigrants who are currently living and working here to earn legal status - something polls show the majority of Americans supports.

These are facts.

The governor needs to learn them or risk looking increasingly silly on the national stage.


Attorney General Terry Goddard Reacts to Brewer's Untruths
Consider what Jan Brewer has had to say recently:

·      "The majority" of illegal immigrants are drug smugglers.

·      Some 87 percent of those arrested for being here illegally have prior criminal records.

·      Law enforcement has found "bodies in the desert" that "have been beheaded."

When she is asked for evidence of her untrue claims, she has nothing.  The list of untruths and misstatements grows every time Jan Brewer speaks. Today the Arizona Republic has called her on it, in an editorial entitled, 'Gov. Jan Brewer needs to get her facts straight." The Republic calls her "reckless" and "irresponsible."  They're being gentle.

Jan Brewer is scaring people out of visiting Arizona and creating fear in our communities - all so she can win an election.  Is that "irresponsible," as the Republic charges?  Yes. But it's worse than that.

It's politics - and it stinks. 

Arizona needs change, and I need your help to make it happen.  Please join our campaign and sign up to volunteer today. With your help, we can tell Jan Brewer that telling the truth isn't optional.