Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses - except in AZ

Emptywheel has a post up this morning that really chaps my ass. It's about the new State bills in AZ that want to take citizenship away from babies born in the U.S. to parents who are not citizens. It's the hate that the rightwing nutters have for anyone of color and specifically brown babies born to brown parents that aren't citizens of our nation. First, let me quote Emma Lazarus, from the Statue of Liberty and how people were never questioned when they showed up on our shores:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"(emphasis mine)

Unless you are a full Native American Indian, the poem above applies to all of you and your relatives, just as it applies to me and I am quite sure it applies to that pile of steaming batshit known as Russell Pearce. From Emptywheels writeup over at FDL:

With the filing in the Arizona legislature of twin bills at the end of this week attacking the automatic citizenship granted to U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants under the 14th Amendment, it seemed like time to return to the matter.

Specifically, we are talking about the following Arizona Legislative measures:

- House Bill 2561 and Senate Bill 1309 would define children as citizens of Arizona and the U.S. if at least one of their parents was either a U.S. citizen or a legal permanent U.S. resident and therefore subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.

- House Bill 2562 and Senate Bill 1308 would seek permission from Congress to set up a system so states can create separate birth certificates for children who meet the new definition of a citizen and those who do not.

These are the provisions engendered by the hateful right wing “anti-anchor baby” effort. Arizona is, as it was with the previous “immigration papers please” law enacted in SB 1070, on the cutting edge of the national anti-immigrant and hatred of brown movement. While Arizona may be the test lab, it is certainly not necessarily the originator for these discriminatory and bigoted efforts. The “father” of the measures, leader and vocal mouthpiece for them in the Arizona legislature is State Senator Russell Pearce, newly crowned President of the state senate. Pearce worked off the template written by national movement conservative Kris Kobach for SB 1070, and the attempt to blow up the 14th Amendment birth citizenship guarantee is also being pushed by national extreme right wing movement conservatives such as Rand Paul and David Vitter.

But the point man and patron saint of anti-immigration hate in Arizona is indeed President of the Arizona Senate Russell Pearce, a former top deputy and confidant of the pernicious Maricopa County Sheriff, Joe Arpaio. When Pearce first arrived in the Arizona state legislature in 2001, it was as a state representative from the heavily Mormon (Pearce’s religion) area of Mesa, and he was known for little more than being a:

…loudmouthed backbencher, unhealthily obsessed with illegal immigration.

Russell Pearce is a horrible, hate-filled little man. He is someone that should not be allowed to decide the fate of anyone other than himself.

Emptywheel's article goes on to tell you why Pearce is a disgusting, worthless human being and how he came into power in the Grand Canyon State. How he got canned from running the Department of Motor Vehicles for tampering with state records. One would think this would be enough to keep his smarmy ass out of politics, but no. Not when rich folks, and high-powered lobbyists love him and his bigoted self.  Hell, its been widely reported in AZ that he is buddies with a longtime neo-nazi supporter and this article contains the picture to prove it. Rachel Maddow did a great piece on Pearce's nazi/supremacist connections and the PhoenixNewTimes has an informative writeup here (link opens in new tab)including the video of Maddow's show.

But in AZ Republican circles, being a nazi supporter and having supremacist associations evidently is a red badge of courage that keeps getting you elected in certain districts. Go read Emptywheels piece to really get a feeling of how ugly it has gotten in AZ with regard to the nutter right and their control there. I have lived in that beautiful state twice now. I was not political both times and must admit I never noticed the rightwing nutjobs, only the gun-toting ones scared me. There were plenty of them btw.

Emptywheel is sad for the 'state' of his state and he quotes and prints a biting Will Bunch piece that was in HuffPo shortly after the AZ massacre that left so many dead and injured including Rep Giffords.  The Bunch piece ate at EmptyWheel and he contacted Bunch to tell him as much,  but he admits that it's true now more than he would like to admit.

And that should bother every friggin one of us.

The 411 on the AZ immigration law authors...

I was stunned..and it takes a shitload of ...well...shit to do that to me. From Rachel's show this evening...a little 411 about the men that wrote the fascist AZ undocumented workers/illegal immigrants law.

 

From The Maddow Blog:

It was [John] Tanton who founded the anti-immigration movement's most powerful institution, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). A retired ophthalmologist once active on environmental issues, his interest in immigration was marked in the beginning by an explicitly racial argument. "To govern is to populate," Tanton wrote in 1986. "Will the present majority peaceably hand over its political power to a group that is simply more fertile? … As Whites see their power and control over their lives declining, will they simply go quietly into the night? Or will there be an explosion?"

If you want to know more about these fascist, racist, Holocaust denying bastards, check out this 2005 American Prospect article about these fuckers. Below are their names:

Kris Kobach
John Tanton
The Pioneer Fund, big in the eugenics movement and funders of FAIR.
 Russell Pierce

Google those suckers and be amazed, m'dear reader, at the Hitler-esque fuckery they are involved in. And they compare Obama to Hitler...give me an effin break. From the American Prospect article:

Tanton founded FAIR in 1979. Between 1982 and 1994, it received more than $1.2 million from the Pioneer Fund. A little-known foundation created in 1937, the Pioneer Fund likes to benignly describe its origins in “the Darwinian-Galtonian evolutionary tradition, and the eugenics movement.” In the late 1930s, though, it frankly admired Hitler. Today, it still bankrolls groups such as the aforementioned American Renaissance and the American Immigration Control Foundation (AICF) in Virginia. As fair has attempted to develop a more mainstream persona, it has dropped the Pioneer Fund as a funding source. FAIR's executive director, Dan Stein, has repeatedly denied that any racial animus motivates its activities. But the federation has kept Tanton on its corporate board of directors.

In addition, FAIR's political action committee, the U.S. Immigration Reform PAC, routinely receives significant contributions from Tanton and his wife. FAIR's PAC has contributed more than a quarter-million dollars for and against candidates since 1999. In 2000, it spent more than $30,000 against Republican Senator Spencer Abraham of Michigan, an Arab American, who lost that general election. Not surprisingly, it has also given Representative Tancredo $15,000 over the years, according to Federal Election Commission documents. Buried in those documents is a disclosure that the PAC had Peter Gemma on its payroll doing clerical work. Gemma is a denizen of Holocaust-denial meetings and other hardcore anti-Semitic venues, according to Devin Burghart, the author of numerous reports on anti-immigrant groups for the Center for New Community in Chicago. Gemma apparently did not make any of the money decisions at FAIR's PAC, but his presence is another indicator of the shark-infested waters that politicians like Tancredo swim in.

While FAIR has the biggest footprint on Capitol Hill, the AICF possesses the largest list of donors among the think tanks that provide literature and ideas to local groups. It has also received $180,000 in grants from the Pioneer Fund. But its main source of funds is an immense donor base: more than 400,000 names of contributors who give $5 or more, according to documents provided by the Center for New Community. The donor list legally belongs to American Immigration Control Foundation NC, one of three corporations that make up this particular mini-empire.

Notably, the AICF is heavily interlaced with the Council of Conservative Citizens. The lineal descendant of the '60s-era white Citizens Councils, the Council of Conservative Citizens revived itself in the '90s with campaigns for the Confederate flag and against immigration. It stays away from explicit anti-Semitism and describes itself as a “white separatist” group rather than “white nationalist.” This distinction is without a difference -- particularly given the arguments its leadership have made for a genetically determined notion of American nationalism. Trent Lott was forced to disassociate himself from the council once his ties to the group became public.

The Council of Conservative Citizens is heavily linked with several anti-immigrant groups, including the AICF. One AICF board member, Brent Nelson, also sits as director of the council's foundation. President of the AICF's board from 1993–95, the now-deceased Sam Francis edited the council's tabloid until this year and otherwise served as its commanding philosopher-general. And the aforementioned Wayne Lutton, editor of Social Contract and occupant of Holocaust-denial circles, serves on the Council of Conservative Citizens' editorial advisory board.

What a wonderful bunch of white supremacists! Congratulations AZ...you really screwed the pooch this time.

UPDATE: My dear blogger bud REALITYZONE has an excellent post up on this topic as well, entitled We Are All Mexicans in AZ. Also, check out the video below that I filched from my Canadian blogger bud Kim @  repliderium. If the AZ law is allowed to stand...we are all redheads aren't we?
M.I.A, Born Free from ROMAIN-GAVRAS on Vimeo.