Arizona immigration law: Que lastima internacional

from thinkprogress:



....(snip)....


CENTRAL AMERICA: The Guatemalan Foreign Ministry issued a press release soon after Gov. Jan Brewer signed SB-1070 into law, deploring the measure and expressing the government’s “deep concern” for the threat it represents to basic justice. The new government of Honduras also condemned the law. “Honduras considers that the passing of the law is the wrong step and does nothing to resolve the core problems behind of illegal immigration,” said Minister of the Presidency María Antonieta Guillén. Officials in El Salvador urged its citizens to avoid traveling to Arizona, and in Nicaragua, officials called on the Organization of American States (OAS) and the United Nations (UN) “to take the necessary measures to safeguard the rights of the Hispanic population.”

SOUTH AMERICA: The Chilean Secretary of OAS, José Miguel Insulza, responded to Nicaragua’s request by expressing “the concern of the OAS, its Secretary General, the countries of the hemisphere and the Latin American community with the passage of a law in a state of the United States that we consider to be discriminatory against immigrants, and in particular against a population of such origin that lives in this country.” Heads of state and foreign ministers of the 12-member Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) slammed SB-1070, stating that it encourages “discretional detention of people based on racial, ethnic, phenotypic, language and migratory status reasons under the questionable concept of ‘reasonable doubt.’”

EUROPE: After reviewing the law, UN experts based in Geneva, Switzerland stated that SB-1070 could violate international standards that are binding in the United States. “A disturbing pattern of legislative activity hostile to ethnic minorities and immigrants has been established with the adoption of an immigration law that may allow for police action targeting individuals on the basis of their perceived ethnic origin,” the experts said. Amnesty International, whose headquarters is based in London, agreed, calling the law “cruel and misguided” and in violation of Article 9 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

AFRICA: South African Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu has been an outspoken critic of Arizona’s immigration law. “Abominations such as apartheid do not start with an entire population suddenly becoming inhumane. They start here. They start with generalizing unwanted characteristics across an entire segment of a population,” wrote Tutu. “A solution that degrades innocent people, or that makes anyone with broken English a suspect, is not a solution.” .........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://thinkprogress.org/2010/05/24/arizona-international-response/

There is a lot of bad feeling here around this issue.

And I have to say, the casual anti-Latino stuff gets more bizarre every day.

The governor of AZ passed a law that made racial profiling legal. And people here are SUPPORTING that?

"Where do we find ourselves?" -- Ralph Waldo Emerson