An Arizona State University librarian discussed the decades-old roots of anti-immigrant rhetoric in the state at the Walter Cronkite School Thursday.
The discussion, led by Arizona State University’s Chicano/a Research Collection librarian Nancy Godoy-Powell, traced the history of the immigration debate back four decades but started with recent developments.
“In 2010 in my point of view, the Latino community was aggressively attacked by two anti-immigration Latino bills: SB 1070 and HB 2281,” Godoy-Powell said. “However, the anti-immigrant rhetoric isn’t a new thing.”
SB 1070 required undocumented immigrants to always carry registration papers and allowed law enforcement officers to question the status of a person if there is suspicion the person may be undocumented during a lawful stop. HB 2281 forbade public and charter schools from teaching classes that “are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group,” or “advocate ethnic solidarity,” including Mexican-American studies, according to the bill’s text. Both bills were passed and signed by former Gov. Jan Brewer.
Godoy-Powell said this anti-immigration rhetoric and action in Arizona dates back to the early 1990s. She presented pictures of deportations from this time period and discussed the quick and sometimes violent nature of these deportations. She said officers sometimes failed to differentiate between those in Arizona legally and illegally.
“They didn’t really take the time to ask to see documentation, and a lot of these were pretty violent,” Godoy-Powell said. “People were forced to leave a gunpoint. Not all of these deportations were, but some of them.”
She said the rise of undocumented immigration activism in Arizona started in the 1970s with the Hanigan case, where three undocumented workers were robbed and beaten by ranchers along the Mexican border. This led to the creation of a human rights advocacy group called the National Ad Hoc Coalition on the Hanigan Case.
“From that group, that national group, started a very grassroots oriented initiative here in Arizona,” Godoy-Powell said. “You see that now with a lot of the undocumented groups that are fighting for justice and for non-discrimination.”
Godoy-Powell then discussed more modern national and local immigration policies from the 1980s to 2010. She said that what she characterizes as anti-immigration policies such as SB 1070 dehumanize people.
“These people are coming to the United States to work and to survive,” Godoy-Powell said. “They’re usually doing the work that is very hard and in my opinion a lot of Americans probably wouldn’t want to do.”
For ASU graduate Tessa Otero, who attended the event and is a part of the Mexican-American community, the lecture was a reminder that these civil rights issues have existed for decades.
“It’s validation that there’s always been the struggle for civil rights, and it was never won,” Otero said. “It’s still being fought for… also seeing that we can take ownership of our own history and we could own the rhetoric.”
ASU freshman Caleb Melvin appreciated the discussion at the end of the event.
“Here we actually got into a deep conversation,” Melvin said. “We got into more of a controversy where we differentiated in opinions, which is how we improve going toward the future.”
Godoy-Powell said now is the time to have these conversations.
“This a good time to have conversations for these different groups who might feel marginalized or even groups who are in power who maybe don’t feel like they’re marginalizing certain people,” Godoy-Powell said.
Contact the reporter at Stephanie.M.Morse@asu.edu.
