Legislating Illegality: Racial Profiling and Arizona Senate Bill 1070

     The above political cartoon is a prime example of the ways in which illegality, racialization, stereotypes, media, popular culture, and legislation are all inexplicably intertwined. I say "inexplicably," because, as many of our readings have asserted, one cannot necessarily imply a definitive causal relationship between these factors. Instead, these things all come together within society and continually influence one another. In the except from her book, Impossible Subjects, Mae Ngai speaks about these factors and brings particular attention to how the interaction between race and illegal status has helped to form a class of Americans that she describes as "'alien citizens' - persons who are American citizens by virtue of their birth in the United States but who are presumed to be foreign by the mainstream of American culture and, at times, by the state" (2). When looking back at American history, one can easily see how these alien citizens have been marginalized and often as not, criminalized through government action. Take for example Japanese internment, and now, the illegal immigration problem associated with Mexicans. Ngai argues that "alien citizenship flowed directly from the histories of conquest, colonialism, and semicolonialism that constituted the United States' relations with Mexico and in Asia" (8). I have noticed a pattern throughout our readings that the racialization of minorities is used as a tool for political and economic exploitation. I believe that the very idea of the existence of an "alien citizen" speaks to American attitudes about immigration. I view this figure in society as a representation of the United States' desire to exclude all immigrants (at least politically), both legal and illegal.
     Following this logic, I feel as though the Arizona Senate Bill 1070 was an attempt to unfairly target legal immigrants, illegal immigrants, and "alien citizens".  The bill aimed to accomplish this in primarily two ways; first, it became a state misdemeanor for an immigrant to be in Arizona without carrying the required documentation at all times. Second, it allowed officers of the law to question an individual's immigration status during any lawful stop, detention, or arrest based entirely off of "reasonable suspicion". Quite obviously, this immediately led to debates concerning the possibility of racial profiling when questioning potentially illegal subjects. In this way, the figure of the alien citizen is at risk for being unfairly, and unlawfully, detained based entirely on racial stereotyping. Additionally, as "the line between legal and illegal status can be crossed in both directions," the criminalization of immigrants not in immediate possession of papers could lead to undue deportation (Ngai 6). Indeed, it is impossible to identify here whether the law is a reflection of the national fallacy of alienage placed upon Mexicans or whether this type of thinking is a result of racially discriminatory laws such as these.