http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepubli ... e1-10.html

All heat, no light
Hispanic boycott of work, retail is as senseless as proposals it is protesting

May. 10, 2005 12:00 AM

The heat generated by those pushing bad state laws on illegal immigration and those protesting those laws hasn't generated any light yet.

Today's economic boycott seeks to make its protest points by getting Latinos in Arizona to stay home from work and out of stores.

It's about as well thought out as the proposals it protests.

Undocumented workers can't afford to take a day off from a job they might lose if they don't show up. Besides, most purchased the fake documents necessary to pretend to be working legally. Why would they blow their cover? Why would their friends urge them to?

What's worse, this boycott puts Latinos - native-born, legal residents and naturalized citizens - into one, big, monolithic heap.

All Latinos are not alike.

Large numbers of Latinos supported Proposition 200, the anti-immigrant measure around which Arizona's anti-immigrant sentiments buzz.

We suspect that they, like voters of every other racial or ethnic group, voted for the measure out of unmitigated frustration with immigration policies that don't work.

Proposition 200 has been aptly described as a call for help. Are you listening yet, Washington?

Further compounding the flaws in the boycott organized by Elias Bermudez, executive director of Centro de Ayuda (Center of Help), a business that assists immigrants with immigration and tax documents is this:

You don't have to be Latino to want to protest the sort of simplistic stuff being proposed as the "answer" to illegal immigration. A lot of non-Latinos are also fed up with these anti-immigrant elixirs and the barkers peddling them.

Take Proposition 200. (Please!)

In addition to barring undocumented immigrants from getting any benefits, it was supposed to stop undocumented immigrants from voting.

There was little evidence that undocumented immigrants were perpetrating voter fraud while on break from washing dishes and making beds. Nevertheless, voters - Latino and others - went along.

Last week, the Pima County Registrar of Voters reported that 59 percent of new voter registrations were rejected in the previous two weeks because they were sent in without adequate proof of citizenship. Even the most ardent conspiracy theorists can't believe all those people were undocumented immigrants. But what cost to democracy if even half of those would-be voters give up in disgust?

Not nutty enough?

Then consider the bill Gov. Janet Napolitano vetoed last week. Aimed at preventing the use of the Mexico-issued matricula consular card as identification, it was so poorly written it would have barred police from accepting a British passport as identification for a tourist from London. Jolly dumb, what?

No doubt there's a need for effective protest against this sort of potentially damaging silliness.

But a boycott that presupposes all Latinos think alike on immigration is just as insulting as laws that view all Latinos as suspected undocumented immigrants.

What's more, protest that assumes Latinos are the only ones incensed by the lack of intelligent thinking on immigration is heading off the wrong cliff.

Buy a light bulb, somebody.