Arizona Immigration Ballot Initiatives

Mixed results on the GOP-led Arizona State Legislature's efforts to get their failed proposals from the now-vetoed "comprehensive" immigration bill they sent to the Governor last month on to the fall election ballots.

Arizona voters will decide in November whether to expand the list of government benefits denied to illegal immigrants and make English the state's official language.

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They failed Wednesday night to push through the Legislature ballot measures that would have criminalized the presence of illegal immigrants in Arizona and set state punishments for businesses that hire illegal labor.

They also couldn't muster enough support for a ballot proposal to make communities get rid of policies that prohibit police officers from enforcing federal immigration law. - linkage

I'm breathing a sigh of relief that the meatier issues that would've put us on a further path of a police state were defeated, but it's still astronomically obnoxious that the voters in Arizona are going to be forced to vote for 1) the further restriction of basic services to people who share our environment and 2) the continued dumbing down of the general population by continuing the stigma of bi/multilingualism.

While the political suits and pearls keep chugging along in their game of political football, news stories like this will keep piling up worse than a chain-reaction wreck on I-10 during a monsoon dust storm.

Along the deadliest stretch of the U.S.-Mexican border, coroners and consulates are struggling to keep up with a record volume of bodies that are pouring into morgues like the one in Tucson. Border officials have dealt with unclaimed bodies and burials for decades, but they also face financial, moral and political questions as the bodies pile up.

Dr. Bruce Parks, the Pima County chief medical examiner, has more than 100 bodies of undocumented immigrants in the morgue, some new arrivals, others dating as far back as 2004. Since Jan. 1, he's received a record number - 83 - compared with this time last year, when he had 60. The start of the summer temperatures has been brutal, he said, with six dead in one June weekend, the worst so far this year.

"The main thing now is just bracing ourselves for the new people coming in," Parks said. "We're already behind, and it's picking up again."

Don't forget to give groups like No More Deaths, Coalición de Derechos Humanos and the Border Action Network some well-deserved support for helping to end the loss of human lives in the parched desert of the frontera-lands.

Crossposted at Migra Matters