SB1070 Backlash Now International and Bipartisan

Governor Jan Brewer of Arizona was in Tucson yesterday for a town hall meeting along with 200+ protestors outside. CNN has video of her remarks where she does a decent impression of a Fiddling Nero:

"I believe it's not going to have the kind of economic impact that some people think that it might," Brewer, a Republican, said.

You can almost hear her willing it to be true.

Brewer, and the rest of the Arizona Republican Party, are counting on the backlash to their extremist actions to fade. The opposite is happening, however; the Latino community is not backing down and we are sending a strong message to all of culprits behind SB1070 that we will not be intimidated by our government.

Looking around at the headlines, it's becoming clearer that we are winning this political fight. The backlash is growing in intensity, crossing international borders:

The Secretary General for the Organization of American States (OAS), José Miguel Insulza, spoke earlier about the situation that thousands of Latin American immigrants face in the state of Arizona and spoke about "the concerns of the OAS, of the Secretary General, and of the Latin American community over the passing of a law in the US state of Arizona that we consider to be discriminatory against immigrants, and in particular against the population of Latin American origins living in that country."

Buenos Aires Herald

Plus, the state of Sonora, just south of Arizona in México, has backed out of a cooperation meeting that is held every year to discuss regional opportunities for commerce and safety. They canceled as a symbolic gesture of protest to the new law.

Also on Monday, President Calderon reiterated his earlier criticism of the Arizona immigration crackdown, saying in comments to the Institute for Mexicans Abroad that the law "opens the doors for unacceptable racial discrimination."

According to a copy of the speech posted on the presidential Web site, Calderon said that commercial, tourism and cultural ties between Mexico Arizona would be affected by the law. "We are going to act," he said, without specifying details.

Meanwhile, Mexican media reported Monday that the federal congressional delegation of the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD), Mexico's third-largest political party, had called upon Sonora Gov. Guillermo Padres Elias to break commercial and tourism ties with Arizona over the new law.

Nogales International

The AZGOP is so extreme that it's now finding itself under ridicule from members of its own party on the national level. Tomás Tancredo was one shocker to raise questions of SB1070's scope, Joe Scarborough is another. The former Florida GOP Congressman has a huge platform with Morning Joe on MSNBC and blasted Arizona's Republican-sponsored initiative:

It does offend me that when one out of every three citizens in the state of Arizona are Hispanics, and you have now put a target on the back of one of three citizens who if they're walking their dog around a neighborhood, if they're walking their child to school, and they're an American citizen or a legal, legal immigrant, can now put a target on their back and make them think every time they walk out of their door, they may have to prove something.

Like a tuning fork, the backlash will continue to build against SB1070.

Due to Arizona's proximity to México, this law is an act of voter suppression of Latinos - a Juan Crow initiative- by the Arizona Republican Party. Well, we won't forget and we won't be intimidated come November. Here's an appetizer of what's to come:

...Democratic candidate Terry Goddard leads Brewer 71-25 with Hispanics. That may seem ho hum, but consider this: Barack Obama only won Hispanic voters in the state by a 56-41 margin. So Goddard's outperforming him by more than 30 points there. And on our September poll Goddard was up just 53-33 with Hispanics so it's a 26 point improvement on the margin even relative to that.

Public Policy Polling