-
Chapter Twelve: Indecent Proposal? The Rise and Success of Arizona Proposition 200
- University of Notre Dame Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
t w e l v e Indecent Proposal? The Rise and Success of Arizona Proposition 200 S y l v i a M a n z a n o Long before Arizona SB10701 came to symbolize the most stringent anti-immigration policy in the country, Proposition 2002 placed immigration enforcement at the center of Arizona politics. The 2004 campaign for Prop 200 framed state immigration policy in a manner that blurred the lines between Latino identity, national security, and economic concerns. This was one of the first successful campaigns to incorporate homeland security language in the post–September 11 political context in order to mobilize support for a policy agenda targeting and penalizing Latinos. Unlike 1990’s California politics characterized by anti-immigration and anti-minority politics, Arizona Prop 200 was bolstered by national sentiment post–September 11 regarding homeland security and national identity. Today Latino immigration politics often appeals to public fears that tie immigration, Latino identity, and national security (Chavez 2008), but it was novel in the 2004 Arizona setting. In essence, Prop 200 paved the way for Arizona SB1070, and contributed to the larger national discourse around immigration politics 321 322 ■ Sylvia Manzano that remains heated and polarized. The rise and success of Prop 200 merits closer analysis for a few reasons. The initiative itself provides a compelling case study in racial threat political dynamics and minority rights in direct democracy venues. Additionally and importantly, examining the context and factors that produced the 2004 law can lend insight into how and why divisively framed immigration politics became a state priority and model for other contests and campaigns around the country. The majority of Arizona voters, 56%, voted in favor of Proposition 200 in November 2004. The omnibus initiative included several controversial provisions including requiring citizenship validation in order to register and to vote,3 and to apply for and receive public benefits. The law also placed new burdens on state and local employees to absorb immigration enforcement duties as the new legal requirement compelled them to report immigration law violations found in the course of their new verification procedures to federal immigration authorities. Prop 200 further criminalized non-compliance, such that employees found guilty of failure to document and report violation of federal immigration could be charged with that crime, punishable by up to four months in jail time and fines. The final stipulation in the new law gave the public legal standing to enforce immigration law through lawsuits against individuals and agencies. That is to say, any Arizona citizen can sue an individual state or local employee or larger government entity for inadequate response or failure to report undocumented immigrants whose status was discovered as part of the public benefits verification process. Clearly, the scope of the law reached far beyond penalizing undocumented individuals residing in the state. The confluence of forces that made such sweeping and severe policies attractive to the Arizona electorate had been brewing for decades. Scholars can correctly point to various historical, contemporary, social, and legal phenomena that contribute to the heated and salient nature of immigration politics in the United States. For the purposes of this chapter, three context-specific factors are considered to explain the emergence and success of Prop 200. First, recent state elections demonstrated ballot initiatives could be a successful mechanism to generate public policy that penalizes cultural differences. Voters approved mea- Indecent Proposal? ■ 323 sures in favor of Official English (Prop 106 in 1988) and repealing bilingual education (Prop 203 in 2000), demonstrating a public willingness to support laws that might otherwise be too controversial for legislative action. Secondly, the flow of immigrants into Arizona dramatically increased during the late 1990’s and into the 2000’s due to favorable economic conditions coupled with U.S. Border Patrol fortification of the Texas and California borders (Hanson 2007; Cornelius 2001). Finally, the post-September 11 context provided a new way to frame immigration policy, in terms of national security threats, that resonated with public opinion (Chavez 2008; Cornelius 2005). These unique factors (prior punitive ballot initiative success, increased immigration , and post–September 11 context) were simultaneously present, producing a sociopolitical environment favorable to aggressive initiatives from sophisticated and well-funded policy entrepreneurs (Muller 1994; Blumenthal 2004a). In 2010, nearly six years after Arizona passed Prop 200, the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the registration verification provision on the grounds that it conflicts with federal laws requiring states to remove obstacles to voting and make registration...