Arizona
and its recent legislative history were cited in a recent report issued
under the aegis of the United Nations. According to Githu Mugai, who
had been specially appointed by the organization to study racial
discrimination throughout the world, much of the most serious
discrimination is lobbied against alien migrants. Mugai cited the
controversial Arizona state legislation of SB 1070 as an example of
governments overstepping the bounds of human rights as should be
extended to citizens and non-citizens alike.
Mugai’s
comments were reported as the latest example of the negative outside
attention which has been attached to the legislation. More seriously for
the law’s own chances of being implemented in Arizona, the federal
government has taken an interest, in a largely negative form, in the
legislation. The Justice Department, for example, is responsible for one
of the court cases pending against the SB 1070 Arizona legislation,
while a federal judge has barred some aspects of the law from being
enforced, even while the legislation as a whole has been in effect as of
July 29, 2010.
Mugai
voiced some of the complaints which have commonly been made about SB
1070 in the U.S., both at the community level within Arizona and
throughout the nation. He charged that the legislation “equips a
policeman…with such immense powers as to compromise in my point of view
the very, very fundamental human rights that ought to be enjoyed in such
an enlightened part of the world as Arizona,” placing the issue in an
international context.
