Right wing politicians like Governor Jan Brewer have been saying for months that the Arizona/Mexico border is rife with beheadings, kidnappings and killings galore. Their lies have been exposed, time and time again.

The latest issue of Time confirms again what we, and others who live in a fact based reality have been saying.

“[W]hile it’s hardly irrational to worry about Mexico’s violence eventually spilling into the U.S. — they have hardly risen to a level that justified the draconian Arizona bill.”

Time goes on to declare

“[a]ccording to the FBI, the four large U.S. cities (with populations of at least 500,000) with the lowest violent crime rates — San Diego, Phoenix and the Texas cities of El Paso and Austin — are all in border states ” and concludes “despite the murderous mayhem raging across the border in Mexico, the U.S. side, from San Diego to Brownsville, Texas, is one of the nation’s safest corridors.”

And yet the far right continues to whip up hysteria based on xenophobia and lies. There are no facts or statistics that will satisfy them, no solution good enough except mass deportation and criminalization. So where’s the disconnect? Why are polls showing such support for Arizona’s racial profiling law and other copycat measures?

“[t]here’s a real disconnect between emotions and facts when it comes to the border,” says El Paso city councilman Beto O’Rourke. “You’ve got a lot of politicians exploiting this fear that the Mexicans are coming over to kill us.“

Hopefully Governor Brewer, Senators McCain and Kyl, Sheriff Arpaio and their restrictionist allies will face the facts sooner rather than later – that is if they even believe their lies in the first place rather than just being cynical political panderers.

Categories: Arizona, comprehensive immigration reform

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