Emails from State Senator Show Racial Motivation of Arizona Law

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"I've never been a hateful guy," Pearce (in photo) said in a 2011 interview. "It's disappointing that people would paint you as a hateful guy. ... Vigilant? Absolutely. But I'm not hateful. I just know my duty. My duty to my country, my God, my family and the rule of law."(He is right, this is not necessarily about hate. Racism/White Supremacy is systematic and calculated. Does he look like an angry emotional basket case to you? This here is a reaction to white fear of assimilation from a growing Latino population & white genetic annihilation. Being able to detain non-whites is a precondition to genocide. Watch your back. Plan accordingly.) From [HERE] Opponents of Arizona's controversial immigration law, Senate Bill 1070, are using dozens of e-mails sent by Russell Pearce over the past six years to allege that the law was racially motivated and that the former senator and sponsor of the legislation fabricated data to persuade the Legislature and Gov. Jan Brewer to support it. The American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona acquired thousands of Pearce e-mails through a public-records request and included dozens of them in a legal motion to block a portion of the law.

Advocates hope to use the e-mails to show a pattern of discrimination that, they believe, was Pearce's motivation for SB 1070 and thus prove that it violates the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. If they are successful in showing a pattern of discrimination, it could help persuade the courts to overturn the law, legal experts say. The emails would provide evidence of the racist intent of the Legislature. Smoking gun evidence rarely exists. 

The following are excerpts from e-mails Russell Pearce sent from 2006 to 2011. 

  • "The illegal aliens in the United States have a crime rate that's two-and-a-half times that of non-illegal aliens. In particular, their children, are going to make a huge additional crime problem in the U.S."
  • "The birth rate among illegal immigrants is substantially higher than the population at large."
  • "Last week, Denver's illegal aliens sang our national anthem in Spanish and bastardized the words of OUR country's most sacred song."
  • "Battles commence as Mexican nationalists struggle to infuse their men into American government and strengthen control over their strongholds. One look at Los Angeles with its Mexican-American mayor shows you Vincente Fox's general Varigossa commanding an American city."
  • "We create cultural and linguistic apartheid by creating a slave class of workers unassimilated while growing in numbers and antagonistic strength. This condition creates a perfect formula for rioting and violence that will tear our nation to pieces!"
  • "They create enclaves of separate groups that shall balkanize our nation into fractured nightmares of social unrest and poverty."
  • "Can we maintain our social fabric as a nation with Spanish fighting English for dominance?
  • It's like importing leper colonies and hope we don't catch leprosy. 
  • It's like importing thousands of Islamic jihadists and hope they adapt to the American Dream." 
  • "9,000 people killed every year by illegal aliens," 
  • "the illegal aliens in the United States have a crime rate that's two-and-a-half times that of non-illegal aliens."

 

Gov. Brewer spokesman, Matthew Benson, dismissed the idea that SB 1070 was politically motivated or that inaccurate statistics persuaded leaders to support it. "The ACLU's tactic is a smoke screen," he said. "By focusing upon an individual legislator's e-mails, they intend to divert focus from SB 1070's simple, common-sense language -- language that the overwhelming majority of Arizonans and Americans support, and language that the Supreme Court unanimously upheld."

 

According to the pleadings, the e-mails show that Pearce and his correspondents tended to blur lines between illegal immigrants and Hispanics in general. They also include what the motion calls "invented facts," like e-mail statements that illegal immigrants are involved in 60percent of all murders or are responsible for the majority of murders of police officers, or "the idea that everybody who's marching to protest the law is illegal," said Omar Jadwat, one of the ACLU's lead attorneys in its case against SB 1070.

"Key legislators relied on invented 'facts' about the costs and dangers of 'illegal immigration,' conflated Latinos generally or certain U.S. citizen children with 'illegal aliens,' and used thinly veiled code words that, in context, plainly reveal a discriminatory motive," the motion says.

 

 

 

Controversial history

Pearce has drawn criticism since before he was elected to public office.

As Motor Vehicle Division director in 1996, he successfully pushed for a law that requires individuals to prove they are in the country legally to get a driver's license. Immigrant-rights activist Salvador Reza at the time called the law "racist."

As a state lawmaker, the accusations against Pearce continued.

In 2006, Pearce faced a backlash for using the term "Operation Wetback" in praising a 1954 federal program that deported illegal immigrants.

That same year, he sent an e-mail to supporters that included an article from the National Alliance, a White-supremacist group. The story attacks the media for presenting a "single view of the world, a world in which every voice proclaims the equality of the races, the inerrant nature of the Jewish 'Holocaust' tale, the wickedness of attempting to halt the flood of non-White aliens pouring across our borders."

Pearce apologized, saying that someone he thought was a friend had sent him the article and that he forwarded it without reading the entire article.

He was criticized in 2011 after he forwarded a letter from a substitute teacher that another senator eventually read on the Senate floor. Pearce defended the teacher, who wrote that most Hispanic students would rather be gang members than students and that they "hate America and are determined to reclaim this area for Mexico."

During Pearce's 2011 recall election, former Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo and Bay Buchanan, who served as U.S. treasurer under President Ronald Reagan, organized the Committee to Oppose Recall of Russell Pearce. Their website, teamamericapac.org, included links to such organizations as the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which some have accused of having an anti-immigrant agenda and Social Contract Press, which advocates barring Muslims from immigrating to the U.S.

Pearce also had connections to J.T. Ready, an avowed White supremacist and border vigilante who in May killed four people and himself in a domestic-violence altercation.

But Pearce distanced himself from Ready. "At some point in time, darkness took his life over, his heart changed, and he began to associate with the more despicable groups in society," Pearce said in a statement released to the media shortly after the murders.