The growing far-right populist movements across the United States, from the ‘birthers’ to the ‘Tea Partiers’, may be disparate in nature but they all have one thing in common – they have all used ‘Europe’ as a bogeyman. According to their script Barack Obama is trying to move America toward the “socialist nightmare” that is Europe. How odd then that the new immigration law this movement has pushed through in Arizona moves that state closer to Europe than anything Barack Obama has passed or likely will pass.The Arizona immigration law signed by the state’s Republican governor this week would require police officers to stop anyone who looks like an illegal immigrant and demand that they produce paperwork showing they have the right to be in the United States. The law’s passage has resulted in a furor in America, where critics say it mandates police to conduct racial profiling and is likely to be used by local officials to harass minorities. ‘Boycott Arizona’ movements are spreading like wildfire, and if there is speculation they could be as successful as the 1991 boycott when the state refused to recognize Martin Luther King Day. That boycott cost the state an estimated $400 million. On that issue, Arizona eventually caved.
