Arizona immigration law encourages police abuse, says Mexican president The Mexican president, Felipe Calderón, has condemned Arizona's new immigration law and warned that relations with the border state will suffer as a result.
The law, which gives the police the right to stop anyone they suspect is an illegal immigrant, "opens the door to intolerance, hate, discrimination and abuse in law enforcement", Calderón said last night. Trade and political ties with Arizona would be "seriously affected", he warned.
"Nobody can sit around with their arms crossed in the face of decisions that so clearly affect our countrymen," Calderón said in a speech at the Institute for Mexicans Abroad.
His comments came as the furore over the law escalated, with calls growing in the US for a boycott of hotels, convention centres and other economic targets in Arizona.
Opponents of the legislation say it will lead to victimisation of anyone who looks or sounds Latino. Supporters say the legislation is needed because the state can no longer cope with an estimated 450,000 illegal immigrants.
The head of the Organisation of American States, José Miguel Insulza, said: "We consider the bill clearly discriminatory against immigrants, and especially against immigrants from Latin America."
The government of the Mexican state of Sonora, which sits across the border from Arizona, announced it would not attend a co-operation meeting the two states have held annually for four decades. The meeting of the Sonora-Arizona commission was set for June in Phoenix, Arizona.
"This is not about a breaking of relations with Arizona but rather a way to protest at the approval of the law," the state government said.
Democratic members of the US Congress, religious leaders and leftwing activists have urged a boycott of economic targets in the state. At least one national group has responded by cancelling a convention planned for the autumn. Scores of lorry drivers were reported in the US media to have threatened to stop carrying freight to and from the state.
The bill, signed into law on Friday, gives police the right to stop anyone "if reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the US". It has polarised opinion across the US, creating a clear divide between Democrats and Republicans.
Cleaning crews were called to the state legislative building this morning to clear swastikas daubed on it overnight. And a Democratic congressman from Arizona, Raúl Grijalva, who called for an economic boycott against "unjust and racist" legislation, was forced to close his office at the weekend after receiving two death threats.
Among those calling for a sweeping boycott of Arizona businesses was the San Francisco attorney, Dennis Herrera, who urged city departments to look at contracts with Arizona that could be terminated.
He said: "Arizona has charted an ominous legal course that puts extremist politics before public safety and betrays our most deeply held American values."
He noted that a similar boycott 20 years ago, which included the National Football League's decision to move the Super Bowl from the state, led to Arizona dropping its refusal to recognise Martin Luther King Day.
At a rally on Sunday, Grijalva, one of Congress's leading advocates of immigration reform that would offer a route to citizenship for illegal immigrants, called for President Barack Obama to use his executive powers to block the legislation.
The sports editor of the leftwing publication the Nation, Dave Zirin, announced he would no longer write about the Arizona Diamondbacks baseball team. "For me, they do not exist. They will continue to not exist in my mind as long as the horribly named 'Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighbourhoods Act' remains law in Arizona," he wrote.
The board of governors of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, based in Washington, ordered its executive to move a convention planned for this autumn from Arizona. The association president, Bernie Wolfsdorf, said: "We cannot in good conscience spend association dollars in a state that dehumanises the people we represent and fight for."
The Rev Al Sharpton, an advocate of African-American rights, said in New York that he would organise "freedom walkers", just as the civil rights movement had organised freedom riders to board segregated buses in the 1960s. "We will go to Arizona when this bill goes into effect and walk the streets with people who refuse to give identification and force arrest," Sharpton said.
