Arizona immigration law targets Immigrant Women and their families

This week the Supreme Court holds hearings to determine the constitutionality of the nation’s most controversial state immigration law, Arizona’s SB 1070. The National Coalition for Immigrant Women’s Rights (NCIWR) opposes the law because it promotes stigma, bias and blatant racial profiling by demanding police seek out “foreign characteristics” to identify immigrants without documents, among other serious flaws. Today, more than half of immigrants are women, and many of those women are the sole breadwinners and backbone of their families and communities. SB1070 creates barriers between law enforcement and immigrant women who fear that reporting a violent partner or other criminal activity might lead to their own immigration detention. The law creates cruel conditions that could potentially needlessly separate mothers from their children. “This Arizona law and others like it legalize the harassment of immigrants,” said Jessica González-Rojas, executive director of National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, co-leader of NCIWR. “This country needs comprehensive immigration reform that protects women and unites families, not over-reaching laws, like this one, that deny basic human rights.”“Women and their families should not be terrorized by laws that threaten to tear families apart,” stated Miriam Yeung, executive director of the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum, co-leader of NCIWR. “Immigrant women are making enormous social and economic contributions in communities across the United States. Laws like SB 1070 completely undermine this reality.” NCIWR stands in solidarity with women’s and immigrants’ rights supporters across the country who are relying on the Supreme Court to declare this law unconstitutional. ###The National  Coalition of Immigrant Women’s Rights is the leading national collaboration to specifically focus on women and gender issues in the public discourse on immigration. The coalition represents more than 40 leading organizations with a presence nationally and in every state.