Arizona Immigration Law Divides Latinos, Too

By MARC LACEY

Published: October 30, 2010

PHOENIX — Arizona’s immigration law, which politicians have debated in the Legislature, lawyers have sparred over in the courtroom and advocates have shouted about on the street, has found its way up a driveway in central Phoenix, through the front door and right onto the Sotelo family’s kitchen table.

That is where Efrain Sotelo, 49, a process server, and his wife, Shayne, 46, an elementary school teacher, sat and argued on a recent Friday night. He drank beer. She sipped wine. Like many residents across the state, they differed on State Senate Bill 1070, as the immigration law is known.

“I try not to engage in arguments with my wife,” Mr. Sotelo said, looking across at her. “When we talk about this, we both know what’s going to happen. I can’t convince her, and she can’t convince me.”

On that much, they seemed to agree. “He’s much more conservative than I am,” she said. “He can’t be changed. I can’t be changed. We both know that. But that doesn’t mean we don’t try.”

That such a divisive social issue would divide some families is not surprising. But what makes the Sotelos stand out is that they are both Latinos, he a Mexican immigrant who was born in the northern state of Chihuahua and she a descendant of Spanish immigrants who grew up in Colorado.

While polls show that a vast majority of Latinos nationwide side with Mrs. Sotelo in opposing Arizona’s law, that opposition is not uniform. “All Latinos are not opposed to this law — that’s too simplistic,” said Cecilia Menjivar, anArizona State University sociologist. There are other Mr. Sotelos out there, including an Arizona state legislator, Representative Steve B. Montenegro, a Republican who immigrated from El Salvador and became the only Latino lawmaker to vote in favor of the bill.

Since Gov. Jan Brewer signed the legislation in April, polls have found that about 70 percent of Latinos nationwide oppose the law, which allows the police to arrest people they suspected of being illegal immigrants, a provision blocked by a federal judge at the request of the Justice Department.

Mr. Sotelo, who said he would be following Arizona’s appeal of that ruling on Monday, realizes that his views are not popular among immigrants. He was hesitant to reply when a woman in the country illegally asked him recently what he thought of the law.

“I said, ‘I don’t think you want to hear what I have to say,’ ” he recalled.

He thinks his adopted state has been unfairly maligned since the law passed. “I’m a Hispanic, and I don’t have any issues walking the streets,” he said. “They make it seem like the police or sheriff are out there checking everyone’s papers, and that’s not so.”

But his wife, who was thrilled by President Obama’s challenge to the law, has a different view of her adopted state. “It’s more of a racist state after 1070,” she said. “We are a magnet for neo-Nazis.”

Mr. Sotelo, who came here in 1972 after his father obtained a green card, is unswayed by the fierce objections of the Mexican government to the legislation. He still recalls bitterly when he was stopped at a checkpoint inside Mexico with his two children some years ago. The official was checking his paperwork and, Mr. Sotelo said, clearly angling for a bribe. Mr. Sotelo was so furious at the encounter that he turned around and crossed back home to the United States.

Mr. Sotelo does not believe that the bulk of illegal immigrants are criminals, as some advocates of the law have argued. But some percentage of them are dealing in drugs, he said, and those lawbreakers “make the rest of us look bad.”

Mrs. Sotelo scoffs at that. “It’s not a perfect world, and in all groups you’ll have people who abuse the system,” she said. “When you’re dealing with individuals, there has to be flexibility.”

Because he serves summonses for a living, owning his own business, Mr. Sotelo tends to be the law-and-order type. Because she has taught the children of illegal immigrants and sees how hard-edged policies affect real people, Mrs. Sotelo tends to be more willing to give.

“As a teacher, when the law passed, I had kids crying,” she said. “They felt they had to uproot themselves from the life they had known all their lives. I saw total pain. I couldn’t believe it was 2010. It was almost as if I were living through the civil rights era again.”

Her husband shook his head.

Back and forth they went, with Mr. Sotelo endorsing a get-tough approach to illegal immigrants and his wife talking of the need for compassion.

“Phoenix is the No. 1 city in the country for kidnappings,” he said at one point, citing the large number of illegal immigrants who have been held against their will by smugglers.

“That’s false,” she shot back.

“O.K., but there’s a lot of kidnappings in Phoenix,” he said.

“You and I are not being targeted,” she said.

“Right now, it may not be us,” he said.

Her: “I’ve never feared being kidnapped.”

Him: “I do.”

Her: “You can sincerely say you have a fear of being kidnapped?”

Him: “I do. Who knows?”

And so they continued in what was for the most part a good-natured exchange, although with a third party there to intervene when the debate heated up. There was no storming off, which is not always the case, they said.

Trying to convince Mr. Sotelo of the error of his ways can frustrate Mrs. Sotelo. The same goes for him, when he tries to convince his wife how wrong she is.

In one sense, Mrs. Sotelo has come out on top. She has won over their two children with her arguments, her husband said, leaving him with plenty of conservative company once he heads out the front door but isolated in the confines of their home.

Nov 1, 2010