A coalition is uniting to improve the tone of the immigration debate

Published on Sat, Apr 30, 2011

Sunshine. Smiling people. Horizons as big as our opportunities.

Scenery as amazing as our optimism. That was the old Arizona.

Intolerant. Unwelcoming. Dangerous. Controversial.

That's the new image of Arizona.

If you don't think that image is right for our state, you might want to check out a new group in town called the Real Arizona Coalition. It includes some high-profile members from business, community and faith organizations who are ready to say, "Enough, already" - although they would probably say it more diplomatically.

This group is not about being in your face. It is about trying to get to your heart. Arizona's heart.

It's about remembering what made Arizona a destination. (Hint: It wasn't just the weather.) It's about honoring all the people who helped build the state and tapping that diversity to solve some big, big problems. Together.

This is a courageous concept. Despite all the talk of a new era of civility, wedges remain a powerful political tool to separate people and build alliances based on fear and dislike of the other guy.

Illegal immigration is one of those wedges. Two-thirds of Americans say the current system is broken. But the desperate, radical efforts to solve this national problem in Arizona's Legislature are largely responsible for Arizona's bad image.

Senate Bill 1070 made Arizona a punch line for political satirists. Reckless talk about headless bodies in the desert didn't help the state's image, either.

Once lauded for its friendliness and famous for its growth and tourism, Arizona saddled itself with a heavy load of bad publicity just as it was beginning the long, hard climb out of the Great Recession.

It matters to visitors.

"Bad news travels faster than good news," says Marc Garcia of the Greater Phoenix Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Bad news does not attract tourists.

It matters to entrepreneurs and investors.

"We are putting our future prospects for prosperity in peril if we are perceived as being hostile toward foreigners," says Ioanna Morfessis, president of IO.Inc, a business- and economic-development consulting firm. She is founding president/CEO of the Greater Phoenix Economic Council (GPEC) and the Economic Alliance of Greater Baltimore.

Imagine a French executive of a global company who has a Tunisian wife, Morfessis says. How will he feel about being transferred to Arizona? This matters in an era when global companies make decisions about where to locate based on the need to compete for top talent.

Morfessis is a member of the Real Arizona Coalition, as is the Greater Phoenix Convention and Visitors Bureau and nearly two dozen other groups, including Arizona Employers for Immigration Reform, St. Luke's Health Initiatives, Sundt Construction, One Arizona/Interfaith Leaders Coalition and GPEC.

Barry Broome, GPEC president and CEO, said by e-mail that the Real Arizona Coalition is important because "Arizona has suffered from a media landscape that has greatly mischaracterized our community."

He added, "This collective effort is working to articulate a true, better story about our great state."

It isn't just economics. This is personal, too.

Latinos have roots in Arizona as deep as the Grand Canyon. But their civil rights became collateral damage in the rush to get tough on illegal immigrants; their children were characterized as gang wannabes on the floor of the state Senate this spring; and Arizona's new attorney general characterized a group of peaceful Latino protesters as a "thuggish mob."

This wounds the heart of a state in which nearly one-third of the population is Latino and only a small fraction of that population is undocumented.

Luz Sarmina, president of the non-profit Valle del Sol, says the rhetoric surrounding illegal immigration has "made it OK to talk really ugly about people, as though they are not human beings."

An Arizonan for more than 40 years, she says someone recently yelled, "Mexican, go home!" as she was walking in downtown Phoenix. During hearings at the Legislature about this year's proposed immigration bills, she heard people say they "didn't want to sit in the same room with Mexicans." That kind if thing would not have happened two or three years ago, she says.

"I have countless friends who have been pulled over just because their skin is brown," says Rev. Phil Reller, member of the board of the Southwest Conference of the United Church of Christ and part of One Arizona/Interfaith Leaders Coalition.

Reller says the faith community needs to be involved in changing the discussion.

Real Arizona Coalition describes itself as aiming to "regain control of the state's destiny by encouraging civil, fact-based discussions to improve the tenor of the debate over immigration, while shifting the conversation to focus on the issues such as job creation, education, a quality environment and honing our state's competitive economic advantage."

To start a discussion based on facts, the coalition is co-hosting the "Arizona Immigration Solutions Conference" on Saturday at Rio Salado College. Other co-sponsors of the daylong event are One Arizona/Interfaith Leaders Coalition and Arizona Employers for Immigration Reform.

Todd Landfried of Arizona Employers for Immigration Reform says every member of the Legislature has been invited. The public is welcome, too. Advance registration is required. (Go to azeir.org/aisc/.)

The conference will include a discussion of what has been tried in other states, including Utah's promising guest-worker legislation, and a review of current research.

Speakers include Ben Johnson, American Immigration Council; Jaime Aguila, an Arizona State University immigration-history expert; and UCLA professor Raul Hinojosa-Ojeda, who is co-author of new study, "A Rising Tide or a Shrinking Pie," from the Center for American Progress and the Immigration Policy Center.

That study found that "the SB 1070 approach would have devastating economic consequences if its goals were accomplished. ... It would trigger a loss of 581,000 jobs, decrease total employment in the state by 17.2 percent and reduce the state's tax revenues by 10 percent."

When such information is factored in to the economic and human costs of Arizona's tortured debate over immigration, it's clear a new direction is necessary. The members of the coalition I talked to are not wild-eyed open-borders fanatics. They want safe borders and a sensible, workable immigration system.

They also want their state back.

With the Real Arizona Coalition, Morfessis says, "we aspire to restore Arizona to the Arizona we love."

It's a goal worth embracing.

Published in the Arizona Republic | Read Article