The Arizona State Senate is considering [1] a bill that would require hospitals to check whether patients are in the country legally, and contact federal authorities if they are not.
The bill is similar to Arizona's legislature’s attempt [2]to require local police to check the immigration status of those they detain, even at routine traffic stops. The first bill—portions of which have been blocked [3]by a federal court—threatened to make the state significantly more dangerous [4] by removing all incentive for undocumented immigrants to cooperate with local law enforcement. But the hospitals bill might be, unbelievably, even more dangerous—it would prevent undocumented immigrants from seeking critical health care, driving them to either suffer without care or seek underground, and likely unsafe, treatment.
Right Wing Watch reported on two immigration [5] panels [6] at last week’s Conservative Political Action Committee—both were notable not only for their overtones of white supremacy, but for the dehumanizing language participants used to describe undocumented immigrants.
As we noted earlier this year in a report [7] on right-wing immigration rhetoric, dehumanizing language is key to implementing inhumane policies. You know that that rhetoric has gone way too far when elected officials are proposing fixing the immigration system by preventing sick people from seeking safe and legal health care.