The Los Angeles City Council, protesting Arizona’s crackdown on illegal immigration, on Wednesday voted to ban most city travel to Arizona and future contracts with companies in that state.
During a morning-long debate on the resolution, council members compared Arizona’s action to Nazi Germany and the beginning of the Holocaust, as well as the internment and deportation of Japanese Americans during World War II. A new Arizona law, which will take effect July 23, requires police to check the immigration papers of people they suspect lack legal status, which critics say will lead to racial profiling.
“Los Angeles the second-largest city in this country, an immigrant city, an international city. It needs to have its voice heard,’’ said Councilman Ed Reyes, one of the resolution’s sponsors. “As an American, I cannot go to Arizona today without a passport. If I come across an officer who’s having a bad day and feels that the picture on my ID is not me, I can be … deported, no questions asked. That is not American.’’
The action was approved 13-1, with Councilman Greig Smith casting the sole dissenting vote.
The council’s action fell short of a total boycott or canceling all of the city’s $58 million worth of contracts with Arizona companies. Officials with the Port of Los Angeles and Los Angeles International Airport expressed concern about potential effects on those agencies. The council asked boards overseeing the port, airport and city utilities to review all contracts with ties to Arizona, however.
LAX receives $22 million in revenue from two Arizona-based airlines — US Airways and Mesa Air. The port relies on three Arizona firms for new, low-emission big rigs, part of the city’s “clean truck’’ program that is expected to reduce truck-related pollution at the port by 80% by 2012.
(Source: LA Times)
Join the official YWN WhatsApp status
11 Responses
LA gets electricity from our Palo Verde nuclear power plant and water from OUR Colorado River. Arizona should boycott LA back. Let them languish from thirst in the dark. While we’re at it, let’s bus all the Mexican anchor babies dumped on our state to LA. Their Mayor Antonio Ramón Villaraigosa can shower them with love and entitlements on the beleaguered taxpayers’ backs. His city is already stone cold broke. What’s a few hundred million bucks more of indebtedness when the cupboard is bare anyway?
Arizona should be allowed to make and enforce the laws that are needed for Arizonians not for the benefit of California.
It’s time that we all boycott Los Angeles and not let them dictate how other states should govern themselves.
The city of LA which consists mostly of illegals anyway could stay away as long as possible & only ruin their city.
They are a bunch of morons for not reading the bill (only THIRTEEN pages!) so they could see for themselves this is a bunch of liberal hypocrisy!
Arizona should be allowed to enforce their laws without having to be bullied or dictated by Los Angeles how to govern.
It’s time to boycott Los Angeles and send them a message to put their own house in order.
AZ has no power to enforce immigration laws; it is a power given by the Constitution to the Federal Government.
The rest of America may take pride in investing in Arizona where all goods and services are provided by American people.
On the other hand where was LA when they were supposed to boycott the state that closed down Agriprocessors for hiring illegals?
charliehall,
thanks for your comment but as you know the feds havent been enforcing the law so this law COPIES the federal law which allows AZ to enforce it as much as possible.
BUILD A WALL!!
1. Questions on who can enter the United States (visas, immigration, etc.) are probably exclusively Federal (though it is interesting that in the antebellum period states handled naturalization).
2. Given that many people in Los Angelos are Hispanic, and the Arizona law requires local police to round up any Hispanic and demand proof of citizenship (and how many Americans carry a passport at all times? – such rules are common in police states, not in the US), it is reasonable that the LA would not want to have any of its employees do business in Arizona.
I am horrified at the total lack of sensitivity toward the illegal immigrants. We should all be applauding L.A.’s action. We Jews have been illegal aliens far too many times in our history.
“…council members compared Arizona’s action to Nazi Germany and the beginning of the Holocaust.”
The comparison to Nazi Germany (yemach shemom) is inapproriate. Arizona police are not beating and murdering suspected ilegal immigrants, rounding them up, rampaging their places of business (although this one might not apply to illegals), etc.!!
#9 — If you lived here on the front line in Arizona, you’d be whistling a different niggun. Jews, legal residents or otherwise, weren’t murderers, kidnappers, drug runners, human smugglers, or any other categories of violent felons. You liberal buttercups sitting comfortably in your eastern cities with one cop per forty citizens just don’t have a clue. And since you don’t have a clue, don’t weigh in on a topic you know NOTHING about.