Arizona governor: Boycott is misguided

[MrBig]

Source: ESPN

In my 28 years of public service, I have made a lot of tough calls. But with a federal government unwilling to secure our border for years and years, Arizona is left with little choice. Imagine a sporting event in which rules have been agreed to for 70 years, but the umpires refuse to enforce those rules. It makes no sense. Although I recognize that Arizona Senate Bill 1070, as amended, is not the entire solution to our illegal immigration problem in Arizona, most people are united in the hope that it will finally inspire the politicians in Washington, D.C., to stop talking and to start action now.

By now, sports fans everywhere have heard something about the passage of Senate Bill 1070, a measure I signed into law. It has resulted in protests outside ballparks hosting our Arizona Diamondbacks and has led to calls on Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig to strip the City of Phoenix's opportunity to host baseball's Midsummer Classic in July 2011.

Urging Major League Baseball to take away next year's All-Star Game from Phoenix is the wrong play. In Arizona, both proponents and opponents of Senate Bill 1070 have stated that economic boycotts are an inappropriate and misguided response to an issue that is clearly worthy of proper public debate and discourse. Put simply, history shows that boycotts backfire and harm innocent people. Boycotts are just more politics and manipulation by out-of-state interests. As a border state, Arizona has already paid a heavy price for the federal government's failure -- hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars in unreimbursed costs -- and its citizens should not be punished further.

It is critically important that all Americans understand the impetus for this new law and have a clear understanding of the law itself. Our neighbor to the south, Mexico, is in a massive battle with well-organized drug cartels. Because of Washington's failure to secure our southern border, Arizona has become the superhighway of illegal drug and human smuggling activity. In December 2008, the U.S. Justice Department said that Mexican gangs are the "biggest organized crime threat to the United States." In 2009, Phoenix had 316 kidnapping cases, turning the city into our nation's kidnapping capital. Almost all of the persons kidnapped were illegal immigrants or linked to the drug trade.


Read more: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/commentary/news/story?page=brewer/100505

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I hadn't seen this posted anywhere. Apparently in the wake of "Los Suns" and the attempt to move the MLB All-Star game, Governor Brewer felt it was appropriate to address the ESPN readers.

Pretty interesting read not necessarily for her reasoning (all the normal talking points including her list of "facts") but more for her plea not to boycott. She makes it sound like the boycott would be quite effective.