Rat-Fucking in Arizona

photos by CNN

Naive Immigrants' Dreams of U.S. Citizenship Raped

I am extraordinarily careful how I use the word rape.

Assholes in Arizona are raping the hopes and dreams of naive immigrants to this country, in the lingo, "rat-fucking" them.

When it is over, even though the immigrants don't know it yet, they are never going to be U.S. citizens.

"Take that, wetback, and shove it up your greasy ass."

Here's how the scam works.

STEP #1

Blog For Arizona

Maricopa County Recorder Elections Office has learned that an insidious fraud is being perpetrated upon legal immigrants living in Arizona. Apparently, unscrupulous people are going through the telephone book and finding people with Hispanic surnames and are calling them up or visiting their homes and asking them if they are interested in becoming U.S. citizens. If they answer yes, or say that they have started the process, these victims are told that the first step to becoming a citizen is to register to vote.

Plainly, this is untrue. You cannot legally register to vote until you have become a U.S. citizen.

A large number of innocent people are believing this story and are providing all of the information needed to complete a registration form. There are also cases where the victim is never spoken to but the information entered into the registration form is taken just from the telephone book. Even with this incomplete information, the forms are completed anyway, often using false signatures, invented birth dates and drivers license numbers.

These faked forms are then turned to the Maricopa County Elections office. At this point, the names and addresses of these victims are put into the County's system and then checked for validity, at which point the forms are rejected.

Bad enough in its own right.

The immigrant has unwittingly committed a felony. Attempted voter fraud.

All the bullshit about needing ID to visit the polls, which of course, many older people and homeless people don't have, which disenfranchises them while suppressing Democratic Party votes, this is tailor-made to support the Republican attempts to keep low-income and minorities away from the ballot box. Not that there is any indication people registering to vote falsely is any type of genuine problem.

Unless you're Ann Colter.

But that's just ordinary voter fraud. And with a good lawyer -- as if an immigrant trying to become a citizen wants to deal with the law and felony charges, and wouldn't be inclined perhaps to just give up their dreams rather than face down the Prosecutor's office -- could probably make a case they were duped. Especially given a string of these are turning up.

Probably. Maybe. Perhaps.

But then, the truly ugly part kicks in. The rat-fucking.

Step #2

Any person who begins the process of becoming a legal U.S. citizen must obtain from their County Recorder a letter that they have never attempted to register to vote and provide it ICE. If the recorder finds them in the system, they cannot provide that letter, which means that person will likely never become a U.S. citizen, and could be charged with a felony.

So even though these victims may be here with legal documents, because some unscrupulous person is trying to earn $4 or $6 for each registration they turn in, or is trying to create voter fraud where none exists, they are destroying someone's dream of becoming a U.S. citizen.

Five years later.

Eight years later.

Whenever the paperwork is due to ICE, the knife falls. Along with a possible felony charge, depending on how generous Maricopa County feels that month.

A family who has taken care to take every single step right. Their visa, their green card, their attorney, all of the paperwork just so... blown out of the water and possibly across the border by some Arizona asshole destroying lives.

Racist fucks.

A friend of mine is a Priest who has lived outside Tucson for over 30 years. He leaves water for people crossing the desert. I've been on the peripheries of the Sanctuary movement (which started in Tucson) since I was a young medic in South Tucson.

Over 1,000 people a day are turned back in the Tucson sector attempting to make the crossing. Since October 1 a year ago, 204 people have died in the Tucson sector attempting the crossing. And obviously -- and typically ignored by the racist Republicans for whom all Hispanics faces are the same -- many, many Hispanics are in the United States completely legally, on valid visas from the very start of their stay. Not to mention the tens of millions of U.S. citizens of Hispanic decent, or people from South and Central America, or from Europe.

To come so far, to work honestly to do everything legally, to become an American citizen, only to be told "No" by an actively anti-immigrant governmental bureaucracy which assumes the validity of all charges against the immigrant, which looks for reasons to reject citizenship applications.

All because some Arizona asshole raped -- rat-fucked -- an immigrant family years ago in their naivety.

This is beyond ugly.

This is evil.