Many of San Diego’s top community, religious, and civil and social leaders, united this week to say “No!” in unison  to Arizona’s SB-1070, which makes being undocumented in the state a crime.

    Under SB-1070, Arizona’s law enforcement officers are required to ask people for documentation if they suspect people are in the country without immigration documents.

    During the press conference held at the University of San Diego’s Peace and Justice Institute, one leader after another, one voice after another, showed their disgust for the new law.

    Critics, including many Latino activists, argue that SB-1070 discriminates against Latinos and other people of color because of racial profiling.

    Kevin Keenan with the ACLU in San Diego said that people from all backgrounds in the county have united against the measure.

    “This inhumane, irresponsible Arizona profiling law must be stopped in its tracks,” Keenan said during the press conference.

    Although he wasn’t present at the event, Congressman Bob Filner issued a statement that was read during the conference.

    “Arizona ’s new immigration law doesn’t meet the most basic test of how we treat people in this country.  Racial profiling, requiring people to carry identification papers – that is the mark of a police state! This law isn’t just misguided, it is dangerous.  It threatens to provoke racial discrimination, community discord and undermines the mission of law enforcement. That’s why the U.S. Justice Department should immediately seek an injunction to stop the Arizona law from being enforced,” Filner’s statement read.

    Pedro Ríos, with the American Friends Service Committee, said that this law is a step back in civil rights.

    “This is taking us back to an era when it was OK to discriminate against people based on the color of their skin,” said Rios, who last weekend travelled to Arizona to attend a rally against the law.

    Activists also said that the law is unconstitutional. The law would take effect in about 90 days.

    Among the statements presented at the press conference include:

   • Arizona’s new law threatens the fundamental constitutional rights of border state residents to move freely within the country; the law poses a special threat to the civil rights and liberties of people of color who live in and travel through Arizona.

   • Though the law’s proponents claim that race and ethnicity alone cannot be cause for questions about immigration status, public officials are already asserting that illegal immigrants can be identified by the clothes they wear and the way they speak. We need a humane and workable solution, not an irrational response to our broken immigration system; we need solutions that help our country move forward together rather than divide us.

   Ríos said that there are several similarities between SB-1070 and California’s 1994 Proposition 187, which would’ve denied public services to undocumented immigrants. Prop. 187 was ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge.

   Rios said that both laws were launched during an electoral year, adding that both use immigrants as a scapegoat during hard economic times.

   A major difference he said is that SB-1070 affects everyone, both documented and undocumented immigrants.

   Many community leaders in San Diego, including Herman Baca, president of the Committee on Chicano Rights, are calling for a boycott of all Arizona companies and products.

   “In our opinion, Arizona has to be dealt with like one would deal with a schoolyard bully, punch him in the mouth,” Baca said in a statement. “(This) calls for an economic boycott of Arizona by our community (the nation’s fastest growing ethnic group), the millions of citizens of Mexico, and all people of good will.”

    On online social network Facebook, many San Diego residents are circulating posters, petitions, and cartoons, several of them made by San Diego-native cartoonist Lalo Alcaraz, against the Arizona law.