Statement from the International Relations Committee of the National Assembly of People's Power of the Republic of Cuba

ON April 23, Jan Brewer, governor of the state of Arizona, United States, publicly announced Law SB1070.
This law, of a profoundly racist and xenophobic nature, allows the police to use racial profiling to detain any person if they have "reasonable suspicion" that the person concerned is an illegal, thus criminalizing undocumented immigrants and creating an atmosphere of generalized persecution of all immigrants who, in the near future, will be constantly subjected to arbitrary detention, searches and humiliation, including deportation to their countries of origin. This is occurring in a state in which one third of the population is made up of Latino immigrants and in which 300,000-plus undocumented workers, in the main Mexicans, have taken on the hardest jobs in long and interminable days of agricultural harvests in return for miserable wages.
From the moment at which this legislation started being drafted, broad sectors within the United States have been exposing its selective and discriminatory nature.
Last May Day, more than 70 U.S. cities were the scenario of mass demonstrations by immigrants, workers, students and human rights defenders who, under the slogan "We are all Arizona" demanded a general migration reform and the annulment of that monstrous legislation imposed on Arizona.
Bearing in mind the implications of this law for millions of human beings from our region who are obliged to travel to the United States in search of better living conditions for themselves and their families, and given the definite possibility of similar legislation propagating like a plague in U.S. territory, the International Relations Commission of the National Assembly of People's Power of Cuba proclaims its solidarity with those who are confronting this brutal violation of their human rights.
We feel bound to draw attention to the fact that, while walls are being constructed and laws like this being passed in an attempt to close the door on immigrants to territory stolen by force from the noble Mexican people, the Cuban Adjustment Act, a constant incitement to disorderly emigration and desertion by any means possible and which has cost the lives of hundreds of our people over many years, remains in full force.