Obama seizes on Arizona law to push repressive immigrantion overhaul

The attack on immigrant workers serves two interrelated purposes. Under conditions of mass joblessness and increasing poverty, singling out immigrant workers is a time-honored means of dividing the working class. At the same time it serves as a pretext for a vast expansion of the police power of the state.

Whatever the immediate impulse behind the bill in Arizona, there is a logic to the policy of the American ruling class. There are sections of the political establishment that are well aware that their policy of bank bailouts and social austerity will inevitably provoke mass social opposition. The attack on the rights of workers and the turn to authoritarian forms of rule is their response.