San Francisco bans travel to Arizona by city employees to protest immigration law

Via Jim Treacher. Implausibly, this is only the second-lamest boycott of the day. The winner? The inchoate progressive rebellion against New York-based Arizona Iced Tea, a.k.a, “the drink of fascists.”

But then, everything associated with tea is “fascist” these days, isn’t it?

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom announced today a moratorium on official city travel to Arizona after the state enacted a controversial new immigration law that directs local police to arrest those suspected of being in the country illegally.

The ban on city employee travel to Arizona takes effect immediately, although there are some exceptions, including for law enforcement officials investigating a crime, officials said. It’s unclear how many planned trips by city workers will be curtailed…

San Francisco’s move comes as the Board of Supervisors introduced non-binding resolutions calling for comprehensive immigration reform and a boycott of Arizona because of the new law, which requires police to try to determine the immigration status of anyone they reasonably suspect of being in the country illegally. There are also online boycott campaigns calling for everything from a boycott of the Arizona Diamondbacks baseball team to the Grand Canyon.

I think this is a fine reminder that governments can exercise their sovereignty in all sorts of creative ways — so fine, in fact, that it should be emphatically reciprocated by Arizona at the first available opportunity. There’s no shortage of moronic resolutions passing through Frisco’s city government; pick one and let the righteous conservative indignation flow. Or better yet, make sure that San Fran’s travel ban is widely publicized inside Arizona and let residents do the rest. Businesses in the bay area are already bracing for a backlash by conservatives (“Certainly in a recession, we don’t want any retaliation”) and that’ll help jumpstart it.

Still not creative enough? Well, San Francisco happens to be one of the most notorious sanctuary cities in America, so much so that even Gavin Newsom ended up knocking the city council last year for being too soft on crimes committed by underaged illegals. I’m sure an arrangement could be reached by which Arizona’s unwanted “guests” relocate to Frisco or some similarly welcoming jurisdiction. Except that, oddly, at the moment none of those jurisdictions seem to want any more “guests” of their own:

As San Francisco and other “sanctuary cities” declare war on Arizona over its new law cracking down on illegal immigrants, most state and local governments that provide a safe haven to undocumented workers refused to publicly roll out a welcome mat for the estimated 440,000 illegals in the Grand Canyon state.

Several mid-size cities and states with policies that seek to protect undocumented workers either declined to comment to FoxNews.com on whether it would accept Arizona’s illegal immigrants or said the possibility had not been considered…

Bill Begley, a spokesman for Mayor Mike Moncrief of Fort Worth, Texas, told FoxNews.com that he couldn’t comment on whether the city, with its population of more than 700,000, would take in any of Arizona’s illegal immigrants.

“We’d have to sit down about any overt offer that would address that issue,” he said. “That’s not something I can talk about off the top of my head.”

I’ve got a feeling progressives are going to come through here the same way they so often come through by volunteering to pay higher taxes. And if they do, good news: Looks like Texas is gearing up to pass an Arizona-style law of its own, so soon there’ll be opportunities for even more “guests” to relocate. In fact, consider this an opportunity for the left to prove how serious it is about its Nazi analogies. Surely they wouldn’t deny safe passage to Jan “Himmler” Brewer’s victims, would they?

Here’s the latest incarnation of the Nazi meme, incidentally, via (where else?) MSNBC. One of the amazing things to me about this debate is how opponents of the law have almost merrily squandered a chance to win some conservatives over to their side. Virtually every prominent Republican has warned of “concerns” about the law — I’ve acknowledged it myself — such that a calm, reasoned appeal about potential civil-rights abuses might have gone a long way. Instead, my sense is that with each new hysterical bleat about Nazism, etc., people are either tuning out or hardening their positions reflexively. It’s not just lefties who are to blame either: Today’s exercise in “bullying sanctimony” by Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson was as grating as anything I’ve read by a liberal. But oh well. When you come to a debate swinging a cudgel, don’t be surprised when people start swinging back. Click the image to watch.

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