Mesa, Ariz. » Fernando Hernandez feels weary on a Sunday morning as he sits alone in his office in this suburb connected to Phoenix by car-clogged freeways and seemingly endless rows of empty strip malls. Last year, about 600 clients paid for his tax preparation services, and he employed four people to help with the onslaught. The day before the filing deadline, he and his staff worked until nearly midnight. This year, he’ll knock off before sunset, having processed only 200 returns for the year. He worries about closing a second office a few miles away.
The culprit for this downturn is simple in his mind — the anti-immigration, enforcement-only bill SB1070 signed into law a little more than a year ago.
"Last year, people were just waiting for their refunds to move," he says. "I knew this year was going to be really, really hard."
But back then, fewer people viewed SB1070 so skeptically. It passed the Arizona House 35-21, the Senate 17-13 and is largely credited with catapulting Gov. Jan Brewer to victory.
Utah Rep. Stephen Sandstrom, R-Orem, was certain his state would support a similar bill and began looking at SB1070 as a template. He consulted with SB1070’s chief sponsor, Russell Pearce, a good friend and fellow Mormon, who also saw Utah as a sure-fire follower.
What a difference a year makes.
Sandstrom’s bill, HB497 is scheduled to take effect Tuesday, if a federal lawsuit doesn’t block it. Instead of mimicking Arizona’s law, it was watered down repeatedly in the shadow of The Utah Compact endorsed by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, business groups and politicians — ultimately derided by some as "Arizona-light." Utah also passed a guest worker bill that captured the imagination of other states which began rejecting SB1070 copycat proposals one by one.
And now Arizona — which once looked to be the leader for Utah and other states — may end up following its northern neighbor with a quiet insurgency happening in Pearce’s backyard. This backlash includes a recall movement against him and a possible adoption of The Utah Compact by local officials in Pearce’s own district — the Mesa City Council.
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Published Feb 21, 2012 06:17:02PM
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Russell Pearce » Pearce is a barrel-chested man with a gravelly voice and part of a finger missing — shot off while he served as a Maricopa County sheriff’s deputy. Inside the Arizona Capitol, it’s nearing the end of the legislative session and the lawmakers are talking about going past 2 a.m. to wrap it up.
A local radio reporter buzzes around Pearce, the Senate president, waiting to get a sound bite and the Republican leader’s assistant tries to shuttle him back to his office quickly.
But Pearce won’t be denied microphones.
The session — which will end in a day — was the "most successful session in the last 20 years" and Pearce says he’s proud of the accomplishments — notably passing a balanced budget. He makes a similar pronouncement about SB1070 when asked to reflect on it a year after its passage.
Despite a federal judge setting aside some of its provisions, crime is down, business is up and "the illegals are leaving," Pearce says. He believes it’s "a rousing success." He rattles off statistics, rapid-fire like a machine gun to emphasize that success.
Statistics from the Immigration Customs and Enforcement Removal Operations in Phoenix appear to support a few of his claims.
In 2009, there were 81,484 deportations — 23,563 of them criminals. In 2010, that jumped to 95,952 total deportations, including 35,937 criminals. And as of April, 24,488 had already been removed, just more than half of them criminals.
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