IT's a sad day in America, especially if you are Latino and live in Arizona

Today is a sad day for America. Especially for Latinos for whom this is a major setback in the fight for equality and civil rights. The immigration bill signed into law by Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer is not one designed to curb illegal immigration, but rather it legalizes racial persecution and institutionalizes discrimination.

It represents the first outcome -- of many to come -- pushed and supported by the hateful rhetoric peddled time and again by the Tea Party and many of its followers. Worst of all, there is no longer a disguise or an attempt to hide behind the cloak of an economic argument. It is the latent persecution of those who fail to fit the "American Citizen" model created by the imagination of Teabaggers, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and the full array of cronies demanding to take a country back that never belonged exclusively to them.

This is what the Tea Party wanted all along. This is what FOX network, its biggest megaphone, had hoped for: A country willing to sacrifice its civil rights for an invisible sense of relief based on a false pretension that the country is or will be white and monolithic.

Just picture what the new law entails? A law enforcement official hears you speaking Spanish or English with an accent; they stop you and ask to see a passport. You might or might not carry it at that moment. You are detained indefinitely, hours - even days. How about if you happen to be walking while brown? According to the law, this could possibly well be evidence of being "illegal."

Your appearance, your clothes, your language, your location, your activities or anything that may trigger suspicion - regardless of whether it is actually suspicious or not - is grounds for detention. The cry “papers please” with a strong German accent from men wearing brown shirts and jack boots is about to be heard throughout Arizona, and you better have your papers!

This is precisely the main reason why we need a humane and intelligent immigration reform. The longer it takes for Congress to take action, the more of these obscene local and state laws we'll see coming out of the woodwork. There's a leadership vacuum at the federal level on immigration and it needs to be filled by President Obama. In today's America this can no longer happen.

Without a doubt the law will eventually be stricken down as unconstitutional, but not before many families are broken and many lives are impacted. We must all step up and say “enough” to the jack-booted crowd in Arizona and elsewhere in this country who think that only old, rich, white people are “Americans” and run around wearing silly costumes demanding back “their” America. What they don’t realize is that “their” America never existed. The Confederacy LOST the Civil War, and we don’t live in a white theocracy and never have.