It’s strange to watch as parts of the U.S. political right-wing, with CNN’s Lou Dobbs in the vanguard, pursue a conspiracy theory that grows from an intolerant premise (the so-called birthers believe Obama’s diverse background must mean he’s actually a “foreigner”). But it’s even stranger and more disconcerting to observe Obama’s administration  endorsing immigration enforcement tactics that do something similar, in a different sphere: they nudge local law enforcement towards profiling Latinos a priori as foreigners, and illegal immigrants to boot. Basically, an identical logic operates in both instances.

The Department of Homeland Security program, called “287(g)” for the section of the 1996 immigration law that created it, effectively transforms local sheriff deputies, cops, and state troopers into federal immigration agents. They’re free to round up illegal immigrants and turn them over to the feds for detention and deportation proceedings. This despite the fact that overstaying a visa or entering the country illegally are civil offenses, not criminal ones, and lie exclusively within federal jurisdiction. And because the 287(g) agreements are often championed by local elected officials as part of a wider effort to scapegoat illegal immigrants and win easy political points, guess what happens: an open season is declared on Latinos, and they’re subjected to sweeps, unwarranted traffic stops, etc., on the suspicion of being foreigners without the right papers (green cards, birth certificates, what have you). Why? Well, because they look foreign or have identifiably non-Anglo names.

That’s certainly what has occurred in Maricopa County Arizona, where Sheriff Joe Arpaio has become a national celebrity and hero to nativists and immigration restrictionists, by leveraging 287(g) into a degrading media spectacle. He’s cast himself in the “hero” role, of course, championing supposedly virtuous raids against immigrant communities. Arpaio loves publicity stunts like marching his 287(g) prisoners, in prison stripes and shackles, past TV cameras to a tent prison custom-built for the detainees. In an editorial after the incident, the New York Times wrote that in Arpaio’s version of America “the mob rules and immigrants are subject to ritual humiliation” (sounds like the anti-immigrant blogosphere). In Latino communities, 287(g) became synonymous with both racial profiling and the rise in immigrant bashing that coincided with the final years of President Bush’s presidency and the economic meltdown.

287g was the subject of a comprehensive review by U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. Many immigrant advocates believed it would be dismantled or significantly revamped. Instead, Obama’s administration announced earlier this month they would expand the program to new jurisdictions, pretty much as is. In March, using New Jersey as an example, I wrote about 287g’s serious flaws, including the financial burden it places on localities. A report by the think tank Justice Strategies outlines some of 287g’s most egregious consequences. The report’s introduction reads in part:

“Rather than focusing on serious crime, police resources are spent targeting day-laborers, corn-vendors and people with broken tail-lights …”

In other words, 287g enables police resources to be funneled into a kind of birthers movement on a national scale, with local beat cops roaming our streets, ready to investigate those who look a smidgen exotic, on the presumption that they aren’t U.S.-born or properly documented. It’s not a coincidence that Lou Dobbs, the CNN commentator who most prominently pushed the birthers story, has also been the most virulently anti-immigration voice in mainstream media. By making only cosmetic changes to 287(g), Obama’s White House lends credence to the xenophobia that drives the birthers movement (not to mention the alleged racial profiling that led to the arrest of Prof. Henry Louis Gates, Jr.).

I began to mull all this when I read Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek’s most recent article for the London Review of Books. Most of it has to do with comparison between the authoritarian bent of both Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi and Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Towards the end of the essay, Zizek touches on anti-immigrant sentiment in Italy, and identifies it as an ingredient contributing to the increasingly undemocratic culture of Berlusconian society. He says it tries to portray itself as a “reasonable,” measured and thus acceptable anti-immigration stance. But when looked at in practice (as when Italian authorities hauled Tunisian fishermen to court for saving the lives of African immigrants) it becomes clearer and clearer there’s a malignant premise at work: the lives of immigrants, especially illegal ones, lie outside the pale. The immigrant, the outsider, the foreigner, he or she is worth less than the citizen, if not worthless altogether. The humanity and inalienable rights of the person are discarded. There’s no due process in racial profiling. But apparently a program that encourages the practice is deemed OK for green-lighting by Obama’s White House.