Steinberg supports Arizona boycott resolution

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State Senate leader Darrell Steinberg threw his weight Wednesday behind a Senate resolution that would urge California to launch an economic boycott against Arizona over that state’s controversial immigration law.

Steinberg attended a Capitol news conference with a dozen other legislators to denounce the Arizona law, which makes it a state crime to lack immigration papers and requires police to determine the status of people they lawfully stop and subsequently suspect are in the country illegally.

Steinberg, a Democrat from Sacramento, predicted that the law would result in racial profiling

‘There is one defining characteristic that allows a law enforcement official to stop someone and ask them for their papers: it’s whether or not their skin is browner than my skin,’ Steinberg said. ‘That’s not what this country is about.’

The resolution, to be voted on by the Senate in the next few weeks, urges state employee and teacher retirement systems ‘to cease making new investment in Arizona’ until it repeals the immigration law and ‘urges an economic boycott.’

Sen. Gil Cedillo (D-Los Angeles), chairman of the Latino Legislative Caucus, introduced Senate Concurrent Resolution 113, saying 44 lawmakers have signed on because of concern that the Arizona law is divisive and unconstitutional.

-- Patrick McGreevy in Sacramento