I would guess that you have little first hand experience living in Arizona.
I live in CA. We have about half again as many illegal immigrants here per capita as AZ does. I know much better than somebody from AZ what impact illegal immigration does, and doesn't, have on a state.
But, I'm not unaware of what is going on in AZ on a personal level either. One of my better friends lives in Nogales. She was born and raised there, her parents were both legally naturalized before she was born. She went to college at Georgetown and works now as a high paid consultant. She has a baby she is raising with her husband and she is just the nicest, shyest, person you could ever meet. But, she is hispanic and has a hispanic accent. She gets pulled over at least once every month for nothing at all, treated like a criminal, searched, and interogated. She has a driver's license, but she has been brought in to the jail and locked up twice in the past year because the cop claimed not to believe her ID was real. I saw her get interogated and harrassed for being hispanic first hand when I went down there for her wedding. That is a serious, serious, problem when stuff like that is going on. It's a blatant violation of the civil rights act and the 14th amendment, and it is absolutely unacceptable morally.
My concern is if you make them legit, at what point do you say no more. We have over 1000 illegals entering AZ daily. Do they also get a pass on the law?
Yeah, that is a legitimate concern. That's why I am not saying that we shouldn't have enforcement. We should have enforcement. But, a solution that is primarily focused on enforcement will fail, where a solution that provides reasonable options for the people already here will succeed.
Also, I think there is a perception that there are massive throngs of people trying to get into the country and that if we opened up a guest worker program their numbers would explode. That doesn't seem to really be the case. The number of illegal immigrants in the US has declined for 3 years in a row now. More illegal immigrants are choosing to move away than choose to move to here.
A guest worker program doesn't need to be a whole lot more attractive than the options they have currently. Yes, it would mean they don't have to look over their shoulders every day, which would be nice for them, but it also means they need to start paying taxes.
It is a shame you feel AZ is not a good state and tends towards discrimination.
Well, first off, we aren't talking about AZ as a whole. The only group of people that has a majority favoring 1070 in AZ is white Republicans. Support for 1070 amongst hispanics, blacks, and democrats are all 10% or lower in AZ. But, yeah, it's pretty hard to deny that white Republicans in AZ are tending towards discimination. It's not just the laws that deal with illegal immigrants either. They're passing a rash of anti-hispanic laws- the law about firing teachers with accents, the law banning cultural studies course, the new bill they are proposing to deny birth certificates to kids born here if their parents were illegal imigrants, english only laws, etc.
The hispanic population in AZ is increasing, and pretty quickly, but 90% of those hispanics are here legally. That kind of a demographic change always causes backlash. But that doesn't make it right. States just plain are not allowed to try to manage the racial makeup of their population. That is what AZ is trying to do and they're having to try to sneak their way around the 14th amendment and the civil rights act to do it. That needs to stop before we can possibly talk about any kind of increased enforcement of immigration law.
