With regard to the Arizona Immigration law, there has been a lot of discussion. themoderateman has an excellent diary which raises some of the underlying issues that seem a bit unwarranted in many cases.
Some people who are opposed to illegal immigration, people such as myself, are opposed to it because it fundamentally eats away at the integrity of our democracy.
More below the fold ...
I DO NOT support a law which targets illegal immigrants based on appearance or ethnicity. Such an approach is inherently racist.
I DO support a law which targets all illegal immigrants equally.
However, regardless of, or in spite of the Arizona law, I primarily support aggressive targeting of the Mexican government (and other Central American countries) who create the circumstances which drive many illegal immigrants towards the U.S. border.
In Europe, illegal immigration isn't nearly that great of a concern (for the most part). No one really bats an eye if a German citizen decides to pick up and go live in France or the Netherlands. British citizens retire to Spain and Portugal in droves. But these countries all have roughly equivalent standards of living (albeit, deliberately overlooking the current issue with Greek and Portugese financial unrest).
The Mexican government treats businesses the way Republicans want businesses to be treated here in the U.S. Minimum wage laws, employment protections, and workplace safety either don't exist at all, or functionally don't exist because they are not enforced. This is what permits the "giant sucking sound" to pull U.S. manufacturing businesses south of the border. This is what permits Mexican companies to pay substandard wages and exploit employees in relative silence.
Go visit a rural Mexican town, away from the tourist traps. Don't go to the gringo side of "Rocky Point," instead go visit the Mexican side of Puerto Penasco. Public infrastructure is in a shamble or simply does not exist. Streets are not paved. Clean water does not exist, if it runs at all. Electricity may be available, but it is unreliable and haphazard. Buildings halfway constructed because Mexican banks only offer mortgages at astronomically high rates--unless, of course, you're rich, and then you can get a competitive mortgage rate.
But we ignore efforts to get the Mexican government to improve conditions within their own country. Instead, we target the immigrants coming across the border. Where is the lobby to Presidente Felipe Calderon to reform his country's government? When will Mexico begin to provide for their own infrastructure?
Sure, it's easy to sit north of the border and state, "They should do this," or "They should do that." But the fact remains that people flee to the U.S. border because living conditions are so atrocious "down there." "Up here," we don't sem to care about why they come, we just use them as a boogeyman for xenophobic attacks.
The primary focus of our "immigration reform" efforts should be pushing to get the countries "down there" to improve their own conditions. If Mexico and other Central American countries can improve living conditions across the board and fix some of their own problems, illegal immigration will begin to take care of itself.