The State of Arizona, tired of the federal government ignoring their Constitutional duty to protect American citizens, has enacted legislation that allows state law enforcement to screen and detain those who cannot produce authentic documentation; much to the chagrin of the progressive left.

On April 23rd Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed into law a measure intended to curb illegal immigration. Entitled the Support our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act (SB 1070) the law compels police officers, when involved in a situation that has already resulted in their stopping an individual, to question that person about his or her immigration status if there is "reasonable suspicion" that person may be illegally in the country. It would also make it a crime under state law to be there illegally.

Why did 70% of Arizonian's approve of the legislation, while just 23% oppose it. Arizonans consistently have been critical of the U.S. government's failure to secure the border with Mexico, and that anxiety has increased with growing drug violence along the border. Former Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano was reported as saying; "[I] say this again, as someone who has walked that border, ridden it, flown it, and driven it: I believe it is as secure as it ever has been." One must remember that Janet Napolitano served as Governor of Arizona from 2003 until 2009. It is fact that the Arizona Border Patrol apprehended over 200,000 persons attempting illegal crossings into the US last year alone. The frightening part of this is that the Border Patrol estimates that two crossings go unchallenged for each one they apprehend. That's 600,000 attempts and a success rate for the bad guys of 67%. No wonder the Obama Administration sought her out for a leadership position in Homeland Security. With a track record like that in Arizona, she was exactly the type of individual they were looking for: I feel so much safer now, don't you?

The outrage unleashed over this law has had a constant theme:

Cardinal Mahoney, a nationally influential figure who heads the nation's largest Roman Catholic archdiocese with 4.3 million members, lambasted the bill on his blog last week, likening it to German Nazi and Russian Communist techniques that compelled people to turn each other in.

"The Arizona Legislature just passed the country's most retrogressive, mean-spirited, and useless anti-immigrant law," the cardinal wrote on his blog. "The tragedy of the law is its totally false reasoning: That immigrants come to our country to rob, plunder, and consume public resources. That is not only false, the premise is nonsense."

First off, Cardinal, it's an anti ILLEGAL immigration law, not an anti immigration law. These are not good people; they commit identity theft, undercut wages for citizens, and suck social services dry. In Cardinal Mahoney's own state of California a new study from the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) examines the costs of education, health care and incarceration of illegal aliens, and concludes that the costs to Californians is $10.5 billion per year. This, to a state with a projected $26 billion budget shortfall.

Thanks Cardinal; for pointing out that the notion that illegal immigration consumes public resources is nonsensical. It is also laughable to hear the City Councils in San Francisco, and other California cities saying that they will boycott Arizona until "…this discriminatory, racist piece of legislation is overturned." In essence what California is telling Arizona is that they will no longer be allowed to accept the IOU's California routinely issues for the services they contract for from other states because of this law. I wonder what Governor Schwarzenegger will do when Arizona decides to return the 4,373 California inmates that are presently housed in Arizona prisons?

President Obama was quoted during a naturalization ceremony in the Rose Garden as saying; "Our failure to act responsibly at the federal level (read amnesty) will only open the door to irresponsibility (read punishing lawbreakers) by others," Obama said. "That includes, for example, the recent efforts in Arizona, which threatened to undermine basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans, as well as the trust between police and their communities that is so crucial to keeping us safe."

Can anyone explain the President's comments? How does it violate a "basic notion of fairness" to discover, detain, and segregate a person found to be breaking not only federal law but now state law as well. I guess the game of "Red-Light-Green-Light" the federal government has been playing with not only illegal immigrants but Mexican drug traffickers as well is fair? Fair to whom? Certainly not to the taxpaying citizens of Arizona: People who cannot let their kids play in the yard without standing guard over them, people that come home to burglarized homes, and ranchers who witness untold acres of their lands trampled and littered with garbage by those hundreds of undocumented workers who traverse their property each night. In this game the trade off seems to be ignoring the property rights of taxpayers and the government's constitutional duty to protect its citizens in order to coddle a potential future democratic voting bloc.

La Raza President and CEO Janet Murguia said during a telephone news conference;

"It [the law] perpetuates the fantasy that we can detain and deport millions of people from our country as a solution to our immigration problems and it propagates the notion that immigrants who are working hard in the Arizona economy are a criminal element to be rounded up and incarcerated,"

In order to prove just how wrong Janet Murguiua is let's review some US history. In 1954 the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) initiative, known as "Operation Wetback," (hey Eisenhower named it, not me) stemmed the illegal crossings. The initiative was led by Joseph Swing, a retired U.S. Army general whose view of Mexico dated from his days riding with John "Black Jack" Pershing during a failed expedition into Mexico against Pancho Villa in 1916. During the operation, immigration squads raided barrios and farms, invaded homes, swept the streets for Mexicans, and bragged about how many had fearfully fled back across the border (emphasis mine). So Janet; apparently you can run sweeps through cities and towns that ultimately have the effect of driving those here illegally BACK across the border where they belong. If it worked in 1954, it probably works just as well in 2010: But I've obviously been out of touch for quite awhile. I was always under the impression that lawbreakers were supposed to be rounded up and incarcerated. Apparently; the latest progressive punishment for breaking the law is to welcome the lawbreakers, educate their children, supply them with health care, WIC, housing assistance, and driver's licenses. Who knew?

While many in Washington, D.C. view immigration reform as a way to legalize the 10 million or more illegal immigrants in the country, 73% of voters in Arizona now say gaining control of the border is more important than legalizing the status of these undocumented workers.

This all came to a head with the murder of Rob Krentz a Cochise County, AZ cattle farmer who had battled the bloody consequences of illegal immigration for years. His dead body was found over the weekend of March 26th. The longtime rancher had been gunned down. His body was found on his land, which is about 35 miles northeast of Douglas, just before midnight Saturday, March 27th.

Area residents said Krentz had no enemies, and they could think of no motive for his death other than the possibility it was related to what they called the growing level of crime in the area related to illegal immigrants and drug smugglers.  So a third-generation rancher, known for his compassion, is brutally murdered by persons unknown; although footprints discovered at the actual sight of the shooting were tracked back to the border, and all the President can talk about is the inherent irresponsibility in Arizona attempting to do what the federal government deliberately chooses not to do.

This situation is tantamount to several unrelated people breaking into your home while you are out to dinner with your lovely wife. Upon arriving back home, you are not allowed to question they're being in your guest room. You are not allowed to alert the authorities because you didn't actually witness them breaking and entering and to accuse them of such without direct evidence is a ‘civil rights' violation. Since they are indeed residing in your home, your duty now is to allow them to stay, set extra places at your kitchen table for them, absorb the accelerated costs of electricity, water, and food. You must also loan them your car so they can work, put the gas in it, and watch as they send their earnings back to their country of origin. While you're at it; don't forget to educate their children, add them all to your health care plan, and be available to bail them out of jail if things get a little rambunctious on Cinco-de-Mayo.

This is what all the immigration advocates ignore. In their zeal to qualify as many persona as possible for the entitlements they've secured for the downtrodden, they believe that a person's physical location is the only qualifying factor required in order to grant a never-ending flow of entitlement. How much would anyone care to wager that the one's most ardently in favor of this also belong to that group of 47% of US citizens that aren't paying any federal income tax to support such programs in the first place?

This is not a racial thing it is a legal thing. All the high dudgeon over "Show us your papers" is based on false premises. And how this is somehow reminiscent of Nazi Germany is distraction from the point that these people are lawbreakers. Even the US Immigration Services Handbook says that legal immigrants are supposed to carry their green cards with them at all times for identification purposes. Plus the fact that all persons, citizens or immigrants, need to carry ID to cash a check, rent a movie at Blockbuster, or apply for a job. According to progressives; you shouldn't have to carry ID to prove citizenship and/or immigration status just like you shouldn't have to show ID to vote. Those things are just too hard.

Hell, we had a long and robust discussion here in Arkansas a few years ago over whether illegal immigrants should be allowed to participate in college tuition assistance programs. The progressives tried to frame the debate around how it would be racist to exclude undocumented persons from tuition assistance funds when they were only trying to lift themselves out of poverty; and shame on us for not allowing them to do just that. It was pointed out that even if an undocumented person was allowed to participate in a tuition assistance program, and did successfully complete his degree, it would still be illegal for any company to hire them because they were still illegal. The response to this debate point was for the progressives to scream "Racism!" all the louder.

Not only are all illegal aliens lawbreakers, they are usually multiple offenders. First they violate federal law (although you wouldn't know it by how this administration behaves) by illegally crossing the border. They then proceed to compound the offense by adding identity theft, fraudulently applying for and collecting social services, and illegally obtaining employment. We are supposed to ignore these multiple offenses, any one of which would place a US undocumented person behind bars for several years in their very own countries of origin.

There are always unintended costs whenever laws are not enforced. Illegal immigration is a monumental problem this country faces. Undocumented workers don't help themselves or this country. But contemplating amnesty without first securing the boarders of the United States is lunacy. Ronald Reagan granted a path to citizenship for an estimated 3 million illegal immigrants in 1986. There were boarder enforcement provisions written into that law. The Imperial Federal Government decided to ignore those provisions and a quarter century later we're facing the same challenge once again; only this time it's at least four times larger.

One final thought. America has such a problem because of its reputation as a beacon of freedom. We cannot allow all the disadvantaged people of the earth free access to our country, but we can export property rights, equality, and rule of law to those other lands.

In 2006 a crowd estimated at 500,000 in Los Angeles alone participated in protests over a proposed reform to U.S. immigration policy. They were gathered to demand their civil rights. Why would illegal immigrants demand they be bequeathed rights from a country they do not belong to? I cannot but help to wonder how much impact 500,000 demonstrators angrily shouting to be granted their civil rights would have had on the Mexican Government if such a rally were to take place in Mexico City?

I've got an idea; be a patriot, take YOUR country back. Force YOUR politicians to give YOU the government YOU demand. Use YOUR numbers and YOUR anger to force YOUR own government to treat YOU with respect. It will be a tough struggle, but ask your own children, educated in our schools, how our own Forefathers struggled just as hard 234 years ago for that same ability to enjoy freedom and the right of self-determination.