In Defense of Arizona's "Racism"

Arizona's new law targeting illegal immigrants is not racist. It is just an imperfect attempt to deal with the worst effects of a problem that Washington has continued to ignore.

My latest column for The Week argues that Arizona’s immigration law is not racist, but just an imperfect attempt to deal with a growing problem Washington continues to ignore.

Imagine yourself a landowner in southern Arizona. The border between San Diego and Tijuana is now effectively fenced, so the flow of illegal immigration has been diverted to your front yard. Every morning you wake up to a hillock of garbage: plastic bottles, food remains, human urine and feces. If you try to police your land, you put your life at risk: Last month, Arizona rancher Rob Krentz was murdered on his own property, likely by a marijuana-smuggling illegal migrant.  ...

Yet not only does the law go unenforced, not only has work not even started on the immigration fence that Congress supposedly voted to build two years ago, but the authorities in Washington keep talking up a proposed amnesty (sorry: “pathway to citizenship”) that only invites more illegals to rush into the U.S. to take advantage of this dazzling opportunity. And when people complain, when a state legislature like Arizona’s takes what action it can against a crisis incubated over 20 years by an unspoken federal policy to look the other way – they are vilified as haters and racists.

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