[Finnster]

Don't worry Jerry, your not going to offend me w/ opinions. Essentially I approach this problem as a pragmatist and am skeptical of the idological BS that seems to frame political issues these days.

I do absolutely agree that there is a problem w/ uncontrolled immigration and lack of coherent Federal policy, and states like AZ bear the brunt of it. I grew up in CO, so we had our fair share of illegals too. I also strongly agree there should be a low tolerance to criminality for any guests in this country. There are far too many hardworking and motivated people who would love to come here to tolerate anyone's bull$hit.
However, not only do I think this law will do much to stop II, I do fundamentally disagree with the notion that we should be making laws that everyone needs to carry gov't papers with them at all times, and that is a crime to not seem American enough if you get caught w/o your papers. Yeah I'm white, so even tho AZ promises there will be no racial profiling, everyone is going along w/ it with the implicit guarantee that the LEOs are only going to be after brown people. The AZ gov basically admits it by omission.

My cousin in Utah is married to a Bolivian, who is a citizen and is earning a law degree, and if they visit AZ, and if he decides he's going to take a walk in the park or go for a hike with his girls and he doesn't bring his wallet, my cousin shouldn't be getting a phone call from an INS detention facility that her family got arrested bc Dad still speaks with an accent and his english is still a bit rough. That's just F'd up and I don't care who you are.

Also, I work in the science field and we manufacture medical devices. I do think America is very skilled at manufacturing. We have European (or better) level of quality for much less expensive. The products China build are cheaper, but far inferior in quality and trustworthiness. We lose out on the low end as sometimes crappy is good enough.

However, on the high end, what I am not seeing is many Americans with the skills and education to do the technical jobs. Just in my area I work with people (scientists/engineers) from China, India, Nigeria, Kenya, Sudan, Poland, Russia, Czech R., Philippenes, Pakistan, Greece, UK, Hiati, Dom Rep, Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, Brazil, Camaroon, to name a few. I'm not sure Americans are even the majority.
My brother in law is a Chem E professor and its a similar story. Few qualified American graduate students to choose from, so the dept accepts many students from India and China with the neccessary background and accomplishment.
Nursing school is another good example of this.

So the question I ask, why are all these Americans out protesting and complaining about Mexicans coming and stealing their shitty jobs digging ditches for $8/hr? If your job is easily replacable by an illiterate from a 3rd world country, then you need to get your ass back to school and get a better education because there are thousands of high paying jobs going to legal H1 visa holders who have little American competition. Its rather pathetic actually given the opportunity citizens are born into here.

I also think low wage Mexicans/etc also contribute alot to American business competitiveness. I think the nation could do a lot more "low end" manufacturing combining American management techniques, innovation, and solid infrastructure with low wage guest workers to keep labor costs low, thus prices low, to compete better with crappy Chinese goods. Alot of other things need to happen too, but we also have to get over the xenophobia and start looking at the business opportunities. IMO, the Mexican infracture is too poor and the govt too corrupt to effectively utilize their low wage resource. We can take advantage of that for everyone's benefit.

If in the end we send a portion of this prosperity back to Mexico to build that country, enlarge the middle class, are create a larger consumer economy for American goods, all the better for us. The future prosperity for America is not going to be built on protectionism and low skill jobs for lazy & lowly educated natives. The world is catching up and we need to work harder and be smarter if we want to keep the privledges we have.