The Arizona Fever

Yesterday, the respected Pew Research Center released a new poll showing Americans are backing Arizona’s recently passed immigration enforcement bill, SB 1070, by huge margins.

According to the poll, 73% of Americans agree with “requiring people to produce documents verifying their legal status if police ask for them.”

When the Pew Poll respondents were asked if the police should be able to “detain anyone unable to verify legal status,” 67% said yes. The real encouraging sign here, though, is that Democrats, Republicans, and Independents all agreed that police should be able to detain those unable to verify their immigration status.

The Pew poll is just the latest sign of a fast-spreading Arizona fever! In fact, virtually all polls show that Americans are rallying behind Arizona’s approach.

This is fascinating: According to a new Gallup Poll, the U.S. public is now more concerned about immigration than subjects like “terrorism,” the “national debt,” and “national security.”

Americans are desperate for relief, for any reasonable way to encourage illegal aliens to go home! Congress has failed to act. So now states are acting.

You probably have already heard that the open borders lobby (National Council of La Raza, the left-wing S.E.I.U., some major religious groups, etc.,) has gone hysterical over Arizona’s SB 1070. They’ve made a cottage industry out of condemning Arizona and Arizonans as racists, xenophobes, backwards, bigots. You name it, and they’ve probably said it.

La Raza and even MoveOn.org (which has usually avoided immigration fights) are busy organizing boycotts of the whole state of Arizona. For example, they want Major League Baseball to move the upcoming All Star game from Phoenix — something MLB Commissioner Bud Selig refuses to do.

Will these boycotts succeed, drying up the Arizona tourist business, and pressuring Arizona to buckle under? It’s hard to imagine this occurring, with the American people lining up behind Arizona. On the other hand, we’re used to the elites controlling things. It could happen. The city councils of San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Austin, Texas, among others, have already joined in a boycott.

While individual city councils are boycotting the law, states are not. Indeed, other states are moving towards the Arizona model. Arizona-type laws are being considered in nine states so far. In Colorado, 55% of voters want their own. In Florida, it’s 62%. These states DO NOT WANT ILLEGAL ALIENS.

Spreading Arizona-type laws to other states is the best chance we’ve had of actually reducing illegal immigration in many, many years. I’ve been told that a difference is already being felt in Arizona.

When all is said and done, the future seems to be getting brighter for unemployed Americans. The Arizona law will ultimately be found constitutional and Congress will either be forced to enforce our nation’s immigration laws or more states will follow Arizona’s lead and enforce these laws themselves. Those states that continue to maintain sanctuary policies will only see their illegal populations grow. Perhaps this would be a fitting punishment for those states that care more about illegal aliens than Americans and legal immigrants.

JIM ROBB is Vice President of Operations for NumbersUSA