Editorial: Arizona’s patchwork policy

Sunday, Dec. 16, 2007 | 1:18 a.m.

Arizona's strict new immigration law, which goes into effect Jan. 1, calls for revoking the business license of employers who knowingly hire workers who are living in the United States illegally.

Proponents of the law say it is intended to drastically limit the job market so that people will be less likely to enter the United States seeking better pay and a better quality of life. Business groups and immigrant advocates oppose the new law, saying it will do little more than force businesses to shut down and endanger jobs even for immigrant workers who live here legally.

It also could encourage ethnic profiling, critics told The New York Times last week, by creating an atmosphere in which legal citizens of foreign descent cannot find work because employers don't want to take a perceived risk.

The Arizona Chamber of Commerce and other business and immigrant groups have lodged a legal challenge to the new law. On Tuesday a judge is scheduled to consider issuing a temporary restraining order that would keep the law from becoming effective Jan. 1.

Still, some of the fears already are coming to fruition. The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that Arizona companies have begun firing Hispanic immigrants, moving their operations to Mexico and putting a halt to expansion plans, all in anticipation of the new law going into effect.

Arizona has an estimated 500,000 illegal immigrants, about 350,000 of whom are working, The Wall Street Journal reports. Immigrants - legal and illegal - make up about 14 percent of Arizona's workforce.

It is not difficult to imagine how drastically - and detrimentally - Arizona's economy could be affected by the firing of thousands of workers or by the loss of thousands of jobs if companies close their doors or move their operations to other countries.

Arizona's piecemeal approach addresses only one aspect of the complicated immigration issue.

And state-by-state laws that vary greatly are no substitute for - and actually create a hindrance to - a comprehensive national immigration policy.

If anything, Arizona's new law will show the rest of the country how immigration policy should not be crafted. And it should help to illustrate, in hard economic terms, why we need to provide illegal immigrants who are productive members of their U.S. communities an avenue to remain here while they work toward legal residency.