You simply can't imagine the impact illegal immigration has on the state of Arizona unless you see some of its effects first-hand.
Physical Impact: Hunting organizations organize several trash gathering efforts in the desert each year along regular corridors and haul out TONS of trash dropped by illegals. Ranchers fences are destroyed, even after ranchers put in methods (gates, etc) for the illegals to use instead of destroying property. Watering systems in remote locations for cattle survival are routinely broken or left on the ground rather than in the tank...leaving the tank to dry up and threaten the ranchers' livestock.
Health Care: I'd like to see statistics comparing the airlift of illegals as compared to citizens. Seems like at least weekly an overloaded vehicle, holdilng 10, 20, 30, or 40+ illegals, overturns somewhere and trauma centers overflow and helicopters from all over the state respond to preserve their lives. Emergency rooms overlow and wait times skyrocket. Urgent or regular medical care requires insurance, so illegals use the ERs instead.
Education: 1000's of children walk/commute daily across the border into American schools. The tax base supporting these schools doesn't include their residences, so the schools operate at substandard levels. All too often classrooms' progress is limited by English as a second language (ESL) learners.
Crime: Phoenix has become the kidnapping and home invasion capital of the world. The local news regularly reports on bloody, often fatal, home invasions, portraying the terror of the occupants as their world collapses around them. Only a few days later the real backstory gets out...the occupants are complicite in criminal activity involving human or drug smuggling, prompting the invasion.
The level of ignorance displayed by the HB1070 opponents is simply amazing. It runs the gamut from extras from Jay Walking (you know, Leno poking fun at idiots on the street) to the leader of the free world. The term 'reasonable suspicion' is center to the debate, with the idiots claiming it as an excuse to illegally profile. In reality, however, that term has very specific and well-defined meaning in the law enforcement arena, having been hashed out through hundreds of precedent-setting court cases.
Here's something I posted to Facebook recently (the first link is disturbing, the second educational):
"Some crank professor at UA in Tucson opened her yap and riuned a graduation ceremony:
UA prof gets booed for politics in grad speech (video)
(includes video)
Might be nice if she'd actually taken the time to read up on the new law, as summarized here:
Op-Ed Contributor - Why Arizona Had to Draw a Line on Illegal Immigrants - NYTimes.com"
