Arizona's crackdown on illegal migrants feels familiar

A generation ago, the mood in California was similar. But the outcome has been different for a number of reasons.

By Teresa Watanabe, Anna Gorman and Nicholas Riccardi

As a Latino activist in California for decades, Salvador Reza witnessed a rise in illegal immigration in the 1980s and protested a plethora of harsh measures to control it in the '90s.

Now, as a transplanted Arizonan, he is experiencing a deep sense of deja vu.

Passage this week of a stringent Arizona bill that would require people to carry proof of legal status and mandate that police check for it is a replay of California's own turbulent history with illegal immigration. Gov. Jan Brewer must still sign the bill before it becomes law and is widely expected to do so.

As in California a generation ago, the number of illegal immigrants in Arizona in the last decade has soared. The twin forces of immigration surges and economic distress have prompted Arizonans to push several strict measures to crack down on illegal migrants.

"In some ways, Arizona is a generation behind California," said Arturo Vargas, executive director of the National Assn. of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials in Los Angeles.

As Latinos mobilized in California, gaining allies across ethnic groups, the movement against illegal immigrants lost much of its steam here.

But that is unlikely to happen in Arizona any time soon, several analysts say. An overwhelmingly white and conservative electorate will continue to dominate immigration politics over Latinos, who constitute just 11.7% of registered voters and are themselves divided over how to treat illegal migrants. In addition, immigrant advocates so far have lacked the funding and major organizational muscle to mobilize widely.

Arizona State Sen. Russell Pearce, the Republican legislator who wrote this week's bill and a host of other hard-line measures targeting illegal immigrants recently, said the state will continue to crack down and predicted no backlash.

"The people are consistently for this," Pearce said.

Others, however, argue that Arizona's fast-growing Latino population will eventually begin flexing its political muscle to force a more moderate course on immigration. Nearly half of all K-12 students and babies born in the state are Latino.

"Demography is destiny," said Antonio Gonzalez of the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, which helped register more than 55,000 new Latino voters in Arizona between 2004 and 2008.

The two states show several parallels but also striking differences in their immigration politics.