Editorial

The Obama administration has filed a lawsuit to block an Arizona law that would make it a state crime to be in the United States illegally.

Rather than use the law's passage as an opportunity to promote meaningful immigration reform, the president and the attorney general have chosen to scold the citizens of Arizona. Instead of trying to prove why it is wrong for Arizona to enforce federal immigration law, the administration should be making the case for what it is going to do to address the issues that necessitated the law in the first place.

The people of Arizona are rightfully concerned with the lawlessness of the Mexican border. Competing Mexican drug cartels are waging a violent war from Juarez to Tijuana to control the lucrative narcotics trade in the United States. This violence has drifted north of the border.

Increased security at crossings in California and Texas have pushed illegal immigrants into Arizona like cattle through a chute. In three years, the Border Patrol has picked up nearly 1 million immigrants crossing the border into Arizona, nearly half of all immigration arrests in the U.S. for that period.

Phoenix police report more than 350 kidnappings for ransom cases each year that are related to Hispanic gang activity. Typically, it involves gangs of unemployed illegal aliens who are hired to kidnap other undocumented immigrants and shake down their families for ransom. Things at times were so bad that Janet Napolitano, the current secretary of homeland security, declared a state of emergency when she was governor of Arizona.

The administration has not taken any steps to ease the concerns of the majority of Americans. In fact, it has done just the opposite.

Farmers who depend on foreign labor have found it more difficult to obtain a legal, fully documented workforce. The administration has tightened rules governing the H2-A temporary visa program, making it all but unworkable. The administration has made it clear that employers bear the full burden of policing the documentation presented by employees, and bear the sole brunt of punishment if employee documents turn out to be fake.

As border state governors have pleaded for help, the president has sent what amounts to a handful of troops to perform only support and administrative duties out of fear that the Mexican government might claim we are militarizing the border.

Mexican authorities, on the other hand, sent more than 7,000 troops to Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, to stem cartel violence in that city.

The attorney general argues the federal government has sole jurisdiction over immigration policy and sued Arizona to prevent a patchwork of state and local laws that undermine the goals and priorities set by the administration and Congress.

He has taken no action, however, against so-called sanctuary cities that adopt policies that actively thwart enforcement of federal immigration law.

Polls indicate that Americans want action. The president has insisted that only comprehensive measures contained in one piece of legislation will solve the problem. But he knows that won't happen in the current session. Progress can be made if reforms are cut into politically palatable bites.

The president and Congress can secure the border. The president can immediately send more troops while Congress authorizes the hiring and training of additional Border Patrol agents. By executive order, the president can give security forces unfettered access to all federal border lands without regard to environmental issues.

The president and Congress can provide employers with a practical guestworker program that will ensure a reliable, legal workforce. Passage of the AgJOBS legislation, which would benefit farm industries and reward workers with an earned pathway to citizenship, would be a good first step.

The larger question of what is to be done with the millions of illegal immigrants already in the country must be dealt with sooner rather than later. But stanching the flow of new immigrants by making border crossings more difficult and by removing economic incentives would be positive first steps.