Not Quite the Same Thing...

In response to your post, Re: Arizona's New Immigration Law, I will have to say your argument that illegal immigrants sometimes actually hurt the economy by sending much of their earnings abroad is sound, I will have to disagree that the discrimination of the Arizona Immigration law is similar to a clerk asking for an ID at the liquor store. While the discrimination of Arizona's Immigration Law seems to be suspicious, when a clerk asks for identification they ask all people he or she believes to be under-age, not just a particular race or ethnicity. They are not discriminating because he or she usually asks ALL young buyers whereas in Arizona the law seems to have targeted a specific race of illegal immigrants, not the illegal immigrant population as a whole.

For example, when the bill was being signed, according to New York Times article "Arizona Enacts Stringent Law on Immigration" (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/24/us/politics/24immig.html), "Hispanics, in particular... railed against the law as a recipe for racial and ethnic profiling." This demonstrates that even the local population felt that the law was not going to be applied equally to all illegal immigrants which makes it different from a young person walking into a liquor store feeling like he or she will be asked for an ID because of her age because it is usually applied to all suspects not just one race.

Moreover, as I can agree with your argument that illegal immigrants might do more harm than good for the U.S. economy when they send earnings abroad, supporting a law that is clearly a target for a particular race is not the answer. If anything the law was a cry for help from Arizona to the United States Government to fulfill promises on immigration reform.