Your Papers, Please, Phoenix and Flagstaff, Part 3

President Obama is stepping in on Arizona's racial profiling immigration law.  Greg Sargent:

This is pretty big: Obama just now sharply condemned the controversial anti-illegal immigration effort in Arizona, calling it “misguided” and “irresponsible” — and even said his administration could insert itself into the fight if civil rights are found to be violated.

This could cause the issue to heat up to full boil on the national level, with untold consequences for the midterm elections.

The effort in Arizona would require anyone suspected of being in the country illegally to produce “an alien registration document” or other proof of citizenship. The Governor of Arizona is expected to decide within days how to act on the legislation — and Obama today pushed the issue hard.

“Our failure to act responsibly at the Federal level will only open the door to irresponsiblity by others,” Obama said. “That includes for example the recent efforts in Arizona, which threaten to undermine basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans, as well as the trust between police and their communities that is so crucial to keeping us safe.”

Obama added that his administration could join the fight. “I’ve instructed members of my admininstration to closely monitor the situation and examine the civil rights and other implications of this legislation,” he said, adding that it was “misguided.”

This is a very, very shrewd play by Obama and well timed to boot:  Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer has until tomorrow evening to sign the bill, veto it, or do nothing (in which case it becomes law anyway).  This puts tremendous pressure on Brewer to veto this, or else she becomes the national face of GOP racial profiling efforts.

And the keyword here is "national".  Obama is clearly setting the bar of a federal response to state bills like this as a priority in his administration, and that means Democrats can then turn this into a pressing reason to lead an effort to pass immigration reform at the federal level.  As I've said before, this is a massive wedge issue that will split the Chamber of Commerce Republicans from the Tea Party...and it risks painting all the GOP as anti-immigrant and even racist.

It's looking like Obama is taking the advice to follow up health care reform with two winning issues for Dems:  financial reform and immigration reform.  There are Republicans who want to be on the right side of both of those issues, especially in an election year.  There are also a lot of factors here:  the GOP treatment of Sonia Sotomayor last year and the treatment of Latinos in general being just a few of them.

We'll see how this shakes out.