Arizona's Somebody Else's Problem Field

With Arizona's "papers please" law going into effect on Thursday, Latinos are fleeing the Grand Canyon State for the other 49.  Not all of the folks leaving are undocumented, either.

While the law targets undocumented migrants, legal residents and their U.S.-born children are getting caught up in the rush to leave Arizona.

Mexican housewife Gabriela Jaquez, 37, said she is selling up and leaving for New Mexico with her husband, who is a legal resident, and two children born in Phoenix.

"Under the law, if you transport an illegal immigrant, you are committing a crime," she said as she sold children's clothes at a yard sale with three other families. "They could arrest him for driving me to the shops."

Lunaly Bustillos, a legal resident from Mexico, hoped to sell some clothes, dumbbells and an ornamental statue on Sunday before her family heads for Albuquerque, New Mexico, on Monday.

"It makes me sad and angry too because I feel I have the right to be here," said Bustillos, 17, who recently graduated from high school in Phoenix.

All Arizona's law is doing is passing the problem on to other states.  What we need is a comprehensive and realisitic national law, but wingnuts on the right keep shooting it down.  Gov. Jan Brewer keeps hissing "Do your job" at Obama, when she needs to be asking Arizona Senators John McCain and Jon Kyl why they scuttled McCain's own immigration reform bill and why they refuse to take one up now.  It's not Democrats refusing to consider immigration reform.