Since when did immigrants become the enemy?

Arizona&#039;s immigration law has inflamed passions on both sides of the debate.

(Image credit: Getty)

last updated 8 January 2015

For a long time, Americans saw illegal aliens simply as hard workers in search of a better life, says Luisita Lopez Torregrosa in Politics Daily. Increasingly, though, they're being portayed and seen as "unreliable day laborers," drug mules or "rapists." Incidents of violence against Latino immigrants — both legal and illegal — are on the rise, and some mainstream Republicans are calling for a repeal of America's 150-year tradition of "birthright citizenship." Perhaps it's the flailing economy or the "division and intolerance" preached by cable news. Or maybe our country simply isn't the "kinder, gentler" place so many of us thought it to be. An excerpt:

As Francis Fukuyama, a professor of international political economy at Stanford University, wrote in the Wall Street Journal recently, "It is perfectly true that the simple fact of being an illegal immigrant induces one to break further laws.''