President Obama gave his first big speech on immigration Thursday, laying out his case for bipartisan immigration reform and calling out Republicans for uniformly opposing an initiative some of them supported when it was proposed by President Bush. In lieu of a coherent policy to deal with the 11 million illegal immigrants in the country, he said, you get a "patchwork" of local laws, like the "ill-conceived" and "ultimately unenforceable" law that will go into effect in Arizona this month. Is the president playing straight, or villifying Arizona for partisan reasons? (Watch highlights from Obama's speech)
The only thing Arizona's law will produce is chaos: Obama was right to take "particular notice of the extremism of Arizona," says The New York Times in an editorial. Its "deeply unjust" immigration law isn't just "an invitation to racial profiling," but also a "usurpation of federal authority" and a prelude to the "chaos" that will ensue if different states have different immigration rules.
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