Pretty much by accident I came across this article in the Phoenix New Times just as I was about to call it a night. It’s about the brutality that accompanies illegal immigration.

I personally considered the new Arizona law (SB 1070) which attempted to address the illegal immigration problem a poorly considered piece of legislation. It caused a lot of invective to be directed towards Arizona, not all of it well informed.

This article does a good job of describing the violence that accompanies illegal immigration. While it’s perhaps easy to dismiss it as non-threatening towards the general population since the crimes described are generally visited upon the immigrants by those abetting their entry into this country, there is no guarantee that the methods employed could not be turned on others. Perhaps more to the point, I don’t think that any society can remain civil or for that matter viable for long if crimes and disregard for life on this scale are for long pushed to the back of our consciousness simply because they involve Hispanic on Hispanic violence.

If you read the article, you will come across a passage that concerns the kidnapping of an immigrant who stepped off a bus at 32nd Street and Camelback Road. I happen to live about a quarter of a mile south of that intersection. No, I don’t live in the barrio, I live in a much desired central part of the city. Just two or three blocks north of that intersection is the border of Paradise Valley, one of the priciest communities in the US. The crime is not something abstract to those who live in Arizona or for that matter any of the border states.

You may fairly criticize Arizona for SB 1070 but you also have to recognize that faulty as it may be it sprang from a set of desperate circumstances. That’s not a good enough reason for it to be enforced but it is a good enough reason to require that any criticism be accompanied by realistic suggestions for dealing with these deadly problems. It’s also the reason that the political class has to realistically devise a comprehensive solution.

Anything less simply allows unspeakable horrors to continue to be visited upon members of this society. Torture, rape, kidnapping and murder as a routine means of earning money are things we normally associate with Third World countries. It’s past time for us to recognize that they’re unfortunately a routine fact of life in this country.