Immigration frustration: Arizona's controversial immigration legislation has deep roots.

• Author: Small, Jim
• Position: A SPECIAL REPORT: IMMIGRATION AND THE STATES

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Make no mistake: Arizona's controversial Senate Bill 1070 was not an idea that sprang forth from notes scribbled on a napkin at a cocktail party. Nor, as some media outlets have reported, were the seeds for the immigration law planted at a shadowy confab of legislators and private industry.

Bill sponsor Senator Russell Pearce, in fact, has been working on iterations of the legislation to eliminate so-called "sanctuary cities" since 2006. Although cities across the state had enacted procedures for local police to use when encountering suspected illegal immigrants, some policies allowed for more discretion than others.

Everywhere he looked, however, Pearce saw government turning a blind eye to what he often characterized as an "illegal immigrant invasion" of both his state, where there are an estimated 500,000 illegal immigrants, and his country. The conscious decisions by law enforcement agencies not to turn suspected illegal immigrants over to federal authorities--or not to check immigration status was directly linked, in Pearce's estimation, to violent crime across America. if law enforcement agencies would do what their name implied, he said over and over, Arizona could heal many of its ills.

Moments before the Senate approved the final version and sent it to Governor Jan Brewer, Pearce explained how he expected the bill to affect Arizona.

"We'll have less crime. We'll have lower taxes. We'll have safer neighborhoods. We'll have shorter lines in emergency rooms. We'll have smaller classrooms," he said during a speech on the floor.

A majority of the frustrated electorate in Arizona cheered its approval. Until it passed the Legislature, most political observers had viewed the new law only through the traditional partisan lenses: It would play well with Republicans, but Democrats would universally oppose it, and independents would be split.

The fear that opposition could be an albatross around some Republicans' necks in hotly contested primary races was a prime reason some supported the bill. A year earlier, six GOP legislators were absent when similar legislation came to the floor and failed by only a handful of votes. They were publicly castigated by Pearce, who dubbed them "the sanctuary six" and urged his supporters to work to unseat them. Three of them were re-elected, and one lost to a candidate backed by Pearce. Another also...