Arizona, N.M.: a world apart on immigration

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. —

As the Arizona Legislature steamed ahead with the most stringent immigration- enforcement bill in the country this year, the New Mexico House unanimously was passing a resolution recognizing economic benefits of illegal immigrants.

While Arizona police will check driver's licenses and other documents to root out illegal immigrants, New Mexico allows illegal residents to obtain driver's licenses, as a public-safety measure.

And if Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican, has become, for now, the public face of tough immigration enforcement, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a Democrat, has told any interviewer who will listen about his effort to "to integrate immigrants that are here and make them part of society and protect the values of our Hispanic and multiethnic communities."

They may sit side by side on the border, they may share historical ties to Mexico, they may have even been part of the same territory, but Arizona and New Mexico have grown up like distant siblings.

People on both sides of the immigration debate have taken notice.

"If a burglar breaks into your home, do you serve him dinner? That is pretty much what they do there with illegals," said Arizona state Rep. John Kavanagh, a Republican. He is one of the staunchest supporters of the new law, which will give local police broad power to check the legal status of people they stop and suspect are in the country illegally.

But Frank Sharry, executive director of America's Voice, a Washington, D.C.-based liberal group that advocates an immigration overhaul, offered New Mexico as a model of balancing a push for border security — Richardson once declared a state of emergency there — with coping with illegal immigrants already in this country.

"Richardson has got it," Sharry said.

A fear of mistaken identity

Even New Mexico's supporters of Arizona's law — and there are some — agree such a measure never would pass in their state, given the outcry among legislators and immigrant advocates that police might detain and question Latinos who are legal residents and citizens but are mistaken for illegal immigrants.

Why the difference?

First, New Mexico (population 2 million) has the highest percentage of Hispanics of any state — 45 percent compared with 30 percent in Arizona (population 6.5 million), and they historically have commanded far more political power than their neighbors do. The New Mexico Legislature is 44 percent Hispanic, compared with Arizona at 16 percent, according to the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials.

Both were once part of Mexico and, later, the same U.S. territory. However, since they became states in 1912, New Mexico has had five Hispanic governors (including Richardson, whose mother is Mexican), and Arizona has had one, according to the group.

New Mexico legislators embrace civil-rights protections in the state's constitution — including so-called unamendable provisions akin to a Bill of Rights that historically protected Spanish-speaking citizens of the former Mexican territory — and often mount a "protective stance" toward immigrants regardless of legal status, said Christine Sierra, a political-science professor at the University of New Mexico.

"When the community at large feels threatened, folks close ranks and join in solidarity to protect the group," Sierra said, noting that Arizona Latinos have struggled to assume the same kind of a power in a state where a greater influx of Anglos (the general term for non-Hispanic whites) over the decades has diluted their strength.

The flow of drugs and illegal immigrants over New Mexico's remote border, moreover, pales compared with that in Arizona, whose border, dotted with towns and roads, registers the highest number of drug seizures and arrests of illegal crossers of any state.

The estimated 460,000 illegal immigrants in Arizona is more than eight times that of the estimated 55,000 in New Mexico, where the economy turns more on government, military and high-skill jobs.

Concerns about immigration and the border arise, particularly in the southern "boot heel" of the state, but the burner setting is low.

"It's not that there isn't social tension between Hispanics and non-Hispanics," said Jose Garcia, a New Mexico State University political scientist. "We just have learned to tolerate each other and get along."

In an interview, Richardson promoted that as only fair to children who had no choice in being raised in the United States, and said other measures improved public health, such as the state Department of Health's cooperation in a health-referral service run by the Mexican consulate for Mexican citizens.

Fleeing Arizona?

Yet, New Mexico's patience could be tested, and some fear the Arizona law will push more illegal immigrants into the state.

Steve Wilmeth, a cattle rancher near Las Cruces, 30 miles north of the border, said he had grown frustrated with finding illegal immigrants crossing his property and recalled a harrowing confrontation with a group of 20 a couple of years ago. He said the Arizona law, which he supports, "is a desperate attempt by the people of Arizona to do something about the onslaught they face."

Violence on the Mexican side of the border — one of the bloodiest cities, Ciudad Juárez, is an hour's drive from Las Cruces — has heightened anxiety. So, too, has the shooting death of a southern Arizona rancher near the New Mexico border by someone the police theorize may have been connected to smuggling.

Border and immigration issues have spilled into political campaigns, but the issue has not topped residents' concerns, pollster Brian Sanderoff said.

Richardson, who believes illegal immigrants should pay back taxes, learn English and take other steps as a condition of gaining legal status, makes no apologies for seeking to integrate them, calling them a net plus for the state.

"I just have always felt that this is part of my heritage," he said, noting his early years spent in Mexico City. "There is a decided positive in encouraging biculturalism and people working and living together instead of inciting tension. The worry I have about Arizona is it is going to spread. It arouses the nativist instinct in people."