Self-Mutilation

Reza overheard the conversation and related a similar case of Caucasian self-contradiction that occurred when he was testifying before the Legislature in 2005. He was arguing against a statewide prohibition on any funding of day-laborer sites by municipalities. Reza told me how a neighborhood activist nearly assaulted him when he informed legislators that he had once helped procure day laborers for the man.

"I told [the legislators] there are a lot of hypocrites in here," he recalls, referring to those testifying for the prohibition. "This guy [who got ticked off] had asked me to find workers for him to pick up oranges in the Arcadia area, because the rats were eating the oranges. The people in the community were too old to pick up the fruit. He said he never did that, but I had brought him two or three workers myself."

The anecdote points out one of the ironies of the immigration debate. Often those who seem most opposed to the influx of illegal aliens are those most in need of their labor — the elderly. The ranks of the counterprotesters at the Pruitt's donnybrook are beefed up with older people who long for the '50s. A time and place when all you saw were white people, or so it seems to them, because the society was then so highly segregated.

Irony aside, it's unlikely local alter kockers will be straining their backs to pick their own fruit. As Reza points out, the law will not apply to people picking up jornaleros for a little part-time landscaping. It will be larger employers who want to follow the law who feel the squeeze, as will we all.

Though Arizona is home to an estimated 500,000 illegals, and while the workers from this pool make up anywhere from 9 to 12 percent of the state's work force, Arizona has an incredibly tight labor market, with an unemployment rate of 3.5 percent. (Five percent is generally deemed to be "full employment" by economists.) Such a labor shortage, further exacerbated by the new employer-sanctions law, will be felt in higher prices for essential goods and services, as above-board employers pass on increased labor costs to consumers.

More alarming, however, than paying more for your hamburger is the prospect that the new law will be enforced here by County Attorney Andrew Thomas and Sheriff Arpaio.

From what we've seen in the past, expect INS-style raids staged for TV cameras, with Joe wagging his finger at supposed lawbreakers. Thomas has recently stated that he believes the law can be enforced retroactively, which should be cold comfort to employers racing to comply with it by January 1. Even if you do everything by the book in 2008, Thomas and Arpaio could still come get you, perhaps based on an anonymous tip from one of your competitors.

"To begin with, they don't have the personnel to enforce this law," alleges Reza. "So what that tells me is Arpaio's going to go after certain businesses to make a political statement. The Sheriff's Office is going to be very selective. Like it is with newspapers."

Selective. You know, as in Arpaio's Selective Enforcement Unit, whose officers arrested New Times co-founders Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin. Indeed, Arpaio's passion for retaliation was most recently documented by my colleague Sarah Fenske in the first installment of the "Target Practice" series ("Enemies List," November 29).

The new law will give Arpaio another way to coerce and control the county's rich and powerful, who might own some of the enterprises he and Thomas go gunning for. Like, say, Carl's Jr. franchise king Jason LeVecke, who's been outspoken in opposing the law. A slip-up in hiring at any one of his 57 locations could put him out of business.

"It's not just about whether someone's legal or not," LeVecke tells me. "It's about whether my whole business goes under and 1,200 people lose their jobs."

Incredibly, nativists are willing to shrink the economy, force illegals to "self-deport," and make businesses kowtow to reactionary demands, perhaps even kiss Arpaio's ring for good measure. The question is, how bad will the situation have to get before politicians stop listening to this small, vicious band of extremists driving the debate?

"I'm not sure how much pain it will take before the law is changed," shrugs the Arizona Chamber of Commerce's Hamer.

In Reza's view, the law's failure is inevitable, and not just because some judge may put the brakes on it through a temporary restraining order.

"You're messing with the natural flow of commerce," he observes. "And you're creating artificial barriers. Commerce and the market are like a human energy. You can't stop it. A lot of companies will refuse to comply with this law. [Of the companies that don't comply] those that survive will survive underground."