http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=13863

“and even if it were so it only applies to citizens.”
I think that the US Supreme Court agrees that the constitution is limited geographically by the borders of its States and its Territories, not by citizenship. Please point me toward evidence to the contrary (if it exists).

“The commonality is personal property and collective personal property encompassed by national lines”
I think that the most recent the recent laureate of the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, Elinor Ostrom, was recognized specifically for her work showing that the application of personal property rights is not always the best way to regulate common property. By extension, I maintain that the current immigration laws in the USA are detrimental to the economic interests of both the inhabitants (both citizen and non-citizen) and neighbors of the USA. There is room for improvement by making them less restrictive and allowing for more legal immigration.

I suppose that’s one theory. I would suggest that even the truly desperate will actively avoid AZ due to the higher risk now exacted. Instead they will cross at, work and/or reside in more comfortable states like CA,NM and TX. Bottomline: significantly fewer illegals will choose to come to AZ. More importantly, potential employers will be (and are being, according to AP’s article) far more cautious in whom they hire. This will result in employers raising wages (modestly at the current unemployment rate) to attract citizens to jobs previously done by illegals. The demand for illegals will, thus, be reduced accordingly.

You’re absolutely right about AZ being able to freely adjust their minimum wage laws, somewhat right about their semi-rigid labor laws (most of which are overrided by federal mandates) and wrong about an (implied) state’s right to opt out of FICA. Illegal labor can easily circumvent all of the higher costs imposed by state and federal labor laws and taxes. Some can be changed by the state, but most can not. It will always be cheaper to employ someone who doesn’t exist on Washington’s rolls.

I think you and I agree about the many factors that need to be changed on a national level in order to make immigration fair, efficient and beneficial to US citizens and immigrants alike. My point is that in the absence of federal action, AZ has done something that will protect her legal inhabitants at the expense of a non-citizen’s individual rights, which shouldn’t be the concern of the US anyway. If anyone’s rights should be prioritized, it should be those of US citizens. To repeat, until the feds act, this law is reasonable, just and most importantly, a catalyst to federal action (wishful thinking, I know).

You may be right at the margin, that some potential immigrants might not enter Arizona under the new law, but that doesn’t address the ongoing existence of jobs for immigrants in Arizona. A larger effect will be one of substitution: more-skilled laborers who can sell their services in other states will do so, while the truly desperate will continue to stream in. Since Arizona has these jobs, immigrants will show up to fill them, now in the more-violent context that this law creates.

I also disagree with the implication that Arizona can’t do anything to regulate employment. Most states have books full of laws regulating who may work and how. Arizona doesn’t have to wait on Washington to write its labor regulations. Due to a lack of imagination and a surfeit of enforcement-industry lobbying, Arizona is attempting to deal with this situation the same way we deal with all situations in our modern statist paradise, by eliminating individual rights. It’s good for profits at the prison operators, you see.

Regardless, I find this comment interesting – “Let’s make the rules more in line with what people actually deserve, which is opportunity to compete economically.”

This may be your heartfelt desire, but it’s not spelled out in our constitution nor bill of rights, and even if it were so it only applies to citizens.

This situation is like if I were to say, “we’re batting responses back and forth like we’re playing ping pong,” it’d be like you saying, “no, the intricacies of TCP/IP packet dissimination, transmission, assimilation, and database storage, incorporating set theory, are much different than that of a ping pong paddle.”

The commonality is personal property and collective personal property encompassed by national lines.