The measure, like the other anti-immigrant laws of recent years, is hypocritical. Arizona’s low-wage, low-quality economy is built around the inexpensive labor of illegal immigrants. Construction, tourism and landscaping companies have made huge profits on the backs of workers making less than citizens and lacking even the minimal protections and safeguards that Arizona provides. Why do you think you “get so much house for the money”? The remains of the state’s agriculture industry would die without illegals. Anglos from the toffs in north Scottsdale to working stiffs in Phoenix get housekeepers and yard care for a fraction of its real cost. As Phoenix, especially, became a narrower economy focused on house building, illegals became more important. The people in power sure as hell weren’t going to pay competitive wages for citizens, much less allow unions. In exchange for this exploitation, the illegals pay a disproportionate amount of their incomes in taxes because Arizona relies so heavily on regressive sales taxes. And, yes, they use hospital ERs — they work for companies that offer no benefits. These anti-immigrant laws are the state’s gratitude. This, along with the “sweeps” by the Badged Ego of Maricopa County. Of course if one really wanted to attack illegal immigration, one would go after the employers that hire them. Arizona has rarely done so. And no wonder. How many degrees of separation are there between the immigrants toiling to improve the riches for the local economic elite and Sen. Pearce and his gang? Or wealthy Republican John Sidney McCain III? Don’t dig too deep or look too far.