I have some friends – former Tacomans – who now live most of the year in Southern Arizona between Tucson and the Mexican border. When it starts getting hot down there, they head back here to their Stadium District condo. (Yes, there are people who live like that.)

I asked for their reaction to the state’s tough new law on illegal immigration. Here’s what my friend Pat had to say:

My informal, unscientific survey of neighbors says that the vast majority of Arizonans favor the law as signed by Jan Brewer since the federal government has failed to come up with a viable solution to the problem.

No longer are the illegal immigrants just poor people looking for a decent life. It’s more about drug smuggling, people smuggling, desertion and murders in remote and not-so-remote areas of Southern Arizona.

UPDATE: I heard from my friend’s husband, who has a slightly different take.

Pat’s view on this situation is certainly true in that illegal immigration does bring a lot of crime. My view (shared by most of the guys I golf with) is probably a little more liberal.

We are all children of immigrants. And certainly Hispanics are some of the most industrious, hard-working persons in Arizona. Where there is a geographical location with such a disparity in income as there is between the U.S. and Mexico, there is bound to be a migration to that area where economic opportunity is the greatest.

I am all for some form of a guest worker program where “illegals” are paid a decent wage, but receive none of the governmental entitlements.