Seeking the best way to boycott Arizona over immigration law

On the Arizona law, I like the idea of a boycott because it's so all-American. The original Tea Party, you'll remember, was in support of a boycott.

The law, by contrast, is quite un-American. First, it permits some racial profiling by police. Its language empowers law-enforcement officers to use race, color or national origin as a criterion -- though not the sole one -- for deciding whether there's a "reasonable suspicion" that somebody is here illegally.

"This is about what you look like. We're not a nation that's about passing laws on what you look like," said Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum.

The law is also objectionable because it springs partly from hostility to people from foreign cultures. Such surges of nativist feeling have marred America throughout its history.

Each time, however, that trend has eventually lost out to the ideal of America as a society that welcomes different peoples. It's an imperfect and incomplete process, to be sure. But that's been the trend.

Ironically, some people furious over immigrants today are the descendants of ethnic groups that needed generations to win acceptance.

"The Latino movement today is in many ways similar to the movement of second-generation Euro-American ethnics in the decades after World War II -- Jews, Italians, etc. -- who insisted on their equal inclusion in American society," said Mae Ngai, a Columbia University history professor who specializes in immigration.

There's one big hole in my argument, and I don't underestimate it. The vast majority of U.S. immigrants in past generations came with legal permission. That's not true today. Supporters of the Arizona measure, who polls show are more than two-thirds of the state, say that this is a nation of laws and that we need to enforce them.

That position has flaws, however. First, the Arizona law might be unconstitutional, because it gives the state powers that belong to the federal government alone.

Furthermore, it'd be unjust as well as impractical to address our long-standing immigration problem by vilifying, harassing and possibly deporting millions of illegal residents. We've tolerated their presence for decades. Parts of our economy rely heavily on them.

"You wanted us to build your houses and tend to your lawns. Now that things are getting tight, you don't want us around," said Andrew Rivera, president of the Democratic Latino Organization of Virginia.

Is a compromise available? Absolutely. Everybody knows what comprehensive immigration reform would look like. It's a "three-legged stool" of gradual legalization, serious sanctions against employers who hire undocumented workers and a guest-worker program.

Among the biggest obstacles: nativist rejection of anything resembling "amnesty" for people here now.

Until reform arrives, we need to show Arizona how much its law offends us. My Washington Nationals schedule shows the Diamondbacks come to town Aug. 13 for a three-game series. I expect I'll have something else to do that weekend.

I discuss local issues at 8:51 a.m. Friday on WAMU (88.5 FM).