AP - "Los Angeles cardinal: Nazism in Arizona immigration bill" [View All]

LOS ANGELES — The head of the nation's largest Roman Catholic archdiocese has condemned a proposed Arizona crackdown on illegal immigrants, saying it encourages people to turn on each other in Nazi- and Soviet-style repression.

The measure wrongly assumes that Arizonans "will now shift their total attention to guessing which Latino-looking or foreign-looking person may or may not have proper documents," Cardinal Roger Mahony said in his blog Sunday — a day before Arizona's Legislature sent the immigration enforcement measure to the Republican governor.

* * *

Arizona has an estimated 460,000 illegal immigrants. Proponents of the bill say it was prompted by concerns over the cost of providing services to illegal immigrants and by the slaying of an Arizona rancher near the Mexican border this month. Authorities believe he was fatally shot by an illegal immigrant possibly connected to a drug smuggling cartel.

Republican Arizona Sen. Russell Pearce, who sponsored the bill, has said it will take handcuffs off police and put them on violent criminals.

But Mahony, whose archdiocese has a huge Hispanic immigrant population, said the Arizona Legislature was passing "the country's most retrogressive, mean-spirited, and useless anti-immigrant law."

Similar laws that were previously passed in other states have been repealed or struck down in the courts, he said.

"The tragedy of the law is its totally flawed reasoning: that immigrants come to our country to rob, plunder, and consume public resources," Mahony said.