Illegal aliens and the gestapo in AZ (late posting, never got back to this draft)

My wife and I went to Arizona on our honeymoon and went all over the state, Phoenix, Sedona, and the Grand Canyon along with many points in between, I am at a loss as to where the problem actually is. Obviously undocumented migrant workers in this country from Mexico and Latin America is a big issue, we hear about it practically everyday from the rightwing noise machine. I'm pretty tired of hearing the same tired meme, "they steal jobs, they suck up welfare, they don't pay taxes, they cause crime, they bring horrible diseases in to the US," and of course drugs and terrorists, that old chestnut. No evidence needed, in fact, no amount of counterevidence makes a dent in this frame. So we have the white-supremacists camping out on the border with guns and beers, playing militia. And all solutions point to "kick them out, what part of 'illegal' don't you understand?"

I'm writing this because I'm tired of the non-debate I was having on facebook, as in, I posted this:

"America’s diversity is our strength. Our immigration system is broken, but we can’t undermine fundamental principles that define us as a nation in order to fix it. We have to stay true to who we are—a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants."--President Obama

And got back this:

"And my rebutall would be quite simply: Mr. President, if we are a nation of laws... THEN ENFORCE THE LAWS PLEASE! Enforce the laws or change they if you feel they are wrong, but the fedeal approach of "Yeah, thats a problem... wow, it's getting worse... meh, you wanna get lunch?" Sure isn't working for the border states.


I've got no problem with... See More immigration. It's a big country, we got room for alot of ya, but we'd like to know you're here and paying your fair share! It's like my house. I have no problem with people hanging out, but let me know you're coming over!

You want to debate that the legal immigration process needs reform, frankly that's not even a debate anymore. EVERYONE agrees that system is broken (and has been for decades!) so why has nothing been done?

At a very minimum, even if the law doesn't stand up in court, Arizona has forced the government to deal with a problem it either didn't want to or wasn't capible of dealing with.

Take a listen to that podcast I posted yesterday. Carolla is politically an outspoken centrist/political agnostic, and I agree with him that it breaks down as a common sense deal."
 
At least it wasn't a bunch of racist crap. The system is broken because the employers of these migrants want it broken, the same agribusiness conglomerates responsible for driving them off their land in the first place now employ them here for wages Americans don't find appealing. The reason new laws aren't put in place is the same power struggle that we just saw take a year and a half to (barely) pass a half-assed health insurance reform law. It is a win-win for conservative elites, they get a slave labor force, a surefire way to fire up the base, and wonderful excuses to put repressive police state measures in place such as in AZ.
 
There's no way to persuade the angry working class Americans of anything different. Having recently finished The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right by David Neiwert, I am starting to get a little scared for even the incredibly flawed democracy we have.