The furor grows over the new law in the State of Arizona which, in essence, allows non-federal officials to enforce facets of immigration law.

Why? In my opinion, not because the issue is really so complex, but because of the age- old schizophrenic views of the American public and its politicians on the issue of immigration.

To provide full disclosure, I am not an innocent in relation to the issue or the debate. In a federal career that lasted more than two decades, I enforced or helped enforce almost every section of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) that deals with violations. As a private practitioner for the last two and one-half years, I have now represented many foreign nationals in filing petitions and applications for immigration benefits, and have litigated on their behalf in federal district courts and immigration courts.

Beyond that, and more specific to the issue at hand, I also spent many hours training state and local police officials on how to enforce federal immigration law under what is known as the 287(g) program, traveling to states as varied in their political stances as Alabama, Colorado, and Virginia, to do so. Many, in fact the majority, of those trips were to the State of Arizona to train sworn police officers under an agreement signed by then Governor Janet Napolitano.

As a non-innocent on the issue, however, I am not surprised that it has come to this.

Arizona is right. Not about the law that it has passed, but about the reason for it. The federal government has done an abysmal job of enforcing the INA. And, as a border state, Arizona is directly affected by what the feds have not done.

But Arizona is wrong.

Beyond the issue of whether their law will pass constitutional muster based on Supremacy clause considerations and the issue of what they will do with the illegal aliens once they catch them, giving its officers immigration enforcement responsibilities is a mistake. First and foremost, most cops don’t want it. No one, including me, that I have worked with in law enforcement is really interested in enforcing basic immigration law. No one with a badge wants to arrest and process a person whose only offense is entering the country without documents or overstaying their visas.

Just ask anyone who carries an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) badge. Ask them if they would rather arrest a cook at the local restaurant who is in the U.S. without documents or the drug dealer who is hauling heroin into this country for sale and distribution. Ask them if they’d rather raid the local hotel and arrest all the illegal help or raid a Methamphetamine lab operation. And ask them if they’d rather do surveillance on and hit a home at 5 a.m. to arrest a mom cooking breakfast for her three kids for having illegally entered the U.S., or do a Title III wiretap on a money launderer who also happens to be part of an international prostitution ring.

Having trained and interacted with many of the police personnel in Arizona, I can unequivocally tell you that they are no different. While my portion of the 287(g) training was on the National Security aspects of the INA, how to use it to catch and prosecute terrorists, spies and human rights violators, I spent more than one lunch break hearing local and state cops tell me without any hesitation that they were attending the course under duress, and hearing, as one very seasoned detective put it, “I don’t care what my Chief says, I’m not doing any of that immigration crap.”

These views are no different than those of the American public in general.

Almost every person that I have spoken to about the issue over the 25 years that I have dealt with immigration law, in one form or fashion, puts it this way: “You need to catch and deport all those illegal aliens…just don’t even think about trying to catch or deport my illegal alien _____________.” You fill in the blank: friend, in-law, worker, contractor, musician, student, yoga instructor, etc.

The same holds true for our political representatives. In 1985, when I was a mere law clerk at what used to be the Headquarters of the old Immigration and Naturalization Service in Washington D.C., I remember an assignment in which I was to find a way to legalize a certain alien and thereby keep the Border Patrol away from the residence of one of our very fine members of Congress. The Patrol had apparently been sniffing around the place and had knocked at the door one day, having had the audacity to ask the lady of the house about a certain person believed to possibly be employed there. That member of Congress was, in public, not a great supporter of immigration. Yet, that member of Congress was apparently a great supporter of not incurring the wrath of his wife by letting the migra haul away their illegal alien.

So, it will be interesting to see where the Arizona law and how its implementation go. Not for the men and women who carry badges in that state. And certainly not for anyone- legal or illegal, foreign national or U.S. citizen- affected by the law. But for the state and local politicians who will all be dancing in front of the cameras spouting their views pro or con, but who will, in my opinion, in very short order wish they had never treaded into these murky waters.

The first test cases will likely be very difficult ones. Imagine the possibilities: the single mom who has a legitimate asylum claim but who gets held in custody for months while somebody decides what to do with her, or the terrorist who gets stopped five times but checks out and is let go because he or she had “legitimate” immigration papers issued by the feds but then goes on to blow up a building with people in it.

And those cases will once again stir the waters for what is sure to be a very public display of the schizophrenia that drives the immigration issue.

There will be no politicians dancing then. They’ll all be hiding. And if they can’t hide, they’ll all be pointing. Pointing fingers at each other, and at the federal government, and looking for a way to deflect before the next election in which their political futures will be determined.

And the feds? They’ll be pointing right back and blaming the State. While doing little or nothing to address the real immigration issues in this country, and only doing as little as they have to do in the easiest way possible to appease whatever schizophrenic political agenda rules the day. Either way, they will do only enough that let’s them get through to the next administration and the next great immigration debate.

Real immigration reform will not come from Draconian laws, and real immigration reform will not come from opening the borders to anyone who simply wants to come to this country.

Real immigration reform will only come when this country finally stops dealing with the issue as a figurative football to be used by the left or the right for self-serving political or personal purposes.

This country must stop pretending and accept that, as a very prosperous nation with very significant levels of freedom compared to most other countries around the world, foreign nationals will always come here and seek to stay. This country must realize that no system, much less the one we currently have in place, can ever deal with the total number of foreign nationals who seek to come to and/or remain in this country at any given time.

This country must finally get serious about real immigration enforcement and demand proactive federal enforcement of the laws already on the books against serious violators as opposed to, as many ICE agents put it, “low hanging fruit.” Then and only then will we ever have a legitimate chance at addressing and actually dealing with the immigration issue as a nation.

Passing laws that put state and local peace officers in the line-of-fire not only for enforcing immigration law, but for failing to do so, is not the answer.

Passing laws that look only to body count and not to priorities is also not the answer.

In my opinion, the great State of Arizona is about to learn this the hard way.

Dan Vara was the INS District Counsel in Miami, Florida from 1990 until 2003. He was also the Chief Counsel, ICE, in Orlando, Florida from 2003 until 2006. As the highest ranking federal immigration attorney in the State of Florida, he was at the forefront of many significant immigration enforcement matters involving counterterrorism and counterintelligence. He was also an instructor on such matters at INS, ICE and FBI conferences. He is now in private practice in South Florida.