By Marcial Guajardo

Managing Editor

In the great Arizona immigration debate, enters the voice of reason: Chuck Norris?

Yes, Norris, kung fu fighting fame and star of “Way of the Dragon” and “Walker, Texas Ranger,” not to mention all those Chuck Norris jokes that refer to him as a sort of god figure.

Norris recently took Mexico President Felipe Calderon, along with members of the House and Senate and President Barack Obama’s Cabinet, to task, after Calderon criticized S.B. 1070, Arizona’s new immigration law. Calderon’s comments drew applause from the Cabinet, House and Senate members.

S.B. 1070, for those who haven’t heard, has greatly divided the nation, with opposition traveling from all points of the country, including Central Texas, to Arizona to make their voice known. Meanwhile, nearly three-fourths of Arizona (the legal residents, anyway) reportedly support the new legislation, signed last month by Ariz. Gov. Jan Brewer.

S.B. 1070 is, as supporters say, similar to federal law in its attempt to root out illegal immigrants and those who entice them to the United States through employment without going through the proper channels. It differs in that it allows police the powers thus far granted to immigration officials.

Brewer has stood firm in her conviction that the law is a good one aimed at protecting legal residents from the evils caused to the state by illegal immigration while also one not meant to incite racial profiling.

The law, however, does not address how police will deal with the additional workload. In a day and economic age when city governments are forced to trim budgets, law enforcement officers are already being asked to do more with less, with police forces staying stagnant in size if growing much at all.

Police department leaders, including some in Arizona, have expressed their disdain with the law, with some dreading the complexity of the new duties being thrown their way when the law goes into effect at the end of July, just months after it was signed.

The law also does not address what to do with the fallout of immigrants leaving the state en masse. Fallout, you might ask? Isn’t it a good thing if they all leave?

As with many things, it has its good points and bad. In the Dallas area, after Farmers Branch City Council members in 2007 voted to approve anti-immigration measures, fear spread and immigrants began pulling their children, even American-born ones, out of schools and leaving the area. After years of population growth, school districts faced the possibility of shutting campuses and no growth. Surely, such change did little to improve retail growth in the area.

The storm associated with such change in a city would be a difficult one to weather in the best of economic times. Such upheaval affecting a state the size of Arizona in an economically unstable time could be a monumental shock to the economy.

And while Brewer has insisted she won’t stand for racial profiling, the law itself does not address how it will be avoided (yes, governor, I have read the law, unlike the critics you show in your commercials). That will be left to law enforcement officers to figure out, and they – the Arizona Peace Officer Standards and Training Board (that state’s equivalent of Texas Commission on Law Enforcement Officer Standards and Education) – are currently working to do so.

After having learned this, I am confident officers will find a fair way to treat those they deal with on a “lawful stop, detention or arrest.” It, after all, only makes sense for police to draw up clear-cut guidelines on how to deal with situations, to avoid confusion in the ranks. Confusion could lead to mistakes, soiling of reputations and lawsuits.

But no matter what they draw up, one thing is for certain: the divide between Americans and Mexicans has grown because of this. This canyon grows between Hispanics and some whites, blacks and others. It grows between Hispanics and other Hispanics.

Calderon comes onto American soil and criticizes its laws. Brewer speaks of a “crisis” caused by a porous border and illegal immigration. Seemingly forgotten are the words of Dr. Martin Luther King. Where is his spirit that drove so many to peaceful resolve?

Enter Norris. Now, granted his solution is nowhere near the peaceful spirit of Dr. King; in fact it’s rather in line with Norris’ kung fu spirit of days gone by.

He looks to this nation’s past – all the way back to the days of its founding – to four key criteria for citizenship found in the Naturalization Act of 1795: “1. five years of [lawful] residence within the United States; 2. a ‘good moral character, attached to the principles of the Constitution of the United States, and well disposed to the good order and happiness of the United States; 3. the taking of a formal oath to support the Constitution and to renounce any foreign allegiance; and 4. the renunciation of any hereditary titles.”

This is the backbone to Norris’ proposal on immigration reform: illegal immigrants in the country would get a three-month amnesty period to apply for temporary worker’s visas. They would then be placed on a two-year probationary period and, if at the end of that time they remained in good standing, they would be issued a permanent worker’s visa. Three years from that they would qualify for U.S. citizenship.

Now, Norris’ proposal on locking the border (“putting up a viable border fence and reinforcing it by whatever means necessary”) only appear to make sense if we stop fighting the war on terrorism abroad, kill off NASA for good and pump all money into border wars. Seriously, Chuck? Have you seen how much it has cost to put up the little border walls we have up already?

But Norris does something Dr. King would be proud of: he eliminates race and ethnicity from the equation. He proposes you be distinguished by the work you put in rather than the color of your skin or the language you speak. And he seems to do with the realization that many immigrants simply want to improve their lives and those of their family members and are quite willing to work for it, often through work deemed too difficult or beneath that of many Americans.

The emphasis needs to be returned to the word “United” and away from “States,” particularly one of them out west.