MESA, Ariz. — One minute, Glenna Twing talks about the immigrant residents of the apartment buildings she manages with the warmth typical of Arizona's business-friendly conservatives who cherish immigrant labor. Her tenants, Twing says, are in the country legally and "are hardworking business entrepreneurs who are trying to make a living and contribute back to society."
Another minute, the 60-year-old Arizonan expresses the frustration that has made the state the epicenter of the national backlash against illegal immigration. She refers to the people on downtown streets who she presumes are undocumented with disgust in her voice: "They're standing on the corner, trying to be picked up for day jobs."
With one of every two unauthorized crossings into the U.S. occurring along the 350-mile Arizona-Mexico border, the state might be expected to offer a clear view on the thorny issue of illegal immigration.
Yet the area's sun-splashed shopping centers and subdivisions harbor surprising shades of gray on the issue -- an ambivalence that underscores why Congress has been unable to agree on a new immigration policy.
Arizona's voters approved a ban on benefits for illegal immigrants in 2004, but also express support for pro-immigrant initiatives.
Elected officials are scrambling to prove they are tough on illegal immigration, even as the largely Republican congressional delegation is evenly divided between hard-line and immigrant-friendly proposals being considered in Washington. In Mesa, the two Republican congressmen whose districts divide the city are on opposite sides of the issue.
"The public is quite confused over which way to go," said Earl de Berge, a nonpartisan Arizona pollster.
Last year, House Republicans bucked President Bush's call for a guest-worker program and passed a bill to make all illegal immigrants felons and erect a fence along the Arizona-Mexico border. The GOP-controlled Senate is taking up an alternative proposal that would allow many illegal immigrants to stay in the U.S.
"The split in Arizona reflects the divide in the Republican Party over immigration," said Marshall Wittman, who works for the Democratic Leadership Council in Washington, D.C.
Wittman, formerly an aide to Arizona's Republican Sen. John McCain, said that "immigration is to the Republican Party what trade is to the Democratic Party. It's an issue that splits [the party] and doesn't follow along predictable ideological lines."
