There is a reason everyone must take a number and wait in the immigration line.

Mr. Leigh Donaldson, whose May 10 column recently bashed the Arizona immigration law, should know this. Good journalism requires getting facts straight and refraining from biased rants that raise the room temperature but do nothing to solve the problem.

Mr. Donaldson’s column widely missed this mark.

As a member of the Green Party; I am hardly a right-wing ideologue. I grew up in El Paso, Texas, one of the nation’s most Hispanic-oriented cities. I love the Hispanic people and their culture, language, art, architecture, food and family way of life. A Southwesterner by heart, many of my best friends in life are Hispanic.

The safety and well-being of those who are natural-born or naturalized citizens or legal immigrants trump the sensitivity some feel should be shown to those who reside in this country illegally. Illegal immigrants do not possess constitutional rights.

We have an immigration problem in this country that the federal government refuses to fix. Arizona has done well to pass its own law mandating that non-citizens must carry their status paperwork at all times, a statute that mimics a federal law in place for 60 years.

The Arizona law gives police the power to question someone’s status only if they have reasonable cause to detain and question that person for some other issue.

The only Hispanic people who fear the impact of this law are either illegal immigrants themselves, or those who have a vested familial or economic interest in protecting someone who is.

None of my Hispanic friends fears this law or disagrees that stemming the flow of illegal immigrants into this country is imperative if we, as a nation, are to have a safe and viable future with secure borders.