Johnston County Sheriff Steve Bizzell and El Pueblo Executive Director Tony Asion belong to the same brotherhood of law enforcement. Yet the lack of a sensible immigration policy in the United States has produced a gulf between these two very good men.

Asion called for Bizzell's head after the sheriff made crude remarks about illegal immigrants in general and Mexicans in particular. I can't blame Asion for being deeply offended and concerned that Bizzell's attitude will negatively affect Hispanics stopped by Johnston deputy sheriffs. But I also know Bizzell's resignation wouldn't put a dent in the growing resentment more and more North Carolinians have toward Latinos. In fact, it would increase it.

I, too, cringed at Bizzell's remarks in Sunday's paper, but I was neither surprised nor offended. I've known Bizzell professionally for a few years and have observed the hardening of his attitude toward Hispanics. I can assure you, he is not unique.

When I came to the state in 1995, tolerance toward illegal Latino immigrants bordered on the romantic. Illegal immigrants -- and by extension Hispanics -- were portrayed to me as angelic, hard-working people willing to risk their lives to feed their families. I knew the honeymoon wouldn't last.

It ended, in my view, in 2003 when a North Carolina version of the Dream Act was introduced in the General Assembly. It was a simple, 52-word bill that said that any individual who attended a North Carolina high school consecutively for four years and earned a diploma would be eligible for in-state tuition at the state's universities and community colleges. The open door for illegal immigrants was in the word "individual."

The backlash unleashed by that bill transformed attitudes toward illegals. No longer were they just smiling faces pushing lawn mowers and busing tables. Practically overnight, they also became law-breaking welfare cheats draining tax dollars from schools and hospitals.

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AS AN ARIZONA NATIVE, I'VE SEEN THIS SHOW BEFORE and had a pretty good idea what the next act would be. Immigration history reveals a pattern. Once an initial wave establishes an ethnic population, a criminal element follows. North Carolina proved no exception.

After experiencing a rapid growth rate in its Hispanic population during the 1990s, Tar Heels discovered what many Western state residents already knew -- the federal government couldn't care less about its responsibility to enforce immigration laws. It has no problem shifting the costs of capturing, prosecuting and incarcerating hardened, illegal-immigrant criminals to the states, which in reality means the counties. Deportation is a tool reserved for the big fish.

As the feds see it, they have international terrorists to catch. They can't be bothered chasing down drunken drivers. That's a job better suited to local sheriffs and district attorneys.

As any Western-state law enforcement official can attest, dealing with federal immigration bureaucracy is maddening, and I'm sure this is the frustration that was the foundation of Bizzell's uncouth remarks to N&O reporter Kristin Collins. The tipoff for me was his crack that illegal immigrants breed like rabbits. Bizzell has never opposed large families before, and for good reason. He has seven brothers and sisters

The sheriff is a good man. If he were my sheriff, I would vote to re-elect him.

Asion is a good man as well. He's part of a new generation of Hispanic leaders that's desperately needed. He understands Latino advocacy can't forever be defined by illegal immigration.

There is room for these two, straight-talking lawmen (Asion is a retired Delaware state police officer) to get together and reap benefits from an unfortunate situation that could tank Bizzell's career. El Pueblo has numerous public safety programs that could result in increased compliance with the law by Johnston County Hispanics, as well as a better understanding of Latinos among law enforcement officers.

Guys, this is a gimmie.

For the rest of us, the Bizzell-Asion divide is one more lesson that suspicion and mistrust are nasty byproducts of the "enforcement-only" Band-Aid. Sooner or later enforcement-only partisans will have to concede that our economy is demanding a guest worker program. And Hispanic advocates will have to acknowledge that reform without enforcement leads only to cultural resentment.

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