Randal Archibold misleads in support of massive illegal activity (New Mexico vs. Arizona)
Randal Archibold of the New York Times offers "Side by Side, but Divided Over Immigration" (nytimes.com/2010/05/12/us/12newmexico.html), a bit of a crooked version of A Tale of Two Cities. The first paragraph misleads:
As the Arizona Legislature steamed ahead with the most stringent immigration enforcement bill in the country this year, (New Mexico's) House of Representatives was unanimously passing a resolution recognizing the economic benefits of illegal immigrants.
That's a reference to "House Memorial 60"; see the PDF link on sos.state.nm.us/sos-2010Memorials.html. Nowhere does it explicitly "[recognize] the economic benefits of illegal immigrants", just of immigrants in general. Archibold isn't really lying, since "immigrants" might be taken to include illegal aliens (even though, legally speaking, it does not). However, it's misleading of him not to accurately represent what the Memorial actually says. This is the section in question:
WHEREAS, the New Mexico legislature recognizes the economic, social and cultural contributions that immigrants bring to New Mexico's communities;
Needless to say, it goes downhill from there, supporting giving a wide range of services to illegal aliens, supporting comprehensive immigration reform (aka amnesty), and so on.
Back to Randall Archibald:
While the Arizona police will check driver’s licenses and other documents to root out illegal immigrants, New Mexico allows illegal residents to obtain driver’s licenses as a public safety measure.
What Archibold fails to tell his readers is that due to their "public safety measure", Arizona no longer considers New Mexico drivers licences to be a reliable form of identification. Note also that in 2008, dozens from "special interest countries" might have received New Mexico driver's license.
The two above are just the first two paragraphs in the article; discussing the others is left as an exercise.