The imperative of immigration reform has landed with a thud on Barack Obama's cluttered desk as Arizona moves to supersede federal law with its own crackdown on illegal aliens.
Arizona's drastic action has forced the President to take a more aggressive stand in favour of comprehensive reform this year - including a path to citizenship for the country's estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants - after the state's Republican-led Senate passed legislation requiring local police to demand proof of immigration status if they have a "reasonable suspicion" that a person is in the country illegally.
Enforcement of immigration laws falls under federal jurisdiction and many legal experts believe Arizona's bill, which the state's Republican Governor Jan Brewer signed into law Friday, is unconstitutional. But Ms. Brewer, who faces several challengers in her bid for the Republican nomination in this fall's governor's race, insisted the new law is required to address a "crisis the federal government refuses to fix."
The bill has mobilized Hispanics and immigration advocates across the country - thousands protested in Phoenix Friday - and prompted charges of politically motivated racial profiling against Arizona's Senate and House of Representatives, which first adopted the legislation last week.
The Arizona legislation has also had the effect of pushing immigration reform to the top of Washington's agenda as Democrats seek to defuse a potentially explosive social powder keg and consolidate their advantage with the country's fastest-growing group of voters. The President Friday attacked the Arizona bill and underscored the need for action by Congress.
"Our failure to act responsibly at the federal level will only open the door to irresponsibility by others," Mr. Obama charged in direct reference to the Arizona bill, which, he added, "threatened to undermine the basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans."
While Tea Party protesters have attracted most of the media attention of late, immigration reform rallies held in recent weeks throughout the country - including a massive March 21 gathering in Washington - have attracter far greater numbers.
"We're really reaching the boiling point," Brookings Institution senior fellow Audrey Singer opined in an interview. "Mr. Obama is now moving closer to guiding the process [for immigration reform]publicly. As he assumes that secure leadership role on this issue, things will move faster."
It's uncertain whether Mr. Obama could rally any Republican support for an immigration bill. Arizona Senator John McCain, who led the GOP effort to craft a bipartisan immigration bill in 2005, has backed Arizona's new law and insisted that enforcement and enhanced border security should take precedence over reform. Mr. McCain is also in a serious primary race against a right-wing challenger.
Some Democrats want to proceed with a bill, even if it ultimately fails to garner enough votes in Congress, in order to brand Republicans as anti-immigrant in the run-up to this fall's mid-term elections. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who polls show is trailing in his re-election bid in Nevada, has also promised to bring immigration reform forward this spring.
If the anti-immigrant image sticks to the GOP, some think it could lay the foundation for a decades-long shift in U.S. politics towards the Democrats. Latinos are projected to account for 30 per cent of the U.S. population by 2050, up from 15 per cent now.
Republicans made significant in-roads with Latino voters under George W. Bush. But Mr. Obama captured 67 per cent of the Hispanic vote nationally in 2008. He won less - 56 per cent - of the Latino vote on Mr. McCain's home turf of Arizona. But Republicans now risk being shut out among Latinos in Arizona, where Hispanics make up 13 per cent of registered voters but 30 per cent of the population.
Arizona State University political science professor Rodolfo Espino likened the situation created by the Arizona bill to California's Proposition 187, a successful 1994 ballot initiative backed by then Republican Governor Pete Wilson that denied social services to undocumented immigrants. The law was quickly struck down as unconstitutional, but its legacy in driving Hispanic voters into the arms of the Democrats endures.
"If Arizona Latinos go down the same road as those in California, that vote will be lost to Republicans and it will shift Arizona over time into a blue state," Prof. Espino said in an interview.