Fed up with Washington’s feckless attempts to secure America’s southern border, last week Arizona lawmakers took matters into their own hands. Gov. Jan Brewer signed into law an immigration bill that requires policemen, during law-enforcement action like traffic stops, to act on “reasonable suspicion” in order to verify a person’s immigration status.

“We in Arizona have been more than patient waiting for Washington to act,” Brewer said last Friday. “But decades of federal inaction and misguided policy have created a dangerous and unacceptable situation.”

Democrats and civil rights leaders were quick to denounce the bill, saying it would lead to widespread racial profiling.

Arizonans, meanwhile, are justifiably frustrated—and scared. Their state has been flooded with illegal aliens. In just the last three years alone, nearly 1 million aliens have been caught trying to sneak into Arizona. That amounts to about 900 per day.

Those who aren’t caught are free to roam throughout Arizona—and the rest of America. In Arizona, the estimated number of illegal immigrants is just under a half million. Embedded among them, of course, are who knows how many violent criminals, drug traffickers and human smugglers. There must be thousands—perhaps tens of thousands—judging by the massive quantities of illegal drugs seized by federal agents. Every day, on average, law enforcement officials confiscate 1.5 tons of marijuana alone.

And in the high-stakes game of drug trafficking, it’s no wonder illegal immigrants are becoming more aggressive and reckless in their behavior. Earlier this year, for example, Arizonans were outraged when a prominent rancher was murdered while patrolling his property 20 miles north of the Mexican border. Footprints at the crime scene revealed that the assailants fled to Mexico after the senseless attack.

Arizona’s capital city, Phoenix, also has the dubious distinction of being the kidnapping capital of North America. “The city has averaged about a kidnapping a day in recent years,” reports the Associated Press, “some resulting in torture and death. Victims’ legs have been burned with irons, their arms have been tied to the ceiling, their fingers broken with bricks.”

Small wonder that 70 percent of Arizonans support the new immigration bill. Law enforcement agencies have also voiced their support for the legislation.

But not the race baiters. They see the law’s passage as yet another opportunity to fan the flames of racial hatred and division. The mayor of Phoenix called the measure “racist and unjust.” Civil rights activist Al Sharpton said the bill effectively “sanctions” racial profiling.

Even President Obama joined in on the chorus of criticism. Within hours of Governor Brewer’s signing last week, Obama scolded Arizona lawmakers for their “misguided” work. He said the bill threatens to undermine the “basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans.”

The president’s reaction, Kris Kobach wrote at the Washington Times, was true to form. “Just as with the Cambridge, Mass., arrest fiasco last year, he rushed to the microphone without knowing the facts in order to stir up and capitalize on accusations of racial profiling.”

That’s what much of the backlash against the Arizona law amounts to: stirring up racial discord. And as it happens, it comes at a time when hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants—an increasing number of them hardened criminals with sophisticated weaponry—are flowing across America’s porous borders every year.

It’s an explosive mixture that will soon blow up in our faces.

Earlier this week, with an eye on the upcoming midterm elections, President Obama appealed to the same people who “powered” his victory in 2008—young people, African Americans, Latinos and women. According to Politico, Capital Hill’s newspaper, the appeal for help was delivered with “unusual demographic frankness.” Columnist Wesley Pruden sees it as a sign of desperation coming from a president who eloquently vowed not to use the race card in 2008 and promised to bring the races together as president.

Instead, the nation is becoming more divided by the day.

Two years ago, when then-Senator Obama was being lavished with praise for his efforts to heal the many race-relation breaches in America, my father warned that in the long run, it would only inflame more racism. “Poisonous race relations have everything to do with Bible prophecy,” he wrote on June 12, 2008.

This dangerous buildup within our society is a racist bomb that most of us will see explode in our faces!Many people believe that Mr. Obama is going to greatly improve race relations. But our racial problems are going to rapidly get much worse!

Then, he added, “The race card is going to be played often for political gain!” (emphasis mine; excerpts of that letter were later posted here).

So often, in fact, that even in the midst of a national emergency that has some Americans living in fear of being kidnapped, tortured or murdered by illegal aliens—and after Arizona passes a law that effectively makes it illegal to do something that has always been illegal—playing the race card and fanning the flames of hatred is what our leaders are concerned about most.