Like a sport fueled perhaps by drugs and alcohol, but overcast by the shadow of hatred and racism, American youths are having fun "hunting Mexicans."

Understand "Mexican" to mean any Latino, because the average North American, in his ignorance about the world, generalizes the origins of those with dark skin.

They consider them dirty and call them "beaners," as if agricultural labor were something undignified, ignoring that practically everything they eat comes to them thanks to Latino manual labor – forgetting, as well, that Americans do not want to do certain difficult jobs, such as field work.

Anti-immigrant sentiment is growing in the United States; the contribution of Latinos to the nation's progress goes unappreciated.

Harassment has gone from simple offensive looks to physical aggression.

On November 8, 2008, 17-year-old Jeffrey Conroy went out with six friends to "hunt" Mexicans. They happened upon Marcelo Lucero, a thirty-seven-year-old Ecuadorean, walking with a friend in a Long Island, New York neighborhood. In the subsequent unmatched row, Lucero was stabbed to death.

This case is emblematic of a national trend, and as a result, a jury declared Conroy guilty of manslaughter as a hate crime, gang assault and conspiracy.

On April 17, in front of Los Angeles City Hall, members of the National Socialist Movement, a neo-Nazi group that proclaims the superiority of whites over other races and cultures, protested in a shameless fashion against undocumented immigrants, accusing them of stealing jobs from whites and of committing crimes.

In Arizona, the state government approved a law aimed against undocumented immigrants on April 23.

This law makes it a crime to not carry a residence permit (Green Card), to give a ride [in a car] to an undocumented person, to stop on the road or simply to approach one on the street to contract him for day labor; anyone found doing any of these things is liable to be arrested and deported starting in August 2010, when the law, signed by Arizona's Republican governor Jan Brewer, goes into effect.

Some 400,000 [undocumented] immigrants who reside in Arizona are now going through an unprecedented period of terror, with many already fleeing the state for fear of being picked up in raids and round-ups. The consequences for the regional economy will be extremely grave.

In Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on March 12, immigration agents who were pursuing Hispanics, detained 18-year-old Leslie Cocche, who had been waiting for the train to take her to her university.

The subject of undocumented immigrants is a hot potato for American politicians. On the one hand, they do not want to lose the Hispanic vote; on the other hand, they might alienate white voters.

The mask of a double moral standard covers the faces of those business people who find that the cheap labor of undocumented immigrants and the fact that they don't have to pay Social Security taxes suit them well.

President Barack Obama called the Arizona law "misguided." Still, he had said earlier that federal immigration authorities will concentrate their efforts on capturing undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes, and dangerous persons who threaten the country's security.

When there is persecution like this, the innocent are often taken for guilty, and such policies encourage the racists' "hunts." For this reason, fear spreads from coast to coast.