The furor over the Arizona immigration law, which gives greatly enhanced powers to police departments there, actually represents an opportunity for overall comprehensive legislation.

At first glance, that may look like a strange statement, but the Arizona fallout on all sides is so severe that the federal government will simply have to get involved.

The Obama administration has been involved in a kick the can down the road exercise, successfully so far, to avoid the issue of immigration reform.

The marches on Washington, the efforts by Hispanic leaders to force action, all have failed to stir the administration into definitive action.

Yet, amazingly, what has succeeded is pressure from the right, specifically from Arizona, where a law has now forced the Obama people to confront an inconvenient truth.

That is, that every state in the southwest and likely many elsewhere, will soon be introducing their own legislation piecemeal on the issue of immigration.

It will not be pretty, as the current uproar over the Arizona law is not pretty.

There are no winners or losers in the current stalemate.

As former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson pointed out in The Washington Post, Republicans are swallowing a poison pill in the long run by being perceived as anti-Hispanic by their actions in passing new and restrictive laws.

While there might be short-term gain for the Republicans in some states, many states such as Texas and California are trending towards a Hispanic majority in the future.

For Democrats, the picture is hardly any brighter. They control both houses of Congress and the White House, yet they have seemed hopelessly ineffective when it comes to this issue.

Republicans are scoring heavily by pointing out this ineffectiveness, and the only way the Democrats can ultimately respond is by proving they can act, and act quickly.

So in all this difficulty there is opportunity. The Democrats need a bill and the Republicans need to lose the image of being anti-Hispanic before it is too late for them.

Hopefully those political realities will coalesce. There comes a point when both sides have too much to lose by allowing the status quo to go ahead.

Such a bill would have tough border enforcement, but also would have to find a way to offer a path to legalization to those here.