Science fiction writer Alan Dean Foster lives in Prescott, AZ. His opinion piece in yesterday’s New York Times takes a stab at explaining immigration, western attitudes and gardening with javelinas to New Yorkers:

Garden Variety Javelinas By ALAN DEAN FOSTER Prescott, Ariz.

“THE problem,” Luis told me, “is all these illegals. They come here expecting to find paradise, and it isn’t. You have to work hard for everything. But at least there is work.” He shook his head. He is shorter than me by five inches, but I would trade an inch or so of height for his full head of black hair. Vanity knows no borders.

Luis emigrated from southern Mexico 16 years ago. He now runs a car maintenance business where I bring my old Aurora every few months. To say that he and many immigrants like him are strongly in favor of Arizona’s new immigration law — which went into effect at the end of last month without its most controversial aspects, like immigration status checks during police stops — is like saying one or two New Yorkers dislike the Red Sox.

[…]

If you think angry white guys who sleep with M16’s and whose six-packs are in their pickups as opposed to on their torsos are the ones angriest at illegal immigration in Arizona, then you haven’t talked to the legal immigrants here. Did everything the hard way, they say. Earned the right to be called an American.

Many of them resent those who crossed the border illegally, but they also sympathize. You can’t be human and not feel for someone who only wants to make a little money to send back home.

[…]

My friends Brock and Glenna have a vegetable garden. In Arizona, that means battling with javelinas, which love their zucchini. Javelinas may be pigs, but they weigh over 70 pounds and have razor-sharp tusks; a pack of them can crush a mountain lion like a trucker would a beer can. Keep that in mind the next time you grumble about having to shoo the neighborhood kids away from your tomatoes.

So yes, Arizona is different. Most of all, the border with Mexico makes us different from those states bordering looks-just-like-us Canada, or silent wide oceans or simply other states. We’re as American as our relatives in Maine and Minnesota and we hew to the same values. But some things are a bit more complicated here.

Read more here.