Rose is 11. She’s in sixth grade. She’s a totally kick-ass kid — I’ve had the privilege of watching her grow since she was in third grade, and so shy she wouldn’t look you in the eye. Now she’s a world-class eavesdropper and question-asker, a future journalist for sure. She’s cut her long, thick hair to her shoulders and although there’s still a good bit of tomboy in her, she’s started wearing necklaces with her Converse.

Her future is bright. (And don’t get me started on her parents, and how truly amazing they are, or I’ll be crying for sure.)

But dark clouds arrived last week, in the form of our governor’s signature on that immigration bill you’ve no doubt heard of, even if you reside on the moon.

Welcome to Arizona, folks. This place sucks. No amount of efforts at government reform over the last decade and a half (from term limits to campaign finance reform to redistricting) has been able to turn our absolutely off-the-far-edge-of-the-right-wing Legislature normal. You already know about our crazy (and I mean that literally) sheriff, Joe Arpaio. Now you are meeting the rest of the state on CNN. Feel my pain.

And feel Rose’s pain. Rose is an American citizen, but if you were a law enforcement officer in Arizona, you might just assume from the color of her skin that she’s an illegal immigrant. Rose is adopted; she’s Mexican by birth. Now her parents might have to pack her passport with her lunch box. And last week, they had to tell her about the law and prepare her in case someone pulls her aside.

That really does make me cry.

There’s much to debate over this immigration legislation — sure, much of it is what the federal government was already supposed to be doing. Yes, there is crime — the death of the rancher that prompted this whole thing is tragic — and I suppose there would be economic implications of illegal immigration if there were actually jobs to “steal” in this country anymore. I know, something needs to be done. And by signing that bill into law (a law I personally doubt will ever actually be enacted — I think the courts will nab it before it goes into effect) perhaps our ill-informed, plastic-surgery-preoccupied (have you seen pictures of the much different looking Jan Brewer from the 1980s?) governor will prompt Congress to do something smart.

But for now, this whole thing is dumb dumb dumb. Hurtful and divisive and sad.

So I can’t stop thinking about Rose, and her family, and how unfair it is that this girl is just as much a citizen of the United States of America as my daughters — yet somehow, after Friday, has been relegated to a different class.

Even if Rose wasn’t technically a citizen, but instead was simply a little girl whose family had managed to get her here, looking for a better life, would she deserve to be in a different class, to be given a different status as a human being? She’d still be an 11 year old girl in a necklace and Cons, watching the world very carefully.

I wonder what she thinks about all this.

NOTE: I don’t pretend to have any answers about immigration, only questions. But if you are looking for a smart authority on the subject, be sure to check in with my dear friend/mentor/former colleague Terry Greene Sterling.