Arizona lawmakers rarely write the laws they pass.

Sometimes the state's legislative attorneys pen them; sometimes lawmakers just copy language from other states; and sometimes advocacy groups or outside experts write the bills.

The latter was the case with Arizona's new immigration law. While the vision belonged to Sen. Russell Pearce, many of the words were crafted by Kansas attorney Kris Kobach, an authority on immigration enforcement with a growing national reputation.

The passage of the toughest illegal-immigration law in the country at the end of April created a firestorm of controversy. The law makes it a state crime to be in the country illegally. It led to proposed copycat legislation in some states and boycotts of Arizona by others. It also has pushed the debate - and the political players behind it - into the spotlight.

Kobach, who has an Ivy League education and ties to a controversial Washington, D.C.-based anti-immigration group, has been writing and defending city and state immigration laws since 2001. But it's his efforts - and successes - in Arizona that have cemented his reputation as an immigration expert.

Arizona has become his test case to prove that ratcheting up laws that crack down on illegal immigration will motivate illegal immigrants to leave on their own.

"Slowly but surely, Arizona is showing that attrition through enforcement works," Kobach said.

Legal mind

Kobach has a bachelor's degree from Harvard University, a doctorate in political science from Oxford University and a law degree from Yale Law School. He said he first got interested in immigration issues as a law student reading about California's Proposition 187, a 1994 voter-approved measure that would have denied health-care, education and social-service benefits to illegal immigrants. A federal court in California ruled the law unconstitutional.

Kobach said he was fascinated by the debate over whether states had the right to enforce immigration laws.

In 2001, just days after 9/11, Kobach got a job as chief adviser on immigration law and border security to John Ashcroft, who was in his first year as U.S. attorney general. Kobach oversaw Department of Justice efforts to tighten border security, including the design and implementation of a system that requires foreign nationals from certain nations to register with a program that tracks their movements in and out of the U.S.

While at the Justice Department, Kobach began making contacts with state and local government officials.

Kobach left the Justice Department in 2003 and now teaches constitutional and immigration law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law. He's running for secretary of state in Kansas.

An expertise

The circle of anti-immigration legal experts is a small one.

Kobach's work for the Justice Department got him in the door. Joining the non-profit Washington, D.C.-based Immigration Reform Law Institute, the public-interest law affiliate of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, earned him a seat at the table. FAIR, according to its website, seeks to improve border security, stop illegal immigration and decrease the number of legal immigrants allowed into the country.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, a non-profit Alabama-based civil-rights organization, has named FAIR among the 932 U.S. organizations it describes as "hate groups," citing FAIR's stance on immigration.

FAIR boasts 250,000 supporters, a very public profile and a national network of grass-roots subgroups.

In 2004, Kobach worked on a FAIR lawsuit against a Kansas law that gave children of undocumented immigrants in-state college tuition. The lawsuit was dismissed, but the work started to roll in.

Several cities hired him to help defend ordinances prohibiting landlords from renting to illegal immigrants.

He also, for free, helps state legislators craft laws.

Arizona involvement

Kobach first got involved with Arizona immigration efforts in 2006. His work defending cities' efforts to combat illegal immigration had begun making headlines, and he was contacted by the Maricopa County Attorney's Office to help defend the state's Human Smuggling Act in court. Former County Attorney Andrew Thomas used the 2004 law to charge illegal immigrants as co-conspirators with the people who brought them into the country. The practice was upheld in court.

Kobach said he was first contacted by Pearce to help draft the 2007 law that makes it illegal to knowingly hire undocumented workers.

Kobach was later hired by the Arizona Attorney General's Office to help defend the law, which was upheld by the Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. The Solicitor General's Office has urged the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the employer-sanctions case.

When Pearce was ready to tackle state enforcement of federal immigration laws, he again called Kobach for help.

Kobach said he is happy with the final version.

"I think it will be difficult for the plaintiffs challenging this," he said. "They are heavy on political rhetoric but light on legal arguments."

Spreading law

It's nothing new for advocacy groups - such as those involved with gun rights, abortion or immigration - to rally voters to their cause. But over the past decade, groups have increasingly begun to accomplish their goals behind the scenes, writing legislation themselves and backing lawmakers willing to introduce it.

Their websites offer "model law" for other states to duplicate. They hold conferences for lawmakers to talk about specific issues. They offer experts such as Kobach to help draft laws.

Kobach said that's exactly how the federalist system in America was envisioned.

"It's been referred to as a laboratory of states," he said. "One state does something that works, and other states follow."

But critics say Arizona's law reflects far more than the wishes of constituents. They say the law is the latest in a national effort by anti-illegal-immigration groups to change public policies using the exact legal wording they want, one state at a time. The groups, critics say, are using Arizona to serve their own greater goals.

Suman Raghunathan, immigration policy specialist with the Progressive States Network, said recent immigration law efforts in Arizona and elsewhere have been the direct result of a targeted effort from Kobach and anti-illegal-immigration groups.

"I think people have no idea that these are very well financed, well organized, planned efforts," she said.

Both she and Kobach agree that when it comes to illegal-immigration laws, Arizona has been made the nation's model state. It was the first state to require an ID to register to vote, the first to require employers to use E-Verify to assure employees were in the country legally and a leader in denying benefits to illegal immigrants. Now, under the new law, it's the first to make it a state crime to be in the country illegally.

"Arizona really has been a trailblazer in discouraging illegal immigration," Kobach said.

Next year, Pearce has said, he will propose a measure that would make Arizona the first state to stop the practice of giving citizenship to children who are born in the United States to illegal-immigrant parents. Ending the practice of granting citizenship to "anchor babies," as they are sometimes called, is one of FAIR's legislative goals and is supported by Kobach.