Are Anti-Immigrant Laws Hate Speech?

So with all the talk about all our caustic political arguments and how they may or may not be to blame for the massacre in Tucson, we have this (not necessarily related to the crazy Tucson shooter but to others potentially like him):

Alex Nogales, president of the National Hispanic Media Coalition, is raising a warning flag about the fall-out from the DREAM Act denial. This from the Latin American Herald Tribune:

“The words of our elected representatives are often charged with hate and feelings of xenophobia, especially against Hispanics, which is putting this area of public opinion completely out of touch with reality,” Alex Nogales told Efe.
“They blame us for things like unemployment, lack of security and economic problems,” the NHMC president said in an interview.

Nogales fears a lashing-out against the undocumented. Already there is momentum growing behind the movement to tighten the scope of the 14th Amendment, to exclude children born to undocumented parents. And laws that mimic Arizona’s controversial sb1070 are being prepped for debate in more than a dozen state legislatures.

“The latest study of hate crimes shows they increased by 40-percent between 2003 and 2007,” Nogales said. “These figures are now even higher, and if we don’t ease off on these anti-immigrant diatribes, the number of hate crimes will continue to rise.”

Nogales’ take is a deeper view, of sorts, of the hate-speech-begets-violence idea. He sees laws like sb1070 as institutionalized corrosive speech that fuels the violence against undocumented workers.

Is he off base? Can a law be viewed as institutionalized speech? (First Amendment aside, of course; going there would would unravel all holds on coherent debate.)