That tidbit about AZ not being able to do that , there's an article that states why AZ is able to pass this law. You know how the law is most of it is back and forth interpretation.

How is it "bigoted?" The law seeks to identify illegal aliens. Last time I checked, "being in the country illegally" was not a race. It's an act - and an illegal one, at that. Can you really call someone who is prejudiced against criminals a "bigot?"

DoingHomework, if you live in Arizona, then your taxes are higher because of people entering the country illegally. They sneak in, use a disproportionate amount of government services (certainly more than you do), but pay nothing into the system. Thus, your state's costs are higher, and its revenue is lower, because of people in the country illegally. It's an economic double-whammy that is crippling Arizona's (and other states') finances.

I understand why the sentiment has reached this boiling point in Arizona. And as such, I don't hold these laws against them. I certainly wouldn't boycott them - they're hardworking USAmericans just trying to protect their resources. But at the same time, I don't think this new law is the answer. I think it will be challenged and defeated, because it seems to me that it is fundamentally unconstitutional. A person in the US is "innocent until proven guilty," yet this law allows police to assume anyone they choose is guilty, and requires them to prove they're not. That's wrong, in my opinion.

I hope the border states find a way to curtail the illegal immigration that is weighing down their budgets, but I think this law goes a little bit too far. In the meantime, legal residents have nothing to fear. First of all, cops are just plain too busy to just walk around, randomly demanding people to prove citizenship for no reason at all. I expect this law will be almost exclusively applied in situations where the police have already been called out to a disturbance. Furthermore, if the person doesn't have proof on them (heck, even if they do), the officer will run their name and date of birth through the national databank. That alone will show the officer if you are a legal resident. If you don't come up on the computer, and you can't prove you're there legally, well then certainly you'll be detained until you can somehow demonstrate you have a right to be in the country.

And what's wrong with that?

It sounds like the fear here is that this law will accidentally scoop up legal residents and cause undue inconvenience to legal, taxpaying USAmericans. I disagree. And as such, I don't really see a problem with it. The only people who will be unduly inconvenienced by this law will be the people it's supposed to inconvenience - those who are in the country illegally.

Kombat, the law is bigoted. No one is even suggesting that Europeans, Asians, or Canadians will be required to prove their immigration status. Regardless of what you hear nationally, this is about targeting hispanics, Mexicans and those from other Central and South American countries.

I don't really care if I pay higher taxes. There are some things that are just plain WRONG. I very definitely think we should address the border issues. But the issues are mostly crime related to drug and human smuggling. We already have laws against killing people.

Our state government has proven they are a bunch of racist idiots. Even the sheriff of the county that covers much of the border, whose department has to deal with most of the issues, has said he thinks the law is unnecessary and racist.

The law also violates federal law, in that a state government cannot compel the federal government.

Tell that to our state legislators. I hope the border patrol starts arresting Arizona cops for interference with Federal officers.

In Arizona we have a hobby of passing laws that violate federal law. We have one that prohibits key parts of the new health regulation for example. Almost certainly unenforcable but a costly embarrassment nonetheless. We like to spend lots of tax dollars suing the federal government and losing.

Those who don't live in the U.S. probably are missing some of the important details of our society. There is no national data bank in the U.S. -- especially not one that can be checked by the officers in the field. This article explains the hodge-podge of identity documents.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_d ... ted_States

Just carrying a drivers license apparently is not good enough according to a recent news article posted about someone being stopped (and being held until his wife could get the documents from their safe at home). But carry your SS card? Screw that. Lose that and people will be running identify thefts against you nonstop. Birth certificate? Great, I guess I need to start carrying a manpurse cuz it ain't gonna fit in my wallet.

Right. And not only do we lack a national database, Americans as a group have a fundamental resistance to the whole idea of having to carry identity. I think Arizona law actually already requires it...but I pity the poor prosecutor or police officer that ever tried to enforce that law. There would be a horrendous backlash.

And interesting that you bring up the birth certificate idea. The Arizona house just passed a law requiring national presidential candidates to show a birth certificate acceptable to state officials to prove they were born in the US. You can guess who that was aimed at and I have no doubt they would try to refuse to accept the famous Hawaii BC for some reason to keep BO's name off the ballot in Arizona. Fortunately the measure failed in the AZ senate but it should still give you an idea of the kind of idiocy we have here.

Is the state of Arizona having problems with Europeans, Asians, or Canadians sneaking across the border, taking jobs in an underground economy (undercutting the cost of employing legal residents), and consuming social services and resources?

Again, I think it's silly to pretend that illegal immigrants coming into Arizona from Mexico pose no bigger problem than those coming from the other aforementioned places. Maybe I'm just ill-informed (after all, I don't live there) but I don't hear about any problems being caused/exacerbated by a rush of illegal immigrants from, say, Sweden. I think you have to face reality a little bit here.

In any case, nobody is telling police to arrest people for looking Mexican or speaking Spanish. The proposal is to arrest people who are in the country illegally. It just so happens that Arizona has a few million of those people, and nearly all of them look Mexican and speak Spanish.

Tim

No. But we are not having problems from Mexicans, Salvadorans, Columbians, etc. either. We have a problem with violence along the border. That violence is committed by criminals involved in drug trafficking and smuggling of humans. Some of those criminals are of Mexican descent, some are probably of Swedish descent. I bet there are even a few Canadians involved. We absolutely should be going after the drug smugglers.

And it is already illegal to hire or employ people without permission to work in the US.



We have about half a million illegal aliens in Arizona.
Undoubtedly a large majority are from Mexico. The issue is not arresting people who are here illegally. The issue is that police are required (not just allowed) to ask about the immigration status of anyone they suspect is not here legally and arrest anyone who is not carrying papers to prove status. There really is no way to suspect someone is not a citizen except maybe by looking at their skin color. So now anyone with tan skin will need to carry papers to prove citizenship or risk being arrested because they can't prove it immediately.

In many cities a disproportionately large amount of crimes are committed by black people. I'm assuming people like Tim would be all in favor of police specifically targeting anyone black with random stops and the like. Getting "tough on crime" is more important than discrimination and civil liberties, right?

It gets worse!

I know this is really off topic in a PF forum but I just had to post this:

Our legislature has just banned teaching ethnic studies classes in the state and made it illegal for schools to allow a teacher with an accent to teach English. So you Canadians better watch those "eh"s if you come down here.

This is really pathetic!

There are dozens of different accents within our own country. New England, Alabama, Boston, California, etc. Or do they mean accents from outside our borders? This is just pure xenophobia.

You already agreed with me earlier that the main driver behind this law is the unemployment rate and budget deficit, not crime along the border. The problems that I was talking about have a lot to do with Mexicans, Salvadorans, and Columbians taking jobs under the table (exacerbating unemployment among legal residents) and using public services without paying taxes (exacerbating the budget problem).



That's fine, but obviously that law (or the enforcement of it) is not tough enough because your state continues to struggle with this issue. I mean, do you think everything was solved, or do you agree that something else needed to be done?



I'm afraid you are right, this will inconvenience a lot of law-abiding Hispanic Americans, and I don't know what to tell you. My point is simply that this isn't racism; it is a fairly logical (albeit insensitive) method for trying to locate the majority of illegal immigrants.



If you are the sheriff in a town where everyone is green except for a half-dozen blue people, and a blue person robs the bank and runs off with the money, what do you do? Do you try to fool yourself and everyone else by pretending that it's just as likely that a green person is the guilty party? Or do you bring in the six people who fit the description of being blue for questioning? Does that mean you are a racist bigot discriminating against blue people? Does that mean that blue people enjoy fewer civil liberties than green people? Or is it just a practical technique for law enforcement?

In Arizona it is a known fact that a whole bunch of Spanish-speaking, dark-skinned people have committed the crime of illegally crossing the border and continue to do so every day. Therefore, I think that if you want to find those people it simply makes sense to start by questioning dark-skinned, Spanish-speaking people. This has absolutely nothing to do with treating dark-skinned people as inferior or extending them fewer rights and freedoms because of their race.

Tim

On a trip to Arizona a few years ago, I encountered an issue I've never encountered in any other state: if I wanted to pay at the gas pump with my credit card, I was required to enter my zip code. Since I live in Canada I don't have a zip code, and I had to go inside to pay. Is this something peculiar to Arizona as well or are other states starting to do it? Why should you only be allowed to pay at the pump if you have a US address?