The Arizona legislature just passed a law to enforce immigration laws.
Excerpt:
The measure – set to take effect in late July or early August – would make it a crime under state law to be in the U.S. illegally. It directs state and local police to question people about their immigration status if there is reason to suspect they are illegal.
[…]Currently, many U.S. police departments do not ask about people’s immigration status unless they have run afoul of the law in some other way. Many departments say stopping and questioning people will only discourage immigrants from cooperating to solve crimes.
Under the new Arizona law, immigrants unable to produce documents showing they are allowed to be in the U.S. could be arrested, jailed for up to six months and fined $2,500. That is a significant escalation of the typical federal punishment for being here illegally – deportation.
People arrested by Arizona police would be turned over to federal immigration officers. Opponents said the federal government could thwart the law by refusing to accept them.
Supporters of the law said it is necessary to protect Arizonans from crimes committed by illegal immigrants. Arizona is home to an estimated 460,000 illegal immigrants and is the nation’s busiest gateway for people slipping into the country.
Republican Gov. Jan Brewer, who signed the bill on Friday, said Arizona must act because Washington has failed to stop the flow of illegal immigrants and drugs from Mexico. Brewer has ordered state officials to develop a training course for officers to learn what constitutes reasonable suspicion that someone is in the U.S. illegally.
[…]The law has strong public support in Arizona, where passions have been running high since a rancher was killed close to the Mexican border last month, apparently by drug smugglers from across the border.
And here is Obama’s response from the Associated Press. (H/T Hot Air)
Excerpt:
President Barack Obama criticized Arizona’s tough immigration bill as irresponsible Friday and said his administration is examining whether it would violate civil rights.
Obama said the federal government must act responsibly to reform national immigration law — or “open the door to irresponsibility by others.”
“That includes, for example, the recent efforts in Arizona, which threaten to undermine basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans, as well as the trust between police and their communities that is so crucial to keeping us safe,” Obama said.
If signed into law by Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, the legislation would require police to question people about their immigration status if there’s reason to suspect they’re in the country illegally. Civil rights activists say such a law would lead to racial profiling and deter Hispanics from reporting crimes.
Obama instructed the Justice Department to examine the bill to see if it would violate civil rights.
Ed notes that Arizona passed this law because the feds dropped the ball on law enforcement.
Just to re-iterate, I am myself a visible minority, and I am in favor of increased legal immigration for skilled immigrants, and a path to citizenship for skilled immigrants who continue to work, pay taxes, avoid committing crimes, etc. for a period of a few years.
WINTERY KNIGHT 
According to the polls, 70% of Arizonans favor the law. I think that most of America doesn’t know the impact of ILLEGAL immigration on this state. In the Tucson area, for instance, there is ONLY ONE emergency room … because federal law mandates that emergency rooms treat anyone regardless of ability to pay and too many hospitals faced bankruptcy for treating illegal immigrants, so they closed their emergency rooms. Other studies suggest that up to 75% of the violent crime in the state is due to illegal immigration. We are, for instance, high on the list of states for kidnapping, but, as it turns out, it’s almost entirely due to the illegal immigration problem, not the population in general. The same is true for auto theft and identity theft. And so it goes.
All the law does is ask the police to enforce the law. It is incorrect that they can simply, on the basis of this law, pull someone over to check their immigration status. The law specifies that the status check is done in the course of some other investigation. But the federal government isn’t doing their job and the people outside of Arizona are mad about it and so the mandate appears to be that we ought not be allowed to enforce the law and we ought to be required to bear the brunt of all these problems on our own. That, apparently, is the rule of democracy — whoever yells the loudest.
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“Civil rights activists say such a law would lead to racial profiling and deter Hispanics from reporting crimes.”
Deter Hispanics from reporting crimes? Who are they referring to here — legal hispanics, or illegal?
If illegal, then they are already failing to report a crime — their presence in the country. If legal hispanics, then I have to ask, to what extent are they reporting illegals among them now? To the extent that this is low, then they are already failing to report crimes.
So, let’s not make this issue about the failure to report crimes, and make it what it is — the commitment of the crime of illegal immigration into a welcoming country that admits millions of legal immigrants — those who follow the rules — annually.
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