Finding Truth About AZ Immigration Bill

I spent some time looking for the content of the actual bill online, and failed. It may be out there somewhere, but nowhere it can easily be accessed.

Instead, all I found were pages and pages of links to articles and blogs that decry the law as heavy-handed or fascist. Such overwrought propaganda is clearly designed to paint a frightening picture of a law that offends civil liberties, whether or not such charges are true.

Trying the second-best option, I found this article from NPR. Some might be surprised that a reasonable and analytical argument on the pro side of the issue would be given air by what many on the Right call National Proletariat Radio.

The information in this article refutes all of the paranoid rhetoric posed by the 3 out of 4 articles on the net and the President, who suggested a family going out for ice cream could be randomly pulled over and arrested for not taking their "papers" along.

The key phrase seems to be "lawful contact". In other words, nobody can be pulled over and harrassed based on a simple visual profile or an offier hearing them speaking Spanish. Lawful contact means the encounter was based on a routine encounter due to a traffic violation or other complaint requiring law enforcement contact.

There's also the important phrase "reasonable suspicion", which also has years of very clear definition. Reasonable suspicion is not defined by what's in the officer's mind at the time, but by clearly defined parameters that represent reasonable suspicion that the person detained for whatever violation may not be legally present. Things like no drivers licence, no proof of insurance, refusal to provide identification.

The outraged argument against the law seems to suggest that it gives license to law enforcement to harrass innocent people without cause. Where it is true that some rogue officers will do so for their own illegitimate reasons, that does not mean the law tolerates such behavior.

The bottom line of the law, as far as I can tell, is to simply allow police to turn over illegal aliens to ICE when they encounter them along the course of their normal enforcement activities.

And I don't have a problem with that.