The AZ law allows police officers, at their discretion, to request proof of citizenship/immigration status (not just proof of identification) even from individuals stopped for a minor offense. If the individual questioned cannot provide a birth certificate or satisfy the officer that he or she is legally in the US, that person can be arrested and jailed until immigration status is verified. The officer, at his discretion, can also demand to see proof of immigration status from anyone who is with the person initially stopped or questioned.

Folks have problems with a number of the provisions (none of them, by the way, related to “illegal aliens”):

First, there is no law that requires a US CITIZEN to show proof of citizenship to any law enforcement officer (with the obvious exception of showing your passport, etc. to an immigration officer if you are a traveler entering the US at the border or airport). The AZ for the first time ever would require a US citizen to prove his or her status to a local police officer whenever the officer asks for it.

Second, the officer is allowed discretion as to whom to ask such proof of citizenship. The racist intent of the law is clear from this particular provision: the AZ legislature could have made the requirement to show immigration status papers from ANYONE detained, ticketed or arrested by a cop, but chose to give the cops permission to profile and use their “judgment” or bias in deciding who to ask. Clearly, the intent was to make sure that Caucasian people would not be inconvenienced

The law clearly targets ONLY one type of persons: not “illegal aliens” but any brown-skinned person of Hispanic heritage, including the 30 plus Hispanics that re US citizens.

My family has lived in what is now the US since the 16th century, before the mayflower ever set sail from England. We are brown-skinned, Spanish-speaking US CITIZENS and the law allows racist cop to arrest me if I jaywalk, litter on the street or absentmindedly run stop sign and do not carry my passport or birth certificate with me.

My question is: how can any decent, moral American can support such blatant discrimination against a fellow US citizen?

Anyone who pretends that reality chooses to ignores the dozens of youtubes & articles already flooding the media of ‘brown americans’ in Arizona being held for days simply because they’re the wrong color & for the crime of carrying only their driver’s license.

Honorable Governor:

I am about to send in my early ballot to vote for the Sales Tax increase. The items it is purported to help are important to me. For example, I see education as the greatest investment there is for our future.

My strong reservation is that these monies will, instead be piddled away for legal/court costs for SB1070, which will be severely weakened, if not totally overturned.

You were recently quoted as saying you don’t understand why people are calling for a boycott as it will hurt innocent people. Clearly your signing of SB1070 shows you don’t understand hurt when it is inflicted on others, why do you expect yourself to understand hurt when it is inflicted on the rest of us?

Sincerely,
Gene Holmerud

Please take a look at this page:
http://www.azleg.gov/FormatDocument.asp?inDoc=/legtext/49leg/2r/summary/h.sb1070_04-19-10_astransmittedtogovernor.doc.htm

This is the bill as signed.

The New York Times has been called out in regards to how they have depicted this law. “Requires police offers to stop and question” is no where within this law. Read it please. This is what I refer to falsehoods in trying to depict this law in the way that you do. When I teach students, we often draw from multiple locations on the web as a exercise, and amazingly there is entirely different information in all locations.

A media outlet should not create your entire reaction to something such as this. Perhaps actually reading the law as it sits would be best, then add in helpings of other resources for understanding and background.
In this NY Times article, it says nothing of the words that you quote:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/24/us/politics/24immig.html?scp=1&sq=arizona%20immigration%20law&st=cse
Please, why don’t we rely on the facts of the law as it sits on the Arizona Legislature website, and its specific wording at hand. When others bend the words to meet their agendas, more people are injured than those that can bring about proper change.