Not All Arizona Sheriffs Are Like Sheriff Joe in Phoenix. Some Of Them Have A Brain In Their Head:

Yeah, I read another comment in the LA Times by an Arizona sheriff. He said that the one part of the law that the SCOTUS left standing...the requirement for police who stop a car for a traffic infraction to ask for "papers"...will cause all kinds of lawsuits...from both sides.
It is a license to discriminate...stop a car for any flimsy reason if the occupants "look illegal." We haven't heard the end of this. Once again SCOTUS is to blame for the mess.
It's starting to become a refrain...everything they touch they screw up.

How can "Reasonable suspicion" be construed as anything but racial profiling? The Sheriffs are also between a rock & a hard place, because as I understand it, they can be arrested for not following through on enforcing this law.

Yup. And...eexcept for sheriff Joe, I presume...they are not happy about it.

There is a small group of Sheriffs that are in favor of the law.

Hey guys, the situation is a mess... However the Justices were right... What I find interesting is that even this Conservative Court did not really do too much to alter the spirit of the Constitution.

The law is bad and has to be changed, but the Court can't change the law...

The basic idea, that it seems that the people are missing is this: Arizona is a sovereign state, and may have its own laws. However, there are laws that are the jurisdiction of the Federal Government, and the states can't touch. Immigration is one of those laws.

The minority opinion said that being a sovereign state, Arizona may have its own laws which can govern the state, as long as the laws don't go against the Federal Laws. If Arizona wants to check the papers, is fine, however they can't act on the findings. They can't deport anyone, they can't even detain them based on the status. They have to report it to the Feds who may, or may not take any action against the person without papers...

Right after the ruling, Homeland Security said that they will not act on any complaint from the state, if they did not target the offender based on Federal Law violations.

Remember Ford with his Model T and any color as long as it is black???

So, Arizona can check for papers, and how far will they go? They can ticket the persons for a traffic violation, but they can't touch them for being illegals, unless the Feds wanted them...

This is a sure way to kill tourism and industry in general. A lot of the labor force in America today is of foreign descent, first generation... Who needs the harassment, even if they have papers???

The mayor of Phoenix said that his city is in dire financial straits due to people cancelling trips to Phoenix as a protest to SB 1070.

Look at what happened in Alabama. Crops rotting in the fields when they scared all of the latinos out of the state.

Jim, give welfare recipients a choice. Work in the fields or NO welfare money. Bet they would find a job REAL quick.

Amanda,

Obviously you never worked in the fields and that is why you are talking stupid... It takes skills to work in the fields. Not everyone is able to pick or gather the proper way so that the crop can be sold...

Jim and Crin

Thanks for excellent comments - I can not write better than you on these subjects. You are right to the point.

The Supreme Court decision is not the end of this story. Thanks Jim for important article.

**********

LOL.

LOL.

Simple, ask EVERYONE and you aren't profiling. ;)

If I'm driving I'm LEGALLY required to have my license anyway. How is it so hard to show that?

I don't like a lot of the things America is doing, although I love most of what is going on here. I don't understand this paranoia against carrying ID papers though. In any of the Western Civilizations (Europe), no citizen ever thinks about leaving home without an ID on him or her, and this does not seem to have stopped progress in that part of the World...

The Jamaican ones state the citizenship of the person. Does the American state the citizenship?

Ha, ha, ha, Dennis. You know what? No... If you are American born, practically you don't have an ID with your citizenship mentioned on it, except the passport, that no one needs, unless they travel, and unless you are a naturalized citizen with a naturalization certificate which mentions the fact that you are a citizen of the US when you get it...

There are states, Michigan is one of them, in which if you so wish you can get a driver's licence which may be substituted for a passport to travel in Canada and the surrounding countries... That one can be used as proof of citizenship, however is not mandatory and is more expensive to get it...

It used to be a time, good old times, when going to Canada or the islands all you needed was a driver's license... I fondly remember those times...

But we live in a global world today, and as long as we would have among us a GOP, a party of anti social behavior, selfishness, obtuse minds, and genetic rejection of common sense, we would need IDs to get out of the building...

Actually if you are on a visa (not sure about green card yet) it is stamped TEMPORARY in red and is not given to you immediately, so they can tell JUST by that. You need a birth certificate or passport to get a license, so you have to prove citizenship to get one (unless they stamp it temporary).

I love this Sheriff.

Me, too.

I can remember when conservatives were proud that we didn't have to present our papers on demand at any time for any reason. It was considered one of the hallmarks of our freedom and made us different from the various fascist and communist governments. Now, of course, conservatives are stridently demanding everyone who looks illegal or votes must show their papers. It shouldn't surprise me since conservatives were the ones who gave us the TSA which has the authority to give us strip searches and body cavity searches for no greater crime than trying to catch a flight. Before that, we had the freedom to freely travel unmolested anywhere within our nation's borders.

Spot on, Susan:

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

-- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), Letter to Josiah Quincy, Sept. 11, 1773.