1) That'd depend on the tools, resources, and training of the police officers you're encountering. If they can't determine your citizenship by name alone and they seem to be concerned about your immigration status, I would strongly recommend helping them verify your citizenship with additional identifying information. If you refuse to cooperate in identifying yourself, be prepared to deal with some hassle while the police do their job. Obviously no cop wants to waste his own time, so if you're not who he's looking for, save him some trouble.
2) ICE can stop and detain anyone any time within 100 miles of any US border. The reason there is some concern about ICE is the fact that ICE already has dragged some US citizens (presumably by mistake) in based on suspicion that they're in the country illegally. The Arizona law extends significant protections to citizens and lawfully residing aliens to ensure Arizona law enforcement doesn't make the same mistake when said individuals can identify themselves with government issued ID.
First of all, ICE can stop anyone, any time, for any reason, and can set up checkpoints within 100 miles of any US border.
Secondly, if you're a US citizen with no ID on you, the Arizona law doesn't say one way or another about your status. The only case mentioned is when you DO have government issued ID, which essentially kills off any further investigation into your status.
A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIAL OR AGENCY OF THIS STATE OR A COUNTY, CITY, TOWN OR OTHER POLITICAL SUBDIVISION OF THIS STATE MAY NOT SOLELY 31 CONSIDER RACE, COLOR OR NATIONAL ORIGIN IN IMPLEMENTING THE REQUIREMENTS OF 32 THIS SUBSECTION EXCEPT TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY THE UNITED STATES OR 33 ARIZONA CONSTITUTION. A PERSON IS PRESUMED TO NOT BE AN ALIEN WHO IS 34 UNLAWFULLY PRESENT IN THE UNITED STATES IF THE PERSON PROVIDES TO THE LAW 35 ENFORCEMENT OFFICER OR AGENCY ANY OF THE FOLLOWING: 36 1. A VALID ARIZONA DRIVER LICENSE. 37 2. A VALID ARIZONA NONOPERATING IDENTIFICATION LICENSE. 38 3. A VALID TRIBAL ENROLLMENT CARD OR OTHER FORM OF TRIBAL 39 IDENTIFICATION. 40 4. IF THE ENTITY REQUIRES PROOF OF LEGAL PRESENCE IN THE UNITED STATES 41 BEFORE ISSUANCE, ANY VALID UNITED STATES FEDERAL, STATE OR LOCAL GOVERNMENT 42 ISSUED IDENTIFICATION. 43
I have read those other posts and they're talking about FEDERAL immigration law which doesn't have the protections that the Arizona law does. FEDERAL immigration law allows ICE to chuckle at your license and take you in anyway. The Arizona law says that ID issued by a US government at any level eliminates the police duty and lawful ability to further probe your actual immigration status.
In other words, if you present a license from any US state to an Arizona law enforcement officer who suspects you of being in the country illegally, his ability to question your immigration status vaporizes. The Arizona law provides broad protections for US citizens and legal residents that Federal immigration law does NOT provide. Ergo, the aforementioned examples are utterly worthless except to show that Arizona's legislature was smart to include extra protections.
A driver's license is enough to exempt you from suspicion within the context of the law we're discussing. It's right there in black and white: a Federal, state, or local government issued ID throws out any police suspicion regarding your immigration status for the purposes of the Arizona law.
If you're walking around and have no ID, you're still required to identify yourself if stopped by police. If you're a legally residing non-citizen who left the house without your immigration paperwork, you're in violation of Federal law. If you're a citizen, you need only provide your identity to police, but it'll probably save you a lot of time and trouble if you provide enough information that they can verify your citizenship if they start asking immigration questions. Sure, you don't have to cooperate, but if they're thinking you hopped across the border last Tuesday and you don't have anything on you that says otherwise, it's probably smart to provide additional information about your identity that they can verify.
From a simple reading of the Arizona law, any US state or local government ID will do. In addition, Federal ID will do. They don't prove you're a citizen, but for the purposes of the Arizona law, they eliminate grounds to continue verifying your immigration status. As I've said previously, the Arizona law has exemptions so large you could drive a train through them. They did that on purpose. In reality, the Arizona law has far more protections for citizens and legal aliens than the existing Federal law on which they based this legislation.
The protections Arizona put in place are far better than anything in Federal immigration law. The Feds don't have to care if you display your valid state-issued license. They probably should, but they don't have to. Arizona law enforcement must.
They don't, but if state police in Arizona or Federal immigration officials believe said citizen is an illegal immigrant, it'll save that citizen a lot of time and hassle if they simply have ID with them. So no, you don't have to carry a little plastic ID card with you. You do, however, have to identify yourself if the police request that you do so. And if you're not prepared to cooperate to the point that they can verify your identity, you should be prepared to deal with a lot of time-consuming hassle.
Besides, the Arizona law requires that police have an actual reason to suspect you're here illegally. "He looked at me funny" does not count. The police aren't looking for more hassle and more paperwork. 99.9% of the time, if you're not who/what they're looking for and you provide some very simple, basic information to help they understand that, any encouter is over quickly and easily. The 0.1% is the imperfection of human existence; not the tyranny of an oppressive government.
It does in the context of the law you're bitching about. Arizona's new law that allows and presses state law enforcement to enforce existing immigration law treats any ID issued by any local, state, or Federal agency as de facto proof that you're not in the country illegally. In essence, any doubt to your legal status is removed under Arizona law once you produce any ID issued by any government at any level within the United States. That would include your driver's license. It's a ridiculously broad exemption designed to keep regular folks from having to worry one bit about this law. Anyone in the US legally can completely bypass the Arizona law quite easily by obtaining a simple ID card which is available at little or no cost.
The only people who'll be caught up by this are illegals who haven't even bothered to get a forged document and anyone who (illegally) refuses to identify themselves. SCOTUS already ruled that one can be compelled to simply identify themselves to police under the Constitution since identification is not - itself - incriminating under any circumstance.
First of all, the guy from the news story in your first link (link to a liberal lunatic, by the way) was pulled over and detained by FEDERAL immigrations officers. FEDERAL. Not Arizona. Not Arizona police. Not under the new Arizona law (under which his license specifically would have exempted him from any further immigration status issues). So your problem there is with FEDERAL immigration law, which apparently allowed the detention. Of course, we only have one side of the story so far. Let's see what happens in a few days when the OTHER side of the story comes out, hmm?
Your second link is, again, FEDERAL immigration enforcement. The birth certificate and other information provided is specifically cause for exemption within the Arizona law.
So if anything, you've done nothing but prove that Arizona's law is even better and more protective of citizens' rights than the EXISTING Federal law. You have NO evidence of ANY abuse under the Arizona law because it hasn't even taken effect as of yet. Further, it has enough exemptions built in that anyone who simply identifies themselves to police in Arizona (and who is in the country legally) should have no trouble at all. Anyone with a local, state, or Federal ID is exempt from further immigration inquiries under the Arizona law.
You're complaining about ICE's possible mistakes in a story about an Arizona state law that ties its law enforcement's hands even more than ICE's hands are tied. If you're looking for perfection in law enforcement (or anything), forget it. What's important is that mistakes are fixed and that changes are made to avoid them happening again in the future. Looks to me like Arizona is already fixing the Feds' mistakes with language written into their law.
Maybe the Feds should be adopting the Arizona language instead.
First of all, the Oregon driver's license satisfies the requirements of the Arizona law.
Secondly, there's nothing in the law which states that a US citizen would be fined for not having a birth certificate on their person.
Thirdly, if you want to take your dollars to someplace less "xenophobic and less racist", then leave the United States. The Arizona law you're complaining about mirrors existing Federal law which requires legal aliens to carry their immigration paperwork with them at all times and which makes it a crime to come here without going through the normal immigration process. If you took the Federal law, slapped "Arizona" on it in a number of places, and then added a whole bunch of wide open exemptions to keep citizens and legal residents from being hassled by mistake, you'd have the Arizona law.
Congratulations, you've managed to screw up every single part of your post and fill it with absurd and ignorant drivel that doesn't bear any resemblance whatsoever to reality. With a persecution complex like that, you'd be a prime candidate for some antipsychotics.
That's not what the law says, no. Perhaps you should read it before commenting on it further.
Out of curiosity, have you also been complaining about the Federal law which says essentially the same thing this Arizona law says with regards to ID requirements and such for legal aliens? It's been around for quite a long time, but I can't recall ever having been deported by ICE because I went for a walk without ID.
If you're stopped by police and provide sufficient information to identify yourself, your status as a citizen should be relatively trivial to verify. US citizens are not required to carry or present ID or "papers", but are required to identify themselves to law enforcement. If you're in Arizona and refuse to cooperate with police to identify yourself once this law takes effect, it's possible they might detain you if they have a solid, articulable reason to believe you're in the country illegally until they can verify otherwise.
But how is that any different from now if you're taken into custody by Federal law enforcement officers who believe you're an illegal alien? While citizens are not required to carry ID on them in the US, it's a smart idea to do so simply to avoid delays, confusion, and other associated problems. This isn't a law that's designed to put everyone under a microscope; it's a law designed to allow police to do something when they have a person in custody that they know and can prove is in the country illegally. There are enough exemptions in this law to drive a train straight through it. Why? So citizens and legal residents aren't hassled. With the way it's written, plenty of illegals could easily slip past Arizona law enforcement. The point of having it is so that Arizona law enforcement can catch the illegals who are too lazy/stupid/poor/ignorant/etc to even come up with a shred of credible evidence of legal status.
The Arizona law specifically states that a US local, state, or Federal government issued ID is sufficient evidence of legal status. Read what the law actually says instead of listening to these hyperventilating idiots who think US citizens will be hauled away to prison if they go swimming without a birth certificate.
The reality is that the only people this law is trying to catch are the ones who haven't even bothered with forging documents and such. The police will be looking for people who are obviously and verifiably in the country illegally; NOT for anyone and everyone who can't immediately prove to be here legally. The law provides loopholes large enough to drive a train through specifically to ensure that virtually everyone who isn't targetted by the law isn't hassled by those enforcing it.
And as I'm sure you're aware, as a legal US resident, one is required by US Federal law to have up-to-date immigration paperwork with them at all times which confirms their status. So even if Arizona didn't exempt everyone who has a license (which they did), you'd still be fine so long as you were already complying with Federal law.
Arizona Revised Statutes Section 2, 11-1051 (B)... A PERSON IS PRESUMED TO NOT BE AN ALIEN WHO IS UNLAWFULLY PRESENT IN THE UNITED STATES IF THE PERSON PROVIDES TO THE LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER OR AGENCY ANY OF THE FOLLOWING: 1. A VALID ARIZONA DRIVER LICENSE. 2. A VALID ARIZONA NONOPERATING IDENTIFICATION LICENSE. 3. A TRIBAL ENROLLMENT CARD OR OTHER FORM OF TRIBAL IDENTIFICATION. 4. A VALID UNITED STATES FEDERAL, STATE OR LOCAL GOVERNMENT ISSUED IDENTIFICATION.
Essentially, any valid ID issued by any local or state government, or by the Federal government, is sufficient to ensure law enforcement has no reason to suspect you of being an unlawful alien. Such an ID can be gained with little or no cost (depending on means) from the local state government's licensing office (DMV/MVA/etc). If you don't have the ID with you or you simply don't have one, supplying some basic information to the police (your name can already be compelled by law) should be enough to avoid any big problems. Avoiding delays is as easy as keeping a driver's license or other government-issued ID with you.
Maybe you should read the Arizona law. Maybe the Arizona law tells you. Maybe reading things before commenting on them / bitching about them is just good practice. What do you think?
Arizona Revised Statutes Section 2, 11-1051 (B)... A PERSON IS PRESUMED TO NOT BE AN ALIEN WHO IS UNLAWFULLY PRESENT IN THE UNITED STATES IF THE PERSON PROVIDES TO THE LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER OR AGENCY ANY OF THE FOLLOWING: 1. A VALID ARIZONA DRIVER LICENSE. 2. A VALID ARIZONA NONOPERATING IDENTIFICATION LICENSE. 3. A TRIBAL ENROLLMENT CARD OR OTHER FORM OF TRIBAL IDENTIFICATION. 4. A VALID UNITED STATES FEDERAL, STATE OR LOCAL GOVERNMENT ISSUED IDENTIFICATION.
You're saying that "brown skinned citizens" shouldn't have their driver's license on them while they drive? Nice advice.
Outside of that, you're required to give your name when it's requested by police. If you're a citizen without a driver's license or other form of ID on you, it's likely you can provide any necessary info to police for them to verify your status as a citizen. If you refuse to talk to them and they have a reasonable, articulable suspicion that you're in the country illegally, they have every right to detain you until your identity can be confirmed.
Maybe reviewing a little case law would help you understand the path to enforcing the Arizona law without civil rights violations.
Driver's license, state-issue ID, birth certificate, etc.
If you're driving, you already have to have a driver's license. If you never drive and don't have one of those, you can get a state-issue ID for little or no cost depending on means.
If you believe the police in the United States are "the local gestapo" who simply "pistol whip" people on a whim, it's probably past time for your medication. When your persecution complex is muted by the Aripiprazole, we'll look at the reality of the situation. . . . . .
Alright, so if you're a US citizen who believes the police may have reason to suspect you're in the country illegally, you have a few options to avoid any issues. First and foremost, a driver's license works wonders. If you're driving a vehicle, you have to have one of those anyway. If you simply don't drive at all - ever, and don't want/need a driver's license, you can get a state-issue ID for little or no cost. Either should be perfectly sufficient to resolve any questions from law enforcement.
However, it's more likely that most cops are going to know pretty quickly if you're someone they need to check. If you don't speak English, that's probably a good place to begin. If you get pulled over and don't have a license or other ID (which is, itself, a problem), then that's kind of a clue too. If you take off running when they say 'Hello', that'd also be a good starting point.
Now that's not nice. We need legal immigrants to bring new talents and new ideas into our marketplace. S/he is exactly what we do need. What we don't need are the border-jumping criminal aliens who ignore the laws and live here as parasites. Every last one of the illegals needs to be booted back to their country of origin and barred from ever returning.
I hear people talk about a "path to citizenship" for illegals. I got a path for them: get out of the US before our law enforcement finds you and go through the legal application process. That's the only path that should ever have any hope of leading to citizenship for an illegal alien. If you're found to be here illegally, not only should you never have any chance at citizenship, but you should also never be allowed to return legally.
For what it's worth, while I completely support the Arizona law and hope that every other state in the union enacts similar legislation and enforces the Hell out of it, I also hope that when Arizona's law enforcement encounters someone who's come legally but is stuck in the limbo of our slowly grinding Federal immigration system that said status is recognized immediately for what it is and that you're left alone. Your anger right now with Arizona is misplaced. If Arizona law enforcement who eventually have to enforce this law don't give someone like you a hard time (assuming you have your immigration paperwork with you), then I really don't think you have any reason to be upset.
In other words, my understanding of the law is that Arizona isn't looking to put someone like you under the microscope. Instead, they're looking for the guys who don't have a single shred of paper from the US Federal government since they've been avoiding our government (and our laws) like the plague. I would sincerely hope that they wouldn't bother someone like you who has paperwork even if you don't have the final product from our slow-moving immigration services. For one thing, you've got enough going on and don't need the hassle. For another, they've got 12 - 20 million border-jumping criminal aliens to find and capture. Every minute they waste sifting through your paperwork is another opportunity for more criminal aliens to go deeper underground.
Keep in mind that I have no idea what your country of origin is right now. It doesn't particularly matter to me. Whether you originally came from Russia, Mexico, Germany, Brazil, Iran, or Britain, or wherever else, so long as you did it legally and are making every effort to comply with the laws (despite the difficulties that can present), welcome. We need good, law-abiding people constantly flowing into this country to provide new ideas, new skills, and new talents. At the same time, we need to drop-kick every border-jumping, sovereignty violating, law-breaking illegal immigrant back to their country of origin. They take resources, money, and opportunity away from both you (as a legal immigrant working in the US) and me (as a citizen of the US). They're criminal parasites and they need to be removed from the country and prevented from returning.
I don't think anyone disputes that current US immigration procedures and handling are pretty well screwed up. That, however, does not change the fact that we have 12 - 20 million people here illegally who are (per laws and policies) to be found and booted from the country. As our Federal government is more interested in granting amnesty to law-breakers in this area of the law than it is in actually enforcing the law, the state of Arizona has decided that it has had enough of what is - by any measure - a full-scale invasion.
Ideally, I would like to see all our immigration policies and procedures overhauled so that everyone coming in legally is able to do so with as little trouble and expense as possible while everyone trying to come here illegally is either prevented from doing so or is quickly located and deported. Unfortunately, far too many in Congress want to tie making your life easier with giving tens of millions of illegal alien invaders amnesty and citizenship as a reward for violating our sovereign borders and ignoring our laws. Considering the fact that these illegal alien invaders are now kidnapping US citizens and have been raping and murdering our citizens en masse for decades, and considering the fact that the drug cartels from Mexico are now extending their wars across our borders, you're just going to have to wait until we can get the idiots in Congress to fix the legal immigration system.
Your beef is not with Arizona, but with the US Federal government. It is not Arizona's fault that the Federal government is leaving you in limbo. It is not Arizona's fault that the Federal government isn't providing you with up-to-date status paperwork. You and I have two common enemies in this fight: the Federal government that's basically screwing you while leaving my country's borders insecured in the middle of one of the largest invasions in history and the illegal immigrants who are flooding into the country without bothering to go through the process you've been working with (because you apparently care about following the law and respecting this country - two concepts utterly foreign to illegals) who have forced Arizona into this position.
If the citizens of Arizona weren't under constant threat from drug cartels and other criminal aliens, and if there weren't an ongoing invasion of the country that's overwhelming our social services and draining our economy, then I'd say we shouldn't resort to states doing things like this just yet as it's really the responsibility of the Federal government to fix things. However, we're under attack and it requires a more urgent response. We've been waiting for the Federal government to fix the problem of illegals flooding into this country by the millions for decades. It simply isn't happening. Now that our people are being kidnapped, taken away, murdered, etc on the verge of a full-scale drug war spilling into our streets, dealing with the illegals has become the overriding priority.
You're in the immigration emergency room telling me your foot hurts. I got gunshot victims to deal with first. Will get to you ASAP. Want to improve your situation in the meantime? Get together with a whole bunch of other people who are in favor of fixing the immigration system without amnesty for illegals and get the Feds to fix their broken system. In the meantime, if you're a non-citizen in the US without documentation showing that you're here legally, ya might wanna steer clear of Arizona and several other states considering similar legislation.
Actually, Democrats have routinely opposed attempts to require some form of ID to vote (apparently it causes issues with double-voting, dead people voting, etc). So really, the two posts above your's are perfectly coherent with the available information.
The only question is, what's the alternative? A third party that can't hope to get anywhere in the rigged game set up by the two major parties? Vote in the Republicans and let them have yet another go at breaking every promise? Sit home and whine? I don't know about you, but I'm searching for something to have faith in in our political system and I'm not coming up with a whole lot of realistic choices.
Maybe that's because money isn't (and never has been) the problem. Maybe it's got something to do with the fact that teachers' unions fight to ensure that there are no consequences for failure for either the school as a whole or individual teachers. Maybe it all students had a voucher of $n of state funding so their parents could choose which school their child attends from the long list of local public, private, and charter schools, there would be a reason for public schools to actually work toward providing a decent education.
The formula they've been trained on for decades is that the worse you do, the more funding you get. It's not a big mystery why they haven't improved.
Santa Susana Field Laboratory isn't a fair comparison at all. We're talking about operational nuclear power plants. The problems and accidents at Santa Susana were with experimental reactors being pushed to their limits (far beyond, as it turned out). The major accidents happened in the 1950s and '60s and they only happened because the entire facility played fast and loose with everything it did. Sort of like when a couple scientists died because they were illegal burning dangerous chemicals in open pits.
So yes, if you're running uncontrolled experiments on untested and unsafe designs, [n] power solution can be extremely dangerous. The difference with nuclear is that in every commercial setting where it's ever been used in any western nation through history, it's proven vastly safer than coal fire plants, oil plants, and evern hydro plants. The same is true for nearly all other applications as well. Even if every plant were designed and run as piss-poorly and dangerously as the Chernobyl plant, nuclear power would still be safer and less harmful to the environment than coal fire plants. As it happens, every nuclear plant operating today (of which I'm aware) couldn't possibly repeat anything like the Chernobyl incident and all have outstanding safety records.
It's pretty telling that the worst nuclear power plant accident in US history resulted in 0 deaths, 0 serious injuries, and virtually no contamination of the environment. When you compare that to the deaths, injuries, and environmental obliteration happening all the time at coal fire plants around the US (and the world), it very quickly becomes crystal clear that we should be working as fast as we can to replace every coal fire plant in the world with nuclear power plants. They're cleaner, safer, more reliable, and just as cheap over the life of the plant due to ridiculously low operations costs.
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1) That'd depend on the tools, resources, and training of the police officers you're encountering. If they can't determine your citizenship by name alone and they seem to be concerned about your immigration status, I would strongly recommend helping them verify your citizenship with additional identifying information. If you refuse to cooperate in identifying yourself, be prepared to deal with some hassle while the police do their job. Obviously no cop wants to waste his own time, so if you're not who he's looking for, save him some trouble.
2) ICE can stop and detain anyone any time within 100 miles of any US border. The reason there is some concern about ICE is the fact that ICE already has dragged some US citizens (presumably by mistake) in based on suspicion that they're in the country illegally. The Arizona law extends significant protections to citizens and lawfully residing aliens to ensure Arizona law enforcement doesn't make the same mistake when said individuals can identify themselves with government issued ID.
First of all, ICE can stop anyone, any time, for any reason, and can set up checkpoints within 100 miles of any US border.
Secondly, if you're a US citizen with no ID on you, the Arizona law doesn't say one way or another about your status. The only case mentioned is when you DO have government issued ID, which essentially kills off any further investigation into your status.
A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIAL OR AGENCY OF THIS STATE OR A COUNTY,
CITY, TOWN OR OTHER POLITICAL SUBDIVISION OF THIS STATE MAY NOT SOLELY 31
CONSIDER RACE, COLOR OR NATIONAL ORIGIN IN IMPLEMENTING THE REQUIREMENTS OF 32
THIS SUBSECTION EXCEPT TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY THE UNITED STATES OR 33
ARIZONA CONSTITUTION. A PERSON IS PRESUMED TO NOT BE AN ALIEN WHO IS 34
UNLAWFULLY PRESENT IN THE UNITED STATES IF THE PERSON PROVIDES TO THE LAW 35
ENFORCEMENT OFFICER OR AGENCY ANY OF THE FOLLOWING: 36
1. A VALID ARIZONA DRIVER LICENSE. 37
2. A VALID ARIZONA NONOPERATING IDENTIFICATION LICENSE. 38
3. A VALID TRIBAL ENROLLMENT CARD OR OTHER FORM OF TRIBAL 39
IDENTIFICATION. 40
4. IF THE ENTITY REQUIRES PROOF OF LEGAL PRESENCE IN THE UNITED STATES 41
BEFORE ISSUANCE, ANY VALID UNITED STATES FEDERAL, STATE OR LOCAL GOVERNMENT 42
ISSUED IDENTIFICATION. 43
http://www.azleg.gov/legtext/49leg/2r/bills/sb1070h.pdf
I have read those other posts and they're talking about FEDERAL immigration law which doesn't have the protections that the Arizona law does. FEDERAL immigration law allows ICE to chuckle at your license and take you in anyway. The Arizona law says that ID issued by a US government at any level eliminates the police duty and lawful ability to further probe your actual immigration status.
In other words, if you present a license from any US state to an Arizona law enforcement officer who suspects you of being in the country illegally, his ability to question your immigration status vaporizes. The Arizona law provides broad protections for US citizens and legal residents that Federal immigration law does NOT provide. Ergo, the aforementioned examples are utterly worthless except to show that Arizona's legislature was smart to include extra protections.
A driver's license is enough to exempt you from suspicion within the context of the law we're discussing. It's right there in black and white: a Federal, state, or local government issued ID throws out any police suspicion regarding your immigration status for the purposes of the Arizona law.
If you're walking around and have no ID, you're still required to identify yourself if stopped by police. If you're a legally residing non-citizen who left the house without your immigration paperwork, you're in violation of Federal law. If you're a citizen, you need only provide your identity to police, but it'll probably save you a lot of time and trouble if you provide enough information that they can verify your citizenship if they start asking immigration questions. Sure, you don't have to cooperate, but if they're thinking you hopped across the border last Tuesday and you don't have anything on you that says otherwise, it's probably smart to provide additional information about your identity that they can verify.
From a simple reading of the Arizona law, any US state or local government ID will do. In addition, Federal ID will do. They don't prove you're a citizen, but for the purposes of the Arizona law, they eliminate grounds to continue verifying your immigration status. As I've said previously, the Arizona law has exemptions so large you could drive a train through them. They did that on purpose. In reality, the Arizona law has far more protections for citizens and legal aliens than the existing Federal law on which they based this legislation.
The protections Arizona put in place are far better than anything in Federal immigration law. The Feds don't have to care if you display your valid state-issued license. They probably should, but they don't have to. Arizona law enforcement must.
They don't, but if state police in Arizona or Federal immigration officials believe said citizen is an illegal immigrant, it'll save that citizen a lot of time and hassle if they simply have ID with them. So no, you don't have to carry a little plastic ID card with you. You do, however, have to identify yourself if the police request that you do so. And if you're not prepared to cooperate to the point that they can verify your identity, you should be prepared to deal with a lot of time-consuming hassle.
Besides, the Arizona law requires that police have an actual reason to suspect you're here illegally. "He looked at me funny" does not count. The police aren't looking for more hassle and more paperwork. 99.9% of the time, if you're not who/what they're looking for and you provide some very simple, basic information to help they understand that, any encouter is over quickly and easily. The 0.1% is the imperfection of human existence; not the tyranny of an oppressive government.
It does in the context of the law you're bitching about. Arizona's new law that allows and presses state law enforcement to enforce existing immigration law treats any ID issued by any local, state, or Federal agency as de facto proof that you're not in the country illegally. In essence, any doubt to your legal status is removed under Arizona law once you produce any ID issued by any government at any level within the United States. That would include your driver's license. It's a ridiculously broad exemption designed to keep regular folks from having to worry one bit about this law. Anyone in the US legally can completely bypass the Arizona law quite easily by obtaining a simple ID card which is available at little or no cost.
The only people who'll be caught up by this are illegals who haven't even bothered to get a forged document and anyone who (illegally) refuses to identify themselves. SCOTUS already ruled that one can be compelled to simply identify themselves to police under the Constitution since identification is not - itself - incriminating under any circumstance.
First of all, the guy from the news story in your first link (link to a liberal lunatic, by the way) was pulled over and detained by FEDERAL immigrations officers. FEDERAL. Not Arizona. Not Arizona police. Not under the new Arizona law (under which his license specifically would have exempted him from any further immigration status issues). So your problem there is with FEDERAL immigration law, which apparently allowed the detention. Of course, we only have one side of the story so far. Let's see what happens in a few days when the OTHER side of the story comes out, hmm?
Your second link is, again, FEDERAL immigration enforcement. The birth certificate and other information provided is specifically cause for exemption within the Arizona law.
So if anything, you've done nothing but prove that Arizona's law is even better and more protective of citizens' rights than the EXISTING Federal law. You have NO evidence of ANY abuse under the Arizona law because it hasn't even taken effect as of yet. Further, it has enough exemptions built in that anyone who simply identifies themselves to police in Arizona (and who is in the country legally) should have no trouble at all. Anyone with a local, state, or Federal ID is exempt from further immigration inquiries under the Arizona law.
You're complaining about ICE's possible mistakes in a story about an Arizona state law that ties its law enforcement's hands even more than ICE's hands are tied. If you're looking for perfection in law enforcement (or anything), forget it. What's important is that mistakes are fixed and that changes are made to avoid them happening again in the future. Looks to me like Arizona is already fixing the Feds' mistakes with language written into their law.
Maybe the Feds should be adopting the Arizona language instead.
First of all, the Oregon driver's license satisfies the requirements of the Arizona law.
Secondly, there's nothing in the law which states that a US citizen would be fined for not having a birth certificate on their person.
Thirdly, if you want to take your dollars to someplace less "xenophobic and less racist", then leave the United States. The Arizona law you're complaining about mirrors existing Federal law which requires legal aliens to carry their immigration paperwork with them at all times and which makes it a crime to come here without going through the normal immigration process. If you took the Federal law, slapped "Arizona" on it in a number of places, and then added a whole bunch of wide open exemptions to keep citizens and legal residents from being hassled by mistake, you'd have the Arizona law.
Congratulations, you've managed to screw up every single part of your post and fill it with absurd and ignorant drivel that doesn't bear any resemblance whatsoever to reality. With a persecution complex like that, you'd be a prime candidate for some antipsychotics.
That's not what the law says, no. Perhaps you should read it before commenting on it further.
Out of curiosity, have you also been complaining about the Federal law which says essentially the same thing this Arizona law says with regards to ID requirements and such for legal aliens? It's been around for quite a long time, but I can't recall ever having been deported by ICE because I went for a walk without ID.
If you're stopped by police and provide sufficient information to identify yourself, your status as a citizen should be relatively trivial to verify. US citizens are not required to carry or present ID or "papers", but are required to identify themselves to law enforcement. If you're in Arizona and refuse to cooperate with police to identify yourself once this law takes effect, it's possible they might detain you if they have a solid, articulable reason to believe you're in the country illegally until they can verify otherwise.
But how is that any different from now if you're taken into custody by Federal law enforcement officers who believe you're an illegal alien? While citizens are not required to carry ID on them in the US, it's a smart idea to do so simply to avoid delays, confusion, and other associated problems. This isn't a law that's designed to put everyone under a microscope; it's a law designed to allow police to do something when they have a person in custody that they know and can prove is in the country illegally. There are enough exemptions in this law to drive a train straight through it. Why? So citizens and legal residents aren't hassled. With the way it's written, plenty of illegals could easily slip past Arizona law enforcement. The point of having it is so that Arizona law enforcement can catch the illegals who are too lazy/stupid/poor/ignorant/etc to even come up with a shred of credible evidence of legal status.
The Arizona law specifically states that a US local, state, or Federal government issued ID is sufficient evidence of legal status. Read what the law actually says instead of listening to these hyperventilating idiots who think US citizens will be hauled away to prison if they go swimming without a birth certificate.
The reality is that the only people this law is trying to catch are the ones who haven't even bothered with forging documents and such. The police will be looking for people who are obviously and verifiably in the country illegally; NOT for anyone and everyone who can't immediately prove to be here legally. The law provides loopholes large enough to drive a train through specifically to ensure that virtually everyone who isn't targetted by the law isn't hassled by those enforcing it.
And as I'm sure you're aware, as a legal US resident, one is required by US Federal law to have up-to-date immigration paperwork with them at all times which confirms their status. So even if Arizona didn't exempt everyone who has a license (which they did), you'd still be fine so long as you were already complying with Federal law.
The Arizona law gives a simple path forward:
Arizona Revised Statutes Section 2, 11-1051 (B) ... A PERSON IS PRESUMED TO NOT BE AN ALIEN WHO IS UNLAWFULLY PRESENT IN THE UNITED STATES IF THE PERSON PROVIDES TO THE LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER OR AGENCY ANY OF THE FOLLOWING:
1. A VALID ARIZONA DRIVER LICENSE.
2. A VALID ARIZONA NONOPERATING IDENTIFICATION LICENSE.
3. A TRIBAL ENROLLMENT CARD OR OTHER FORM OF TRIBAL IDENTIFICATION.
4. A VALID UNITED STATES FEDERAL, STATE OR LOCAL GOVERNMENT ISSUED IDENTIFICATION.
Essentially, any valid ID issued by any local or state government, or by the Federal government, is sufficient to ensure law enforcement has no reason to suspect you of being an unlawful alien. Such an ID can be gained with little or no cost (depending on means) from the local state government's licensing office (DMV/MVA/etc). If you don't have the ID with you or you simply don't have one, supplying some basic information to the police (your name can already be compelled by law) should be enough to avoid any big problems. Avoiding delays is as easy as keeping a driver's license or other government-issued ID with you.
Maybe you should read the Arizona law. Maybe the Arizona law tells you. Maybe reading things before commenting on them / bitching about them is just good practice. What do you think?
Arizona Revised Statutes Section 2, 11-1051 (B) ... A PERSON IS PRESUMED TO NOT BE AN ALIEN WHO IS UNLAWFULLY PRESENT IN THE UNITED STATES IF THE PERSON PROVIDES TO THE LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER OR AGENCY ANY OF THE FOLLOWING:
1. A VALID ARIZONA DRIVER LICENSE.
2. A VALID ARIZONA NONOPERATING IDENTIFICATION LICENSE.
3. A TRIBAL ENROLLMENT CARD OR OTHER FORM OF TRIBAL IDENTIFICATION.
4. A VALID UNITED STATES FEDERAL, STATE OR LOCAL GOVERNMENT ISSUED IDENTIFICATION.
You're saying that "brown skinned citizens" shouldn't have their driver's license on them while they drive? Nice advice.
Outside of that, you're required to give your name when it's requested by police. If you're a citizen without a driver's license or other form of ID on you, it's likely you can provide any necessary info to police for them to verify your status as a citizen. If you refuse to talk to them and they have a reasonable, articulable suspicion that you're in the country illegally, they have every right to detain you until your identity can be confirmed.
Maybe reviewing a little case law would help you understand the path to enforcing the Arizona law without civil rights violations.
Driver's license, state-issue ID, birth certificate, etc.
If you're driving, you already have to have a driver's license. If you never drive and don't have one of those, you can get a state-issue ID for little or no cost depending on means.
If you believe the police in the United States are "the local gestapo" who simply "pistol whip" people on a whim, it's probably past time for your medication. When your persecution complex is muted by the Aripiprazole, we'll look at the reality of the situation.
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Alright, so if you're a US citizen who believes the police may have reason to suspect you're in the country illegally, you have a few options to avoid any issues. First and foremost, a driver's license works wonders. If you're driving a vehicle, you have to have one of those anyway. If you simply don't drive at all - ever, and don't want/need a driver's license, you can get a state-issue ID for little or no cost. Either should be perfectly sufficient to resolve any questions from law enforcement.
However, it's more likely that most cops are going to know pretty quickly if you're someone they need to check. If you don't speak English, that's probably a good place to begin. If you get pulled over and don't have a license or other ID (which is, itself, a problem), then that's kind of a clue too. If you take off running when they say 'Hello', that'd also be a good starting point.
Now that's not nice. We need legal immigrants to bring new talents and new ideas into our marketplace. S/he is exactly what we do need. What we don't need are the border-jumping criminal aliens who ignore the laws and live here as parasites. Every last one of the illegals needs to be booted back to their country of origin and barred from ever returning.
I hear people talk about a "path to citizenship" for illegals. I got a path for them: get out of the US before our law enforcement finds you and go through the legal application process. That's the only path that should ever have any hope of leading to citizenship for an illegal alien. If you're found to be here illegally, not only should you never have any chance at citizenship, but you should also never be allowed to return legally.
For what it's worth, while I completely support the Arizona law and hope that every other state in the union enacts similar legislation and enforces the Hell out of it, I also hope that when Arizona's law enforcement encounters someone who's come legally but is stuck in the limbo of our slowly grinding Federal immigration system that said status is recognized immediately for what it is and that you're left alone. Your anger right now with Arizona is misplaced. If Arizona law enforcement who eventually have to enforce this law don't give someone like you a hard time (assuming you have your immigration paperwork with you), then I really don't think you have any reason to be upset.
In other words, my understanding of the law is that Arizona isn't looking to put someone like you under the microscope. Instead, they're looking for the guys who don't have a single shred of paper from the US Federal government since they've been avoiding our government (and our laws) like the plague. I would sincerely hope that they wouldn't bother someone like you who has paperwork even if you don't have the final product from our slow-moving immigration services. For one thing, you've got enough going on and don't need the hassle. For another, they've got 12 - 20 million border-jumping criminal aliens to find and capture. Every minute they waste sifting through your paperwork is another opportunity for more criminal aliens to go deeper underground.
Keep in mind that I have no idea what your country of origin is right now. It doesn't particularly matter to me. Whether you originally came from Russia, Mexico, Germany, Brazil, Iran, or Britain, or wherever else, so long as you did it legally and are making every effort to comply with the laws (despite the difficulties that can present), welcome. We need good, law-abiding people constantly flowing into this country to provide new ideas, new skills, and new talents. At the same time, we need to drop-kick every border-jumping, sovereignty violating, law-breaking illegal immigrant back to their country of origin. They take resources, money, and opportunity away from both you (as a legal immigrant working in the US) and me (as a citizen of the US). They're criminal parasites and they need to be removed from the country and prevented from returning.
I don't think anyone disputes that current US immigration procedures and handling are pretty well screwed up. That, however, does not change the fact that we have 12 - 20 million people here illegally who are (per laws and policies) to be found and booted from the country. As our Federal government is more interested in granting amnesty to law-breakers in this area of the law than it is in actually enforcing the law, the state of Arizona has decided that it has had enough of what is - by any measure - a full-scale invasion.
Ideally, I would like to see all our immigration policies and procedures overhauled so that everyone coming in legally is able to do so with as little trouble and expense as possible while everyone trying to come here illegally is either prevented from doing so or is quickly located and deported. Unfortunately, far too many in Congress want to tie making your life easier with giving tens of millions of illegal alien invaders amnesty and citizenship as a reward for violating our sovereign borders and ignoring our laws. Considering the fact that these illegal alien invaders are now kidnapping US citizens and have been raping and murdering our citizens en masse for decades, and considering the fact that the drug cartels from Mexico are now extending their wars across our borders, you're just going to have to wait until we can get the idiots in Congress to fix the legal immigration system.
Your beef is not with Arizona, but with the US Federal government. It is not Arizona's fault that the Federal government is leaving you in limbo. It is not Arizona's fault that the Federal government isn't providing you with up-to-date status paperwork. You and I have two common enemies in this fight: the Federal government that's basically screwing you while leaving my country's borders insecured in the middle of one of the largest invasions in history and the illegal immigrants who are flooding into the country without bothering to go through the process you've been working with (because you apparently care about following the law and respecting this country - two concepts utterly foreign to illegals) who have forced Arizona into this position.
If the citizens of Arizona weren't under constant threat from drug cartels and other criminal aliens, and if there weren't an ongoing invasion of the country that's overwhelming our social services and draining our economy, then I'd say we shouldn't resort to states doing things like this just yet as it's really the responsibility of the Federal government to fix things. However, we're under attack and it requires a more urgent response. We've been waiting for the Federal government to fix the problem of illegals flooding into this country by the millions for decades. It simply isn't happening. Now that our people are being kidnapped, taken away, murdered, etc on the verge of a full-scale drug war spilling into our streets, dealing with the illegals has become the overriding priority.
You're in the immigration emergency room telling me your foot hurts. I got gunshot victims to deal with first. Will get to you ASAP. Want to improve your situation in the meantime? Get together with a whole bunch of other people who are in favor of fixing the immigration system without amnesty for illegals and get the Feds to fix their broken system. In the meantime, if you're a non-citizen in the US without documentation showing that you're here legally, ya might wanna steer clear of Arizona and several other states considering similar legislation.
If it makes you feel any better, I have massive karma, so it's no loss. Maybe metamods will fix it? Who knows.
Actually, Democrats have routinely opposed attempts to require some form of ID to vote (apparently it causes issues with double-voting, dead people voting, etc). So really, the two posts above your's are perfectly coherent with the available information.
The only question is, what's the alternative? A third party that can't hope to get anywhere in the rigged game set up by the two major parties? Vote in the Republicans and let them have yet another go at breaking every promise? Sit home and whine? I don't know about you, but I'm searching for something to have faith in in our political system and I'm not coming up with a whole lot of realistic choices.
Maybe that's because money isn't (and never has been) the problem. Maybe it's got something to do with the fact that teachers' unions fight to ensure that there are no consequences for failure for either the school as a whole or individual teachers. Maybe it all students had a voucher of $n of state funding so their parents could choose which school their child attends from the long list of local public, private, and charter schools, there would be a reason for public schools to actually work toward providing a decent education.
The formula they've been trained on for decades is that the worse you do, the more funding you get. It's not a big mystery why they haven't improved.
Santa Susana Field Laboratory isn't a fair comparison at all. We're talking about operational nuclear power plants. The problems and accidents at Santa Susana were with experimental reactors being pushed to their limits (far beyond, as it turned out). The major accidents happened in the 1950s and '60s and they only happened because the entire facility played fast and loose with everything it did. Sort of like when a couple scientists died because they were illegal burning dangerous chemicals in open pits.
So yes, if you're running uncontrolled experiments on untested and unsafe designs, [n] power solution can be extremely dangerous. The difference with nuclear is that in every commercial setting where it's ever been used in any western nation through history, it's proven vastly safer than coal fire plants, oil plants, and evern hydro plants. The same is true for nearly all other applications as well. Even if every plant were designed and run as piss-poorly and dangerously as the Chernobyl plant, nuclear power would still be safer and less harmful to the environment than coal fire plants. As it happens, every nuclear plant operating today (of which I'm aware) couldn't possibly repeat anything like the Chernobyl incident and all have outstanding safety records.
It's pretty telling that the worst nuclear power plant accident in US history resulted in 0 deaths, 0 serious injuries, and virtually no contamination of the environment. When you compare that to the deaths, injuries, and environmental obliteration happening all the time at coal fire plants around the US (and the world), it very quickly becomes crystal clear that we should be working as fast as we can to replace every coal fire plant in the world with nuclear power plants. They're cleaner, safer, more reliable, and just as cheap over the life of the plant due to ridiculously low operations costs.