My response from my Facebook account:
There is no question in any rational person's mind that laws like these lead to more racial profiling, not less. As a white guy who has lived in Arizona for more than 17 years, I've never had to answer any questions about my U.S. citizenship, and I've had plenty of encounters with cops here, since I've had something like 20 traffic tickets in my time here. People of all types see me (including cops) and assume I'm legal. However, when they see a darker skinned or brown-skinned person, they presume that person may be illegal, and they then ask questions related to U.S. citizenship. If that isn't racial profiling, I don't know what is racial profiling, and the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled many times that making traffic stops based on skin color and interrogating people based on skin color about their citizenship is just wrong. In fact, I've never understood how a "free society" would tolerate the imposition of Soviet-style checkpoints on our motorways, yet there they are, enshrined by our highest court due to the "exigency" of the drug trade and border problems.
Because of Sheriff Joe Arpaio's actions and the actions of those who think like him, Maricopa County has become more of a police state in the last decade, especially if you happen to have darker/brown skin. Funny how when Arpaio came into office back in 1994, no one said anything about illegal aliens. Now, as a result, Hispanics are fleeing Phoenix by the tens of thousands, further hurting our already depressed sales-tax driven economy and worsening our real estate market, since there are fewer people renting and buying things like cars, furniture and clothing. I'm sure we can all agree that regardless of your legal status, if you are living and working here, you are buying stuff to survive, and those sales taxes drive a large part of our service-oriented economy; especially since our property taxes are so low.
By preying on the weaker segments of our society, there is also another nasty effect - Hispanics of any legal status (meaning both legal and illegal) will be less likely to cooperate with the police in the future, because of fear. Fear that they will be taken in and subjected to a level of interrogation white people don't have to deal with. This will make it harder for police to investigate crimes and may actually cause the crime rate to increase, especially when a Hispanic person is the victim. Given over one-third of Arizona's legal population is Hispanic, this will have a severe effect on not just illegals, but citizens of all types.
I also soundly reject the notion that we should, as a society, subject ourselves to more law enforcement in the name of anything, whether that be national security, "securing the border" or any other artificially hyped concern. We are moving rapidly to a police state where we will have fewer and fewer rights, and this I find abhorrent, both morally and from a Constitutional perspective. We've already been giving up rights to help fight the war on drugs, and now we want local police questioning people about citizenship? I'm sorry, this sounds too much like the Gestapo of Nazi-era Germany, or more recently, the Soviet Union "you papers are not in ohder, you vill come with ussss..."
Certainly it creates a whole font of new law enforcement powers and responsibilities, which cities and counties can ill afford to absorb. To avoid a real nasty Constitutional challenge on racial profiling, they are going to have to interrogate everybody as to their U.S. citizenship, and this is something I can not and will not tolerate in a free society. Arizona is well on it's way to becoming the police state of the U.S. No one in their right mind can possibly believe that this bill will NOT have a disproportionate effect on anyone who appears brown or in the slightest bit Hispanic. For the sad truth is that it will; it is mere human nature, and considering that most Arizona cops are caucasians and most illegals are darker-skinned from Latin America, it is going to lead to tons of litigation, battles with overworked police, overloaded judiciary, overcrowded jails, etc. Just you watch and see...
I might also add that these bills are largely the product of hysteria and a tyranny of the majority, just like during World War II with Korematsu v. United States. I quote from Justice Murphy's stinging dissent of the original 1944 decision:
"I dissent, therefore, from this legalization of racism. Racial discrimination in any form and in any degree has no justifiable part whatever in our democratic way of life. It is unattractive in any setting, but it is utterly revolting among a free people who have embraced the principles set forth in the Constitution of the United States. All residents of this nation are kin in some way by blood or culture to a foreign land. Yet they are primarily and necessarily a part of the new and distinct civilization of the United States. They must, accordingly, be treated at all times as the heirs of the American experiment, and as entitled to all the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution."
And I quote from Judge Marilyn Patel's eloquent prose when she, in essence, over-ruled the Supreme Court's wrong 1944 decision and granted a writ of Coram Nobis to Korematsu in San Francisco in 1984:
"As historical precedent it stands as a constant caution that in times of war or declared military necessity our institutions must be vigilant in protecting constitutional guarantees. It stands as a caution that in times of distress the shield of military necessity and national security must not be used to protect governmental actions from close scrutiny and accountability. It stands as a caution that in times of international hostility and antagonisms our institutions, legislative, executive and judicial, must be prepared to exercise their authority to protect all citizens from the petty fears and prejudices that are so easily aroused."
Sadly, Arizona fails to learn the lessons of the past, and falls victim to the same type of hysteria and mass legislative abandon as did Congress during World War II. To some degree, we only have ourselves to blame for this situation. To paraphrase V in V for Vendetta: "I understand why you did it. You were afraid. And how could you not be afraid? Every day, you were shocked with crime, attacks, higher taxes. The headlines bleated it out, over and over." We deserve the result, in any event...
--don