What does the Arizona law do?
Arizona's law orders immigrants to carry their alien registration documents at all times and requires police to question people if there's reason to suspect they're in the United States illegally.
It also targets those who hire illegal immigrant laborers or knowingly transport them.
Are other states considering similar legislation?
Michael Hethmon, general counsel for the Immigration Reform Law Institute, helped draft the language of the Arizona bill. Hethmon said lawmakers from four other states have approached him asking for advice on how they can do the same thing where they live. He declined to identify which states, citing attorney-client privilege.
Video: Arizona Gov. signs immigration bill
In 2005, 300 bills were introduced. The next year, that number nearly doubled, and in 2007, more than 1,500 bills were introduced. Another 1,305 were introduced in 2008, and about 1,500 were considered in 2009.
About 15 percent of those were enacted, dealing with issues such as driver's licenses, health and education.
About 1,000 bills have been brought up so far this year.
What do opponents say?
Critics, including immigrant advocates and the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, say they are concerned the law will foster racial profiling, arguing that most police officers don't have enough training to look past race while investigating a person's legal status.
Is federal immigration legislation coming?
The last immigration reform efforts in Congress were in 2005 when Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, and the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, Brown's predecessor, introduced a bipartisan bill that aimed to implement guest-worker programs and ways for more illegal immigrants to become citizens.
The McCain-Kennedy bill, however, never came up for a vote in the Senate.
Other legislative efforts have failed to gain momentum.
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The real problem is not actually in the wording of the new law. The issue that is going to come into play is the racial bias that AZ isn't going to be able to get rid of within it's city police forces as well as state law enforcement agencies. Why? Because it's the human factor that comes into play. If... If, there was a way to ensure that no law enforcement officer on any level, would use race as a deciding factor, then there would be no issue with the law. Even if AZ would be able to do such a thing, there would still be upheaval over the whole mess because regardless of what the officer's true intentions are, any time said officer asks to see papers the person being asked to prove citizenship is going to scream 'racial profiling' every time. Why? Because it's the easy way out. Every race at some point tries to use the race card as a means to escape a situation. Yes, even the whitey does it. Here's the deal, if you think at some point, that you might be suspected as an illegal alien in the USA, carry your freaking papers. How effing hard is it? I carry 3 different types of ID on me at all times... Are you telling me that you can't keep one effing card in your wallet? Also, how about not breaking any laws... Every think of that. If I don't want an officer knowing who I am, I don't break any laws or violate in city codes in front of them. That way they have no need to ask me for ID. Sure, if you're walking down the street doing nothing at all and an officer rolls up and asks you for your papers, that's an issue. Then you can take it to the next level and play your little race card. In fact, lets go ahead and make that happen for the next year or so. That we can we weed out the officers who are going to be a problem with this. Once the douches are off the forces then this whole thing could actually work nation wide.
Morons.
