The new Arizona immigration law is a step in the right direction

First, let me post the full text of the bill. [1] "This policy is a form of racial profiling. The bill promotes a form of racism involving police focus on people of certain racial groups in attempts to determine if someone is undocumented. It is pretty clear that the law enforcement within Arizona will focus more on people of noticeable Mexican or other Hispanic descent rather than Anglo-Saxons." My opponent makes that claim that the bill puts forth a policy of racial profiling, however it does not. This is clear to see because the bill does not mention race, only legality of citizenship, which any race can be legal or illegal. While it is true that in Arizona, nearly all the arrests will be of hispanic illegals, that is not due to racial profiling, but due to the fact that nearly all of the illegal immigrants in Arizona are hispanic. While there may end up being individual cases of racial profiling, those cases would be caused by individual officers not doing their job correctly, as opposed to the law itself promoting it. "The major issue with this bill is that it undermines the generally accepted principle of "innocent until proven guilty." In fact, this law essentially proposes a policy of "guilty until proven innocent." A person is assumed to be undocumented until he can prove that he is documented. This is not "right" at all. It is quite contrary to one of the major principles upon which the United States represents." Police officers don't work under this principle, they never have. The courts work under this. If you are "suspected" of a crime with reasonable evidence (note that reasonable evidence is not proof, as many cases, people turn out to be innocent), the police will arrest you and the court will determine innocent or guilt. This principle also applies to similar baseball saying "tie goes to the runner" meaning that "when in doubt, they are innocent," that also applies to the courts rather then officers. Now officers are required to have reasonable suspicion (or whatever the legal term is, they have so many that sound the same to everyday people, but mean so much different in terms of law) as to prevent abuse, and in many cases have a warrant (which is a judge saying "there is reasonable suspicion"), but the police are not required to prove guilt before the arrest. And this is the same that this Arizona law is doing, allowing officers "with reasonable suspicion" to make arrests for a long time standing federal crime. The reason that people see this as racist or discriminatory is because they equate "illegal immigrant" with "mexican or hispanic" but the two are not the same. Let us change the wording of the law a bit for an example. Instead of "It is illegal to be an illegal immigrant. Any officer may question anyone that they have reasonable suspicion is an illegal immigrant" we replace "an illegal immigrant" with "high on drugs" so it now reads. "It is illegal to be high on drugs. Any officer may question anyone that they have reasonable suspicion is high on drugs." That is certainly a law that we have had for a long time that doesn't get many complaints. But more men do drugs then women, does that mean that this law is sexist against men? Certainly not. Would it be sexist for an officer to question 5 men that appeared to be under the influence and no women? No, should he go questioning random women, just so he meets some quota that allows him to appear all nice and non-sexist? No. There is, without question, a need to do something about immigration. The vast amount of illegals that we have cause crime (not every single one, but a much larger % then the rest of society), they take jobs (some are those that "americans don't want to do" but not all of them are), and they drain money from the government by over using social programs, which increases everyone's taxes. While there are many things that need to be done, and not any single bill will fix the problem, part of it is to make sure that the US is not a "safe haven" where once in, they are safe from punishment. This bill accomplishes that (at least in Arizona) and so, is a step in the right direction. [1] http://www.azleg.gov...