Arizona’s dangerous bill

Imagine you’re walking the streets of Tucson a few months from now. Under the terms of Arizona’s new immigration law, any police officer with “reasonable suspicion” that you might be in the country illegally will be able to stop you and ask for your immigration documents.

Whatever that “reasonable suspicion” might be, does anyone suppose it will be applied to, say, Canadian citizens visiting Arizona? Of course not. It will be applied to Spanish-speaking people with brown skin, of which there are about a half-million in Arizona, most of them legal residents. Lacking identification, those legal residents could be subject to incarceration. That’s the very definition of racial profiling—and uncomfortably reminiscent of police-state tactics.

Arizona’s frustration with federal efforts to control illegal immigration is understandable. But this bill goes overboard by placing additional burdens on already stretched police departments and turning them into surrogates for federal immigration agents. It also decreases the likelihood that Latino residents will cooperate with police investigations, which is why a statewide association of police chiefs has opposed it.

President Obama has lambasted Arizona’s bill as failing to deal with the core issues presented by illegal immigration—our porous border and the 12 million illegals already here. He has also said it’s a “wake-up call” for the government to act, lest the country become a patchwork of inconsistent state laws created in the void of federal inaction.

He’s right, but that doesn’t mean it will act. Congress is so polarized on this issue that comprehensive reform seems unlikely anytime soon. Arizona’s bill is a dangerous sign of the times.