Andy McCarthy offers some legal analysis of the most contentious part of Arizona’s new immigration law. If you want to have a serious discussion about this issue, you should read Andy’s post. He then addresses a practical concern about the law.
It’s fair to question how various scenarios of police interaction could play out in cases where there may be suspicion of illegal immigration. Many on the left, however, have been offering ignorant and dishonest descriptions. We know that reading legislation hasn’t been a Democrat specialty lately, but that’s no excuse for some of the claims that have been made about this bill.
One change to the bill strengthens restrictions against using race or ethnicity as the basis for questioning and inserts those same restrictions in other parts of the law.
Changes to the bill language will actually remove the word “solely” from the sentence, “The attorney general or county attorney shall not investigate complaints that are based solely on race, color or national origin.”
Another change replaces the phrase ”lawful contact” with “lawful stop, detention or arrest” to apparently clarify that officers don’t need to question a victim or witness about their legal status.
A third change specifies that police contact over violations for local civil ordinances can trigger questioning on immigration status.
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