Why should I? All anyone (including the illegal immigrant) has to do is say, “I am a US citizen. Do you have reason to suspect I am violating the law? Am I free to go?” and the officer has no choice but to let them go, unless they want to break the law and detain them on the basis of racial profiling (appearance, accent, language).
Well, now, hold up there, hoss. I think friend Bricker is casting a gimlet eye towards conservative hypocrisy as well, here. It is not a point that he has belabored or droned on about at great length.
Honestly I don’t pay much attention to what my state legislators are doing and I think it’s entirely possible for any state to go off the deep end and not be able to correct the problem till the next election.
Your state elects JD Hayworth on the other hand after all this… the sane people in the state better be sending chocolates to the rest of the country.
No. According to the article in the link, Senator Pearce states that he is aware of the constitutionality issues involved, and has said, “We will write it right.” (Implying that it hasn’t been written yet.)
Confusing to me, though is this, from the article:
How does that work, exactly? Isn’t SCOTUS historically reluctant to hear cases that are still in the hypothetical?
I, like the OP, was only referring to the situation in which SB 1070 were being enforced. I have a feeling that SB 1070, as would any proposed law denying birth certificates to any non-diplomat child born in the US, will be struck down at some point along the 9th circuit path.
But, there is nothing racial about someone’s accent or language, however much they may be associated with or linked to race. Someone’s accent, if they were foreign born, would likely be linked to national origin, which is a prohibited factor for solely basing reasonable suspicion of someone’s legal status under the law that amended SB 1070, HB 2162.
If someone is driving, which would be one of the more common places where SB 1070 would come into play, then the driver is obligated to present their driver’s license to police upon request any way. If an officer approached someone on the street and demanded identification from them, the person would be perfectly entitled to give the quote you mention and walk away. Under SB 1070, if an officer stopped someone on the street because they had reasonable, articulable suspicion that the person was in the country illegally, then so long as the basis for this suspicion was not the person’s race, color, or national origin, the officer can detain the person for a reasonable period of time while attempting to verify the person’s immigration status with the feds (usually through an ICE or DHS database).
But I doubt that many will do this, for the same reason that many criminals could avoid searches by saying, “No, I don’t consent to any search. Am I free to go?” but few do.
OFFICER: Sir, I clocked you doing 67 is a 55 mile per hour zone. I’ll need to see your license and registration, and while you’re getting it out, we ask everyone this question: are you a U.S. citizen or a permanant resident?
Legal question: Since children don’t have the rights of adults, what specifically is keeping us from deporting the parents anyway? Give them the option: take your kid with you and in 18 years the kid can claim US citizenship, or leave the kid to be stuck in an orphanage in the US while your illegal asses are shipped back to wherever. What is the constitutional key to the “anchor?” Because if you remove that, you solve a bunch of problems.
The example Camus gave was a pedestrian on the street. Drivers are required to show their operator’s license anyway, so the status question is unnecessary. Care to have another swing at the ball that Camus pitched?