The "let me see your papers" law

I've been pretty much remiss in keeping this blog up to date. My basic reason is that I've been posting on a weekly basis to the Bill of Rights Defense Committee (BORDC) site. For anyone who is interested, my two posts are published every Saturday.

I thought I would put up one of my recent posts here. I am very unhappy about the new Arizona bill that I call the "Let me see your papers" law (I made a small edit...I added a link that I didn't have available when this went online at the BORDC):

Talk about opening up a can of worms. Arizona governor Jan Brewer signed into law the "Let me see your papers" immigration bill (as I call it). The very idea of allowing "authority" to exercise proper "reasonable suspicion" is absolutely outrageous.

According to the article,

With hundreds of protesters outside the state Capitol shouting that the bill would lead to civil rights abuses, Brewer said critics were "overreacting" and that she wouldn't tolerate racial profiling.

...and I've got a bridge to sell you in the Florida swamplands. Real cheap.

If history tells us anything, it's that "authority" does not use restraint. In my opinion, if and when this law comes into effect, forget just racial profiling, the authorities can stop anybody, let me repeat that...anybody, demand papers and claim it was "reasonable suspicion." I predict that there will be many arrests and seizures founded on the "authorities" having "reasonable suspicion" that the "perpetrators" were illegally in our country. ("Oh, and the we smelled marijuana in the car!") So much for the "search and seizure" laws in Arizona...hey, they were reasonably suspicious that the perps were illegally in our country! That's all it would take.

In addition, on Friday, Keith Olbermann brought up the possible financial hits Arizona could take because of this law. As an example, he wonders how much pressure the baseball cactus league teams, which play in Arizona during the spring, will receive from the teams' home states. He imagined Manny Ramirez driving on his way to a spring game being stopped by the police.

Tuesday, Mr. Olbermann and Rep. Raul Grijalva (D) discussed bringing economic sanctions to the state.

OLBERMANN: I have never heard of a congressman in the history of this country proposing retribution against his own state. So, I‘m assuming you‘re even angrier about this than I am.

GRIJALVA: No. It is—we are codifying into law—if the governor signs this—racial profiling, discrimination under the Constitution. We‘re codifying the fact that law enforcement now has a free hand to stop anybody that looks the part in terms of undocumented people, ask them for verification.

It‘s unprecedented. It is a horrible, horrible precedent for the nation. And it—and we can‘t allow it to continue as though there are no consequences. And the consequences that we can only bring up right now is economic sanctions. We‘re asking organizations, civic, religious, labor, Latino organizations of color to refrain from using Arizona as a convention site, to refrain from spending their dollars in the state of Arizona until Arizona turns the clock forward instead of backwards and joins the rest of the Union.

Personally, I don't think this law will see the light of day. And that will be a good thing. The scary part is that there are those in authority that find it perfectly reasonable to trample on rights that were given us over 250 years ago.