You might have a point if that's what they were doing, but they're not, so you don't.

You keep telling us what they're not doing. What are they doing?

Perhaps I'm reading the excerpt wrong, but it seems to be saying that if a police officer has reason to suspect (?) that somebody is an illegal immigrant, he can ask for proof that he is a legal resident.

It depends on what "lawful contact" is. If that means the person is being arrested, then firstly they need to stop using euphimisms, and secondly, this is not only perfectly acceptable, but is pretty much a no-brainer.

To all those worried about cops racially profiling...

Nothing in this bill talks about mexico, or the people of mexico. It talks about people in this country unlawfully. We have people from Germany, Canada, Japan, Kenya, the UK, and 50+ other countries...

For you to single out Mexico, means YOU just racially profiled. You should he ashamed of yourselves.

Since the state and local police aren't empowered to enforce immigration, stopping someone for "looking illegal" would most certainly not be lawful contact.

Lawful contact can mean stopping someone for speeding or at a routine traffic stop, all the way up to arresting them for assault or murder. If the person can provide a valid driver's license or other federal, state, or local ID, they shall be presumed to be in the country legally according to this law. If they cannot and there exists "reasonable suspicion" - the guidelines for which, I imagine, are yet to be established; this is why the police would require training before the law goes into effect - then the police can check their immigration status with the feds.

It's not ideal, but then neither is the situation which has been caused entirely by a dereliction of duty on the part of the federal government. It is pretty far from draconian, however, and it doesn't hold a candle to Mexico's own immigration laws which are, in every way, discriminatory and racist.

I laughed, because I'm assuming you're joking. I'm not "worried" about cops racially profiling, I know they do. Do you really think that Arizona is worried about an onslaught of Canadians? They'd never even notice. This law won't catch Canadians anyways, unless they run around saying "I hope the mounties don't find oot I don't have a green card, eh?". The letter of this law never mentions a country and that's true, but the thrust of this bill is to get the federal government to do a better job of policing the borders, how many countries does Arizona "border"?

For someone that doesn't trust the government to do anything right, you have an unnaturally high trust in the police. And I believe you're being intentionally obtuse in this statement above, which is weird too.

How many people are going to illegaly move from an MEDC to the USA?

Kenya, maybe, but it's far more likely that they'd go to Europe.

The enormous majority of illegal immigrants in the USA are from Mexico.

Reading up a bit more it seems the law is specifically crafted to do nothing more than recreate the federal law that is already on the books and not being enforced. So since they couldn't use or rely on the feds or the federal version of the law, they just passed their own state version.

If this is accurate, I'd have to say the sudden indignation at this law is would be pretty laughable.

I trust cops far more then I trust Congressmen.

The closer to local government you get, the less untrustworthy it becomes. 

Do I want to give cops to much power? No. Do I want to give them enough authority so they can do what we ask them to do in the first place? Yes.

Let me ask you this. How would you better catch people in this country who are here illegally? I would hope whatever you come up with, would at least incude allowing the cops to ask the question.

How are you going to catch anyone without at least this level of ability?

If there is already a federal law, why would they need this one? Just start enforcing the federal one.

Indeed cops should be able to ask the question, my concern becomes when they ask the question. If a person is doing something wrong, and the cops catch them, well of course they should present some kind of ID. If they are being questioned because their skin is too brown or because they have an accent, to me that is wrong.

What I need to know is what is the consequence of immigration? I hear a lot of "they take all of our jobs!" but that was said of the Irish, and the Chinese before them, and the Germans before them. These spasms of anti-immigration feelings seem to happen in cycles and none of the floods of immigration have ever destroyed this country. I don't understand why our country of 350,000,000 people can't handle a larger population when our country is roughly the same size as China which has 4x the population and not nearly as developed an infrastructure. I'm not saying that unchecked immigration is a good idea, I've just never undersood on a macro scale what horrors come along with a more lax immigration system.