The AZ Senate Bill 1070, also known as the Arizona Immigration Law has come under much scrutiny. A more readable version of the text can be found here. The main aspects of the law seems to be the following:
- Violations of federal immigration laws are now state crimes in Arizona and the laws are now enforceable by state police.
- Foreigners are required to carry immigration documentation at all times (this is actually a federal statute).
- The law effectively requires citizens to carry some sort of identification, in absence of which they are presumed to be aliens and hence subject to detention.
Several professors at the University of Arizona have posted a preliminary analysis of the law at SSRN. However, the main precedence might have been set by the Supreme Court decision in Hines v. Davidowitz U.S. 52 from 1941 in which the court found that Pennsylvania could not require foreigners to carry their registration cards and could not make not doing so a state crime.
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