Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed a law last week that made what was already a federal crime – being in the country illegally – into a state crime (usually it’s the other way around).

Today we get this story from the AP: Illegal Immigrants Leaving Arizona Over New Law

If that was all it took, why didn’t anyone think of it sooner?

On a more serious note, I encourage everyone to read these three items (one, two, three) by National Review’s Andy McCarthy.

By and large, this appears to be much ado about not much. McCarthy:

Contrary to the hysterical charges of racism being leveled at the statute, it does not permit a no-holds-barred inquisition of Hispanic people. Indeed, the state law demands more of police than federal law. To begin with, there is to be no inquiry about a person's immigration status unless the "contact" between the police officer and the person is "lawful" in the first instance.

[…]

Now, why do I say the Arizona law is more restrictive of police than is federal law? Well, the Supreme Court has held that one common rationale for a permissible Terry stop is to ascertain the identity of the person who is detained. That is, federal law would probably permit an inquiry into citizenship as a part of establishing who the detainee is — again, as long as the officer had a good reason for detaining the person in the first place.

The Arizona law, by contrast, does not give a cop this latitude. Instead, the officer is permitted to attempt to determine the person's immigration status only if, in addition to the initial contact being lawful, there also exists specific "reasonable suspicion that the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States." As I noted above, our Fourth Amendment jurisprudence teaches that reasonable suspicion requires specific, articulable [sic] facts — not a hunch or generalized suspicion. Thus, the Arizona law requires that there be reasonable suspicion for both the initial stop (e.g., the police officer observed erratic driving and concluded the person might be intoxicated) and for pursuing a line of inquiry about whether the person is an illegal alien. [emphasis in original]

Could this law be abused? Certainly. But the type of law enforcement officer that would twist this law to suit his needs probably wasn’t exactly stopped prior to this law’s passage from doing similar illegal things.

The hyperbolic rhetoric likening the law to Nazi Germany – always the first refuge of those without a cogent argument – is dishonest and misguided. The faux offense at being asked for one’s papers when pulled over is laughable – has any of these people seriously balked when a cop has pulled them over and asked for their license, registration and proof of insurance?

(For the record: Federal law already requires legal residents to carry “their papers” with them at all times.)

What’s the real impact of this law? Well, most likely more criminals will be handed over to the feds when they’re discovered to be here illegally. Don’t expect a replay of the old Cheech Marin classic “Born in East LA” where American citizens are summarily dumped in Mexico simply because they’ve lost their wallet.