THE ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION DILEMMA

Arizona’s immigration enforcement law currently gives police officers the power to determine the immigration status of people stopped, detained or arrested for another offense if there is a “reasonable suspicion” that they are in the U.S. illegally. This legislation is currently being considered by several other states. Different versions of the Arizona law have passed in Mississippi and by the state senates in Kentucky and Indiana, and legislators in Utah and Oklahoma continue studying the proposal. In Georgia, a bill in the General Assembly would require many employers to use a federal database to check the immigration status of new hires and also would authorize law-enforcement officers to check the immigration status of suspects who can’t produce an accepted form of identification.