What’s the big deal?
The brouhaha over the Arizona anti–illegal-immigration law (people will have to produce their papers on demand!) seems strange.
We all – including natural-born American citizens – have to “produce papers on demand.”
Case in point: My wife Cindy lost her driver’s license. (She didn’t lose her driving privileges due to traffic violations; she misplaced the little plastic card.) In order to replace it, she had to produce the following papers on demand for the DMV: birth certificate, marriage license, Social Security card…and maybe one or two others. (A Catch-22 footnote: When she called the McLean County Clerk’s office to request a copy of our marriage license, they said she would need to send them…a government-issued photo ID – namely, a driver’s license – which is what she was trying to replace!)
Anyway, we all have to produce papers on demand at one time or another…
So, what’s the big deal…?