[UPDATE: The NYT prints a correction, see below.]

Linda Greenhouse of the New York Times hyperventilates out the blog post "Breathing While Undocumented" (link) about Arizona's new immigration law. She misleads about part of the law, she shows that she was looking at an earlier version of the bill and not what the governor signed, she shows that her idea of public policy is to make things worse, and overall she's not doing her supposed job: instead of shedding light on legal issues, she's just retailing the New York Times' strong pro-illegal immigration bias. She's not trying to do real reporting and correct disinformation about the law, she's just adding some of her own.

First, I encourage everyone to download the actual bill as it was signed; see [1] for the link.

What would Arizona’s revered libertarian icon, Barry Goldwater, say about a law that requires the police to demand proof of legal residency from any person with whom they have made "any lawful contact" and about whom they have "reasonable suspicion" that "the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States?" Wasn’t the system of internal passports one of the most distasteful features of life in the Soviet Union and apartheid-era South Africa?

1. As pointed out in several recent posts, legal immigrants are already required to carry their green card or similar. That's federal law, not Arizona law. If Greenhouse were honest she would have told her readers that, but I guess the last sentence was just too good to waste.

2. The law doesn't actually "require" the police to do what she says. The very same paragraph she quotes from says "a reasonable attempt shall be made, when practicable, to determine the immigration status of the person, except if the determination may hinder or obstruct an investigation." If Greenhouse were honest she would have included that language which contains two exceptions to her "requires".

Then, there's the part where she reveals that instead of looking at the law that was actually signed, she was looking at one of the bills:

And in case the phrase "lawful contact" makes it appear as if the police are authorized to act only if they observe an undocumented-looking person actually committing a crime, another section strips the statute of even that fig leaf of reassurance. "A person is guilty of trespassing," the law provides, by being "present on any public or private land in this state" while lacking authorization to be in the United States — a new crime of breathing while undocumented. The intent, according to the State Legislature, is "attrition through enforcement."

I'm pretty sure that the trespassing provision isn't in the actual bill as signed by Brewer. What she references is in the Senate Engrossed version (link) but not in the later House Engrossed version (link). Others have made the same mistake, and she's just following their lead on this and other aspects of this issue.

Regarding public policy, she discusses the Plyler v. Doe case without revealing that the lead attorney in that case was Peter Schey, someone with a series of links to the Mexican government (whether he had other links at the time of the case isn't known).

She also complains about how the Texas state law involved in that case would have created an underclass. The opposite is true: a law like that would have encouraged many illegal aliens to return home and helped prevented the growth of an underclass of illegal aliens. Because laws like that were struck down we've created an even larger underclass than we would have. That doesn't mean that laws like that are the solution, but Linda Greenhouse doesn't support policies that would reduce the underclass: she supports policies that will make the situation worse.

[1] To get the actual bill as signed into law, visit peekurl.com/zizlynj and click that link, then choose it (SB 1070) from the list. If that doesn't work, visit azsos.gov then rollover "Publications" in the left sidebar and choose "Chaptered Bills". In the list, click "Forty-ninth Legislature - Second Regular Session (2010)". Then, click "Filed Chaptered Bills" under " Bills by House or Senate Bill Number". Then, at the bottom click "Last", then click "Previous" a few times until you see SB 1070 in the list.

UPDATE: The NYT has printed the following correction on the same page:

An earlier version of this Op-Ed essay referred incorrectly to the provisions of the new Arizona immigration statute. The version of the bill signed by the governor no longer includes a section under which undocumented immigrants would be guilty of trespassing for being on Arizona soil.