Originally Posted by Willravel

Racial profiling has nothing at all to do with illegal immigration.

Let's go ahead and actually read the bill in question:

Arizona Senate Bill 1070 (pdf), emphasis mine

Read that carefully: "...reasonable suspicion exists that a person is an alien..." If you're not thinking to yourself "this is racial profiling", you're fooling yourself. This is racial profiling made law in a state well known for having problems with racism against Mexican immigrants (which extends to many other immigrants from all over Central and South America), which is now requiring officers to develop a sixth sense in order to determine if someone is acting or appears in a way which suggests that he or she is an illegal immigrant.

This, of course, being absurd, the suspicion then falls to appearance. Brown skin? Check. Raggy shoes? Double-check. Riding four across in a pickup truck where at least one of the guys is wearing a cowboy hat? Book 'em.

It is racism regardless of the spin put on it by racists or overzealous anti-immigration advocates.