By Steven Sarabia | AZ Family
If you’re facing a medical emergency and need to go to the hospital, a bill making its way through the Arizona legislature could have hospital staff questioning your legal status.
SB 1268 passed the Senate and needs to pass the House before going to the governor’s desk. The bill essentially would mandate hospitals to ask if you are a citizen of the United States.
A post on the state’s Republican Caucus website says SB 1268 would “require hospitals to include a section on their patient admission form giving individuals the option to indicate whether they are lawfully present in the United States.”
“Incredibly pernicious. You know it, it sounds like they just want to know whether someone is a U.S. citizen or has legal status. A concern would be, is this on its face just an exercise in information gathering or something that’s going to expose people to ICE enforcement or to being reported to the authorities,” said Arizona Immigration Attorney Darius Amiri. “This definitely would be unprecedented, it would be new territory.”
