do people in states like AZ agree that 3.5% is a small number?

Or does that percentage seem much larger to them in their day-to-day lives due to their higher rate of exposure to undocumented immigrants?

This is a fair question to ask because it is true that the percent of residents in states like AZ that are undocumented immigrants is a larger portion of the population than say the percent of residents who are undocumented across the landscape of the entire country.

An interesting point that needs to be articulated is that people in states like AZ (NM & CA for example) see a lot of "immigrant looking" people period. Overwhelmingly, people in those states see many more Hispanics/Latinos in particular, as compared to populations in other states (like Ohio). However, the vast majority of those Hispanics/Latinos are not undocumented; they are either citizens or documented immigrants. According to the PEW RESEARCH CENTER, there were approximately 2 million Hispanics living in Arizona as of 2008 data. 1/4 of those 2 million (about 500,000) people are believed to be undocumented residents. In other words, 75% or 3 out of every 4 Latino persons seen in Arizona are either citizens or documented residents.

So the question becomes - how do the (non-immigrant) people in those states ever actually know if the person in front, beside or behind them is documented or undocumented or even an immigrant at all?

They don't... there is no efficient way for a person to have such information. However, since nearly all (94%) of Arizona's undocumented immigrants are from Mexico, people assume that all Mexican looking people they see are undocumented. It's a confusion between perceived reality and actual reality. When people make these assumptions, they can only do so based on phenotypical (physical) characteristics or by listening to speech/linguistic patterns.

One other way is by doing spot paper checks, which is what the legislation passed says officials must do (after beginning an investigation on supposed other crimes, eg. jay walking, having a car parked in the front yard, etc). Insightfully, similar practices were enacted against freed black slaves in antebellum U.S. and against Jews stripped of their German or Austrian citizenship during the 1930s.

The Question: do people in states like AZ agree that 3.5% is a small number?

The Answer: this is the wrong question to ask since people in states like AZ (or OH, ME, PA, KY, etc) have no efficient way of knowing whether the people to whom they are exposed in day-to-day lives are even immigrants at all, regardless of their status.