May I see your papers, citizen?

@ABE5177,

ABE5177 wrote:

all law enforcement involves some hassle for the law abiding citizens even if it's only $$$. walked through an airport recently??

Many times and I was treated exactly like all the other citizens - equal sacrifice. That is my point. This law pretends to equal sacrifice, but it's obvious to me that if you don't have brown skin, there is no sacrifice and if you do, there is the potential for significant hassle.

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@ebrown p,

So if the govt cannot be required to enforce its own laws, that leaves 2 options.
Either the state create and enforce their own laws, or the govt becomes a meaningless parasite on society.

1 Reply

@ebrown p,

Adds Cardinal Mahoney..

(I'm reading back on the thread)

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@mysteryman,

Your argument is based on a fundamental untruth.

The government is enforcing immigration law. There are thousands of border patrol agents at every point of entry. There are thousands of border patrol agents patrolling the borders. There are thousands of arrests and deportations every year.

So saying that the government is not enforcing the immigration laws is very simply a lie.

The idea that law enforcement can be perfect is ludicrous. There are people who use prostitutes, people who have multiple wives and people who use illegal drugs.

Enforcement is always a balance-- in any one of these cases you could cut down on the number of people breaking the law-- allowing police to search your house without a warrant would cut down on drug use and production. Making it easier to wire tap would cut down on prostitution, and all sorts of crimes. Jailing people for breaking the speed limit would almost certainly make people drive slower.

In the United States, we put civil rights in front of law enforcement. We have done this since the Bill of Rights was passed where four out of the ten amendments made it harder to enforce the law.

1 Reply

@ebrown p,

I would add, it is the enforcement that is the main problem with our current immigration system.

Every time we have tried to harsh punishments to stop a basic human impulse, it has not only failed, but it has failed with big social costs. We tried to end homosexuality with harsh punishments. We tried to end abortion. And, we tried to end race mixing. We even tried to stop people from drinking beer. In each case the result was social unrest, prejudice and organized crime.

The immigration system we have now is based on punishing individual people who are mainly trying to get the priveldedges that we all take for granted (thanks to nothing more then where we were born). There are many reasons from a better life for your children to the desire to be with your US citizen family.

The current punishment is based on things that should make anyone with a heart shudder. Families are being broken. The poorest of the poor are being jailed (at a big financial cost to their already impoverished family) before they are deported (a double dip of cruel punishment).

You will say correctly that they broke the law-- but there is also the point that the punishment should fit the crime. Breaking families and further impoverishing poor wage earners hardly seem reasonable for the crime of crossing a border.

A human immigration system will lessen the punishment on workers and families, and increase the punishment on employers.

Cracking down on individuals (who are already treated pretty badly) is both cruel and ineffective.

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@ebrown p,

Quote:

Cracking down on individuals (who are already treated pretty badly) is both cruel and ineffective.

that it is ineffective has already been proven wrong by the Oklahoma experiment, that it is cruel is ridiculous. It is treating them like the lawbreakers they are. They evaded our immigration system, gave us the finger, and did what they wanted to do for them. locking them up for long periods of time would be cruel, sending them on a bus back to Mexico, and feeding them in the process, is being very hospitable under the circumstances. Do you consider it cruel to evict people who walk into your home without permission?

1 Reply

@hawkeye10,

again, there is zero dispute about where the majority is on the Arizona law, as all of the polls are consistent

Quote:

But 51 percent said the Arizona law is about right in tackling the problem, though 36 percent said it goes too far and 9 percent said it didn’t go far enough in tackling the problem.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/04/us/04poll.html?hp

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@OmSigDAVID,

That the left is against personal freedom is a construct that exists in your mind and has little to no bearing in the real world.

Furthermore, what several people here on this thread have tried to tell you is that these people are, more often than not, fundamentalist Catholics. As such,their leanings will be toward the right, which means they will endorse, support and uphold the police state and the cancerous, bloated form of capitalism that exists now.

As the renegade capitalists are usurping democracy, it is possible that the US will become a right wing police state where you would be comfortable, should you live an additional 50 years.

However, many of these people are uneducated and their progeny might become better educated and move toward the left which will be a boon to my grandchildren and great grandchildren.

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@ossobuco,

Jesus would approve of ending war and feeding people. He would probably approve of Mexicans who come here to make a better life for their children.

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@Francis,

It's not just geographic knowledge that David lacks. He knows little about politics.

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@hawkeye10,

hawkeye10 wrote:

again, there is zero dispute about where the majority is on the Arizona law, as all of the polls are consistent

But again, the civil rights of the minority of citizens is not up the majority to decide. Of course the majority is happy that the civil rights burden will not fall on them. I'm sure if you took a poll in the 1960's South concerning Jim Crow laws, it would have yielded similar results.

1 Reply

@engineer,

engineer wrote:

Brandon9000 wrote:

This law is really the creation of liberals who have consistently argued down every milder bill or plan to deal with enforcing the immigration laws so that we finally have millions and millions and millions of illegals here and some state passes a very firm law to try to deal with it.

I'm not concerned with the impact of the law on illegal immigrants. I'm concerned with the impact on citizens. While the law has provisions saying that profiling will not be used, in practicality, that is impossible. Either you question every person you stop for any crime, arresting all those without ID or you use some screening system to decide who to question. Police can't take in everyone, so they are going to use a screening system and that's going to be skin color. US citizens with brown skin are going to face significantly more police scrutiny than other citizens. I don't see a way around that and to me that makes this a bad law. If we are willing to give up liberties to ensure better law enforcement, we should do it equally instead of demanding a particular group of citizens sacrifice more because of their skin color.

Nobody's demanding anything. Now that the country has millions and millions of illegals, because, probably, of people like you who have impeded milder implementation for decades, the citizens of Arizona are simply stating that they are going to start enforcing what the feds have utterly failed to. Yes, it is unfortunately inevitable that more attention may focus on people who came legally from or whose ancestors came legally from a country from which 12 million people are here illegally, but that is simply unavoidable. It is impossible to enforce immigration laws without occasionally checking to see if individuals are here legally. What's your "fair" alternative which will serve to find the illegals already here and keep new ones out? I'm listening.

1 Reply

@ossobuco,

While I recognize that your description of your ancestors' voyage on a raft was a figure of speech, a man named Tim Severin reproduced a leather curraugh, a type of small river and coastal boat used in Ireland for centuries and reputed to be the same sort of vessel that St. Brendan the Navigator sailed to the New World in, centuries before Columbus.

Poor Brendan was never knows as a sailor during his life but he was know as Brendan the Navigator for his astonishing and legendary feat.

A brilliant musician, Shaun Davey, composed an orchestral suite in honor of the Severin's voyage in a curraugh or however it is spelled.

I think you would like Davey's Suite.

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@ossobuco,

And while I am off topic . . . my married name was Barrett which seems to share the same Norman French root as barrister, a trickster. The Barretts practiced law for several generations and always denied being Irish. They certainly were tricksters which is why my kids all changed their surname!

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@Brandon9000,

Brandon9000 wrote:

What's your "fair" alternative which will serve to find the illegals already here and keep new ones out? I'm listening.

In Arizona, check every single person stopped by the police for any violation for citizenship and if they cannot show it, then they will be immediately be arrested pending proof of citizenship without any discretion by the police. No exceptions. I single out Arizona only because they have a law on the books mandating such and this prevents selective enforcement. Everywhere else, employees must be verified to have legal work status before hiring with significant penalties for failing to comply. Nationally, the number of work visa is increased to 12 million. As a reform, the McCain sponsored, Bush supported immigration reform bill of three years ago works for me.

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@engineer,

Quote:

But again, the civil rights of the minority of citizens is not up the majority to decide. Of course the majority is happy that the civil rights burden will not fall on them. I'm sure if you took a poll in the 1960's South concerning Jim Crow laws, it would have yielded similar results

If you dont like the Arizona solution then come up with another one, but if our government does not act in the best interests of the nation all hell will break lose. I understand you are all enamored with the theory of minority rights, I kinda like it too, but the heavy lifting has got to get done. Governments get replaced for this kind of dereliction of duty, and your minority rights only exists because of the Constitution. The more the Constitution is used as a justification for stupidity the weaker the support for it will be. This government, this Constitution, can be replaced.

You might want to consider the long term consequences for pissing on the majority while trying to protect the victims of the week from the just consequences of their behaviour.

1 Reply

@H2O MAN,

As all white people are immigrants, I wonder how many are here illegally?

1 Reply

@hawkeye10,

hawkeye10 wrote:

If you dont like the Arizona solution then come up with another one, but if our government does not act in the best interests of the nation all hell will break lose.

I am completely happy with the McCain sponsored immigration bill that was proposed three years ago. It was a nice compromise between punishment and realism. Maybe he should bring it up again (after his reelection, obviously). The problem we face is that immigration is in the best interest of our country, and the existing system in a strictly Darwinian, free enterprise way is very effective. Only the most dedicated are willing to risk death to get here and work as an outlaw. All the border patrols and fences just weed out the weak and less clever. Of course by failing to act, the feds are allowing the burden of the system to fall disproportionally on the people of the border states, but they're just the "victims of the week", right?

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@Advocate,

There were so many Germans in the US during the Civil War that the fort at Dearborn, Michigan, had to post orders of the day in both languages. Ah, 19th C. bilingualism!

During The Great War, German-Americans were subjected to public pronouncements that they Anglicize their surnames.

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@ebrown p,

Your post reminded me of a line bush used frequently about terrorists, that they were jealous of our freedom. No, they were not jealous of our freedom because they see what we think of as freedom as decadence. The illegal aliens are jealous of our freedom and want some for themselves.

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