My personal musings about anything that gets on my radar screen--heavily dominated by politics.
2010-04-29
What I Wish One Of Our Guys Would Have the Fortitude To Say
scene: hypothetical press conference
enter Conservative candidate
Press: Are you concerned that this extremely divisive law passed by a neanderthal legislature in Arizona will lead to lynchings and a Nazi-like policing regime that forces Hispanics to live in constant fear?
Candidate: I must admit, this new law in Arizona, which enjoys the "divided" support of better than 60% of Arizonans, does concern me. I never, in my life, imagined a time when a state of this union would need to pass a law specifically spelling out that something already deemed "illegal" would actually be illegal. Imagine that: illegal immigration is now illegal in the state of Arizona. It's crazy. Next thing you know other states may follow Arizona's lead and start making all kinds of different things illegal, like soliciting campaign contributions from foreigners or evading taxes or bombing the Pentagon. What kind of a world would that be?
Arizona has an enormous problem: its border is being overrun. The violence in the state is on the rise while it is dropping elsewhere, the kidnapping capitol of the country is now Arizona, and individual ranchers along the border are being forced to pay a tribute of food and water so as to avoid becoming a target for violence. This is a problem that there are laws in place to prevent; so I ask you, what good are the laws? Arizona has a sovereign right to deal with its problem in its own way if the laws that are currently in place are inadequate to do so. Clearly, they are.
As to the fear that this would lead to a police state, nobody--and certainly not this law--would favor giving police the right to pull people over at random and ask for some identification and a little information. That would be very intrusive, and we would never do that. Except, of course, unless we suspected that somebody somewhere might be drinking alcohol. Then we'd set up checkpoints at random, pull cars out at random intervals, ask for identifaction, and administer a very invasive . . . oh, wait. Why would it be okay to do this for alcohol but not for illegal entry into the country?
But nobody would want the police to have the authority to pull them over, demand to see their papers, and then if there's any question at all about them to haul them into jail to await a "clearing up" of the issue. Why, that would make us awful people--we'd be just like Mexico if we were to do that.
If we're going to call an activity "illegal," we ought to deal with it as illegal. You can make all the arguments you want about "jobs Americans won't do" and "hard working people taking care of their families," but the same could, at one time, have been said of many people within Al Capone's organization. Illegal is illegal. You need an i.d. to check out a movie at Blockbuster; you need an I.D. to get into a YMCA--I don't think it's too big of a deal to ask you to have an I.D. that shows that you belong in this country.
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