The whole illegal immigrant law thing is being challenged. I heard about it on NPR. The basic jist of the appeal is that it results in nothing more that racial profiling if you ask folkst o prove their status when stopped for other violations... One major flaw I readily saw was that a driver's license is an accepted form of proof. I personally know illegals that have driver's licenses and some here legally that don't. I mean, duh...really?
Beyond that I got to thinking and chuckled to myself as I wondered how hard it is to fake an American accent. Movie actors do it. We all faked other accents at some time in our lives. How hard could it be? What would make our language so special that you couldn't fake the funk? I don't know. Do you?
And another topic came up in the car this week. We were discussing Columbus and how he called everyone Indians when he got here. I pointed out that it was rather silly...I mean you go off searching for a new route to India because they have silk an all this other cool shit. Then you arrive in America. There's no silk, the people look different and they don't even sound the same. Really dude? Did you not realize you fucked up? Or were you trying to look good? And why we continue to call Native Americans by the name Indian confounds me.
I always thought "indian" was derived from "indigenous," but maybe that's wrong.
ReplyDeleteThe AZ law is wrong on so many levels. There are too many avenues for abuse. If we're gonna make any one group produce "papers" on demand, we should make everyone do the same, and I'm not about to carry proof of citizenship everywhere I go. There are mexican people in the southwest who speak spanish whose families have been here for hundreds of years.
Have you read the law, do you have family that live down there? Do you know that if you don't have ID the only thing that they arresting officer can do is turn them over to INS to solve what is going on? Do you know that the law is almost verbatim what the federal law states? That is just gives the police the power to transport to INS? Do you know that once a week someone in Tucson is killed because of the drug wars? Do you know that 6 years ago my brother a bus diver was not afraid to go to work and now he is scared for his life? Do you know that one of the girls in our famliy is blond, 12 and a prime target for kidnapping? Do you know that all of this does not make the national news because it is not "good" press?
ReplyDeleteThat my 18 year old son cannot ride the bus home from work because of the drug activity on the streets at night, and this is in a "good" part of town.
Do I agree with the law, no but something had to and needs to be done. The feds are not or were not helping so the state took steps to protect those there.
Lots of those problems exist here in CA as well, but they are not soley attributed to illegal immigration. There has been a noticeable increase in violence where I live. Hell, my neighbor got shot last year, there was a shooting in front of my house three weeks ago, and none of that was illegals. There is plenty of homegrown violence. I don't live in AZ so maybe the increase in crime there is soley attributed to illegals, I don't know. I agree something needs to be done, but I'm not sure the AZ law is the answer. Legalizing pot would help the situation. I read recently that the majority of the mexican drug cartel trade is in marijuana, and the reason there are more drug cartels in our states is because of beefed up border security post 09/11. They now have to grow on our soil because smuggling it has become so dodgy, so we have an increase in violent illegals involved in the drug trade as opposed to regular Juans who just want to cut your grass. Meanwhile, we should stop corporations from exporting manufacturing overseas and prohibit Corporate banks like Indymac from hiring customer service reps located in call centers in India and prohibit tech folks from hiring online web and software developers in Bangledesh. All of that also takes jobs from Americans.
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