(Moving things over from my old blog)
I meant to post this a few days ago, but it's been a sleepy weekend.
I'm sure we're all well aware of the new bill in Arizona; if you aren't, why the hell are you reading this? Anyway, basically it says that if somebody is suspected of being illegal, they will be asked for all the necessary documentation, and if they can't provide it, they go to jail.
Now, I have a few problems with this:
1) How are they going to "suspect" that somebody is illegal? Only two ways: what they look like or how they speak. If they are not white, check 'em. If they have an accent or don't speak English, check 'em. And anybody knowledgable in law know that this is racial profiling, and is wrong. You can't decide whether you think somebody is illegal or not based on race or language.
2) The bill doesn't specify what "proper documentation" is, and as a video circulating quickly on YouTube shows, ID isn't necessarily all you need.
So basically, I could decide to (and have been, to prove my point) ask anybody who doesn't speak proper English to show me their ID, birth certificate, Social Security, and Immigration papers, and I have to see all of those right that second or you're going to jail. This causes problems, not only because NOBODY caries all those papers around, but also because if somebody was born in America, like the man in the video, they won't HAVE immigration papers.
No comments:
Post a Comment