The new immigration law passed in Arizona was summed up in the Huffington Post quite well.  It reads,

The latest bill would make it a state crime for illegal immigrants to not have an alien registration document. It also would require police to question people about their immigration status if there's reason to suspect they're in the country illegally.
How is this anything but racial profiling?  What other suspicion are these cops gonna have than the color of their skin and how they pronounce their vowels?   Even McCain says it is what it is. 

Since Dec 2006, 22,700 people have died to do cartel violence.  Violence stemming from our insatiable demand for drugs in this country.  Why not attack this problem where it lies, drugs and money.  Asylum requests have sky rocketed recently as people flee their war torn neighborhoods.  Schools are swelling because not only single men are crossing the boarder now but families escaping machine gun fire and shoot-outs in broad day light.  Bullying hard working people already here is not the answer.  Kill the problem at its core with drug rehab and other demand reducing actions allowing people to live where they are.  It's obvious to me at least that people from Mexico love their home.  The majority come here out of desperation.  Supply and demand make it worth the trip.  We demand cheap labor and chemicals in our blood stream.  It all started with this basic economic concept and the solution must come from the same place.

Jake

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Killing the drug problem is not exactly simple. Going on 2 decades in the "War on drugs" and it is only getting worse. Jails are already overcrowded with drug offenders. Not really much more we can do. Sometimes we need to use a lame law to enforce the real ones.

Racial profiling sounds bad, but guess what - essentially everybody who sneaks across the border from Mexico is Mexican. So should they stop white guys? That would be a waste of time, don't you think? And regardless of the Alien status card, illegal immigrants are by very definition "illegal" so does it matter what we arrest them for? I mean they finally got Al Capone on tax evasion because proving he was a mobster and murderer was too hard.

Not really for or against the law, just sharing some thought about your post. Have a good one.

-Taylor

Anonymous said...

The "lame law" line in the first paragraph was a fragment that should have been deleted - sorry it doesn't make sense. :)

A Sweater Friend said...

You are absolutely right that it is a very complicated situation. It spans thousands of miles and has been happening for decades. It's interesting the effect taking out the Colombian Cartels in the 90's has had in the power structure in Northern Mexico. Change one thing and lots more follow.

I just feel like singling out brown skin people isn't going to fix the situation. We live in a place that use to be part of Mexico, and thus contains remnants of that culture and skin color. So many families have called the west home for years.

When I look at my wife's pictures from Mongolia, for the most part the people look the same to me. This is because I haven't spent time with them personally. Any culture different then mine is sadly viewed thru stereo types and I am not the only one guilty of this. As a missionary, when I was sent to teach immigrants (legal AND illegal), I took part in racial profiling at first. I wound up having some pretty embarrassing moments of trying to speak Spanish to someone who was born here and views themselves to be just as American as you or I. It didn't work for me and I don't think it will work for Arizona. I taught people with white skin and blue eyes for Mexico, I know people that only look like immigrants because they can't afford name brand clothes. We might as well put out a mandate to check the legal status of the bottom tax bracket because that is what this will turn into.

The poor will get poorer, the rich will get richer and drug smugglers will keep doing what they are doing.

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