BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?

Subject: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Genie
Date: 27 Apr 10 - 09:40 PM

I know there's another thread about Jan Brewer, but not everyone knows who she is, and this incident happened before she signed into law Arizona's new requirement that law enforcement officials MUST ask for and obtain proof of legal residency when they have any reason to suspect that someone might be in the state illegally.

This indicent illustrates how obtrusive and potentially costly it can be, even for US citizens,
if it is against the law not to carry things like a passport or birth certificate with you at all times.

Video: AZ Truck driver forced to show birth certificate claims racial-profiling

[[The shape of things to come? Sure looks like it. And this incident happened before Gov. Jan Brewer signed the SB1070 into law on Friday. Video and story from AzFamily.com.

PHOENIX – A Valley man says he was pulled over Wednesday morning and questioned when he arrived at a weigh station for his commercial vehicle along Val Vista and the 202 freeway.

Abdon, who did not want to use his last name, says he provided several key pieces of information but what he provided apparently was not what was needed.

He tells 3TV, "I don't think it's correct, if I have to take my birth certificate with me all the time."

3TV caught up with Abdon after he was released from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in central Phoenix. He and his wife, Jackie, are still upset about what happened to him.

Jackie tells 3TV, "It's still something awful to be targeted. I can't even imagine what he felt, people watching like he was some type of criminal."

Abdon was told he did not have enough paperwork on him when he pulled into a weigh station to have his commercial truck checked. He provided his commercial driver's license and a social security number but ended up handcuffed.

An agent called his wife and she had to leave work to drive home and grab other documents like his birth certificate.

Jackie explains, "I have his social security card as well and mine. He's legit. It's the first time it's ever happened."

Both were born in the United States and say they are now both infuriated that keeping important documents safely at home is no longer an option. ]]

Why should a US citizen be required to carry more than a valid driver license when at work driving a vehicle?    If the law enforcement officials have reason to suspect the driver license is fake, why should the "suspect" not be allowed a reasonable time period, e.g., 72 hours, to produce better documentation?   

Being arrested can, in and of itself, keep you from getting some jobs in the future, even if you are acquitted or the charges dropped.   And having your work day interrupted while you go to the police station to deal with the charges can lead to major inconvenience, loss of income during that time, and perhaps loss of a job.

This is the sort of harassment that will probably become standard operating procedure under Arizona's new law.

There are better and fairer ways to deal with the problems of illegal immigration.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: pdq
Date: 27 Apr 10 - 10:18 PM

"There are better and fairer ways to deal with the problems of illegal immigration."

So, why don't you explain exactly what they are?

Many US citizens have been waiting 30 years or more for the federal government to do something about the millions of illegals driving on our roads, taking our jobs and lowering the academic standards of our schools. Not to mention the explosion of drugs and crime.

All we get is inaction and various forms of name-calling and finger-pointing. Many of us think that various vested interests actually want the illegals here.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Rowan
Date: 27 Apr 10 - 10:23 PM

When I saw the new of this on Oz TV my immediate thought was, "Ah, the South African apartheid passbook system rises its head. Again."

CHeers, Rowan

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Genie
Date: 27 Apr 10 - 10:28 PM

Number 1 would be cracking down on employers who hire illegals -- especially the big companies that do so.   Make the fines stiff enough to be a deterrent and, in the case of flagrant or repeat violations, put some executives in jail.

Second, strengthen labor unions. Make it harder for employers to harass, intimidate or penalize employees for trying to organize workers.   "Card check" would be a good start.

Third, make it harder to get a driver license without proof of legal residency and maybe make the documents harder to fake.

As for the illegals lowering our academic standards, I'm not convinced they bear much responsibility for that.   The US schools' graduates lag far behind those of many other developed countries, even in areas where there are not a lot of immigrants.   And immigrants who want to become citizens often know far more about the US constitution and US history than a lot of native-born Americans do.

And you're right: various very powerful interests do want the illegals here.   Primarily the big corporations and anyone else who wants to drive down wages.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: pdq
Date: 27 Apr 10 - 10:37 PM

"Number 1 would be cracking down on employers who hire illegals -- "

Fine, but the employer has done nothing wrong!

In fact, it is illegal for an employer to ask citizenship status, national origin, sexual preference, medical history, and a host of other items.

To do so could result in a federal felony conviction and/or a huge fine.

No, the feds must stop illegals at the border or the states will take charge. Arizona first, Utah second, hopefully Nevada will be next.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Bobert
Date: 27 Apr 10 - 10:45 PM

Bring this one on!!!

I mean, yeah, there's alot of hatred of primarially Hispanics (evidenced by pdq's post above) but let's get real here... In the 90's when everyone was employed and all cylandars were a'workin' we didn't hear any of this anti-immigrant crap we hear now...

It's kinda similar to our own history of slavery.... Yeah, as long as black folks as slaves were building the infastructure of this country all was peachy and we didn't hear all this "Well, them people is some bad peoples"...

But let time get a little tight and we get this same blame game from the same folks... We all know who they are... Top of the list is Redneck Nation which is always ready to vamp on anyone who don't look like them and who think that watching cars drive around in a circle is, ahhhh, entertainment... Yeah, these folks top the list...

But's it's more than just Bubba... It's alot of folks out there who just plainly don't like people who are different than them... And these folks ain't the NASCARers but they are no less predudice, regardless of their stations in life...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Genie
Date: 27 Apr 10 - 10:55 PM

pdq, you are wrong about employers not being allowed to check legal immigrant status.   (And who the heck said anything about asking about sexual preference, race, national origin, medical history, etc.?)

Arizona already has a law requiring employers to do an e-verification of employment eligibility status of prospective employees.

A lot of other states do too.   Why do you think we issue Green Cards?

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Genie
Date: 27 Apr 10 - 10:57 PM

Oh, but, pdq, I have heard that employers in AZ are using the required e-verification procedure only about 6% of the time.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Riginslinger
Date: 27 Apr 10 - 10:58 PM

In any event, it's an environmental issue, and Jan Brewer is on the side of history.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: mousethief
Date: 27 Apr 10 - 11:03 PM

The federal government requires all employers to fill in an I-9 for each new employee. They MUST verify that the employee has the legal right to work in the United States.

pdq, you're full of shit.

Having to show citizenship papers when stopped by the cops, however, is a hallmark of such wonderful, freedom-loving countries as the USSR and communist China. And the Teabaggers hate the Democrats? Total nuts.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: pdq
Date: 27 Apr 10 - 11:09 PM

Just for the record, Mexico requires that all visitors carry papers and show them if asked.

Federal law in the US probably requires the same, but we do not enforce such laws.

The states are tired if waiting and one has acted, others will follow.

My family has been for this country since 1789 and fought in seven wars, died in five.

We have earned the right to say who comes here and who does not.

If there is going to be a war, the sooner the better. If we do nothing, we have already lost.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: mousethief
Date: 27 Apr 10 - 11:11 PM

I note you ignore the fact that you were wrong about the I-9s.

You can cut and paste this:

You're right, I was wrong.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: artbrooks
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 12:05 AM

Genie, I disagree about drivers licenses. Those are, or should only be, proof that a person knows how to drive. Denial of them to illegal immigrants only results in people driving who aren't licensed and don't know what they are doing. Use of them as a substitute for an identification card because the US is unwilling to issue such a thing is counterproductive. I was tailended several years ago by a woman with no license, no insurance, no registration...and no habla.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Riginslinger
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 12:18 AM

Actually, denying drivers licenses to illegal aliens encourages them to got back to where they belong.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: mousethief
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 12:30 AM

You can't possibly believe that? It encourages them to drive without a license. If they don't care if they're here illegally, why the fuck would they care if they're driving illegally?

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 12:39 AM

"Actually, denying drivers licenses to illegal aliens encourages them to got back to where they belong. "

What planet are you from? They will drive regardless of any licence - as do many in Australia whose licence has been cancelled for drink driving, as well as other offence which disallow them from possessing a licence, such as certain medical conditions.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Janie
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 12:54 AM

PDQ, on the maternal side, my Caucasian ancestors arrived in this country in 1704. On the paternal side, my Cherokee and Iroquois ancestors arrived pre-history, and the Caucasians arrived in 1735. If longevity of family lines in this country is your criteria for who has the "right" to decide, then I just trumped you.

From within my own paradigm, I reject your assertion that longevity of lineage within the political borders of a country automatically confers special rights or privileges to me or to my descendants. But suppose I did share your view. With rights comes responsibility. I see no evidence of you assuming the intellectual responsibility to think through the implications for you or your descendants of the various potential consequences, intended and otherwise, of the different ways in which those rights might be exercised.

I don't think there is any person on Mudcat who would argue that we do not have significant issues to deal with regarding immigration.

You present as a caricature. I'm never sure if you are simply amusing yourself by trolling, or if you are an otherwise bright person who choses comfortable ignorance and complacency, or a fearful person clinging to some illusion that you think might provide safety if you can only make the illusion real.




Whatever.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 12:57 AM

This New Mexico legislation makes me worried from a number of perspectives.
From my 25 years of experience as a Federal investigator, I cringe at the idea of state and local law enforcement officers usurping the enforcement of something that is clearly a federal issue. Local officers don't know the ins and outs of immigration law. Federal officers tend to target the "coyotes" who guide hundreds of illegals across the border. Interference from local authorities can destroy Federal operations that work on a larger scale. If Federal agents aren't doing their job, then fix the problem there instead of replacing them with vigilantes.

The Fourth Amendment prohibits "illegal search and seizure," and generally prohibits police from stopping people who give no indication of involvement in criminal activity. What indication does a person give that he/she is legal or illegal? Physical appearance and language are the only attributes, and many Arizona-born citizens look and speak just like Mexicans. What's going to protect them from being stopped by police, time and time again? If you're a white American, how many times have you been stopped by police? How would you feel if you were stopped several times a year, just to check your papers?

It seems to me than in service of preserving ethnic purity in the State of Arizona, this law sacrifices the freedom and privacy of all citizens. If Arizona truly intends to enforce this law equitably, I certainly hope that police officers stop and inspect a number of white Arizonans, in proportion to the percentage of Anglos in the general population. And if those Anglos don't have papers, they should be treated the same as Mexicans.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Genie
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 01:29 AM

@ pdq - "

Just for the record, Mexico requires that all visitors carry papers and show them if asked.

Federal law in the US probably requires the same, but we do not enforce such laws."

The US may technically require that of all visitors -- I don't know, but when I lived in Canada I was not required to carry my passport or proof of landed immigrant status with me. But we do not require that citizens carry such proof when travelling within the US.

Mexico probably does not require their citizens to do so either.

It's not only damned inconvenient to carry such documents on your person at all times, but it poses great risk of loss or theft of those important proofs of identity and legal status.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Genie
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 01:32 AM

Art (et al.), I'm undecided about the driver license for illegal immigrants thing.    I know I had to show my birth certificate to get my first driver license and I've usually had to give my Social Security number -- which I would not have had if I had not been a legal resident.    (Yes, documents can be forged, but that's a whole nuther topic.)

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 05:00 AM

In the trucking incident reported above, as it is being reported by "trucking industry news" commentators, the driver showed his CDL (commercial driver's license) which is supposed to require a background check comparable to what is supposed to be required in most states for school bus drivers, private investigators, child care operators, etc; but additionally showed his HAZMAT certification (Hazardous Material Transport) which can only be obtained from the Fed, and which requires a background check comparable to what "used to be" sufficient for clearance to access US SECRET information and materiel.

The Gestapo detained him until his wife obtained birth certificates for them both and delivered them to where he was being held. (They had threatened to sieze and deport her if she arrived without her own birth certificate.)

Unless she has travelled outside the US and has a current Passport, it's unlikely that the governMess of Arizona has "proof of citizenship" that would be satisfactory under those terms.

While I haven't seen recent statistics, fewer than 20% or so of US citizens even have a "birth certificate" to show according to fairly recent reports, since most states send a "certificate of registration" (if anything) to parents when a child is born, which has no more legal standing than a newspaper clipping. In some places, all one gets is a "form letter" from the doctor/hospital where the birth took place - again no more "legal" than a clipping from a church newsletter.

A separate request must be made to obtain a notarized COPY of the officially registered birth certificate that would be acceptable as a "legal proof" for most purposes; and few people bother getting one until they run into some special circumstance where it's needed.

NOBODY in the US has an "original" birth certificate in their possession, since the "original" is not valid until it's registered with, and held by, the state. No "original" is ever released, so the best anyone can do is a copy. Some states don't even send a copy, but at best will only provide a "certification" that an original is on file.

John

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 05:32 AM

millions of illegal immigrants Really? Millions? I think that is probably a bit exaggerative.

My father (whose antecedents predate and served in the Revolutionary War) who served in US Army during WWII and South Korea twice would be terribly ashamed of this turn of events. What the hell did he fight for?

What Rowan said about apartheid - I agree.

If the greedy corporate capitalists had kept manufacturing industry going in the USA instead of moving it overseas where labour is cheaper, do you think anybody would be complaining about illegal immigrants coming in to do the dirty work no one wants to do?

Maybe you will think again when you spread that jam on your toast and pour your orange juice tomorrow morning - who picked the fruit and were they even permitted bathroom breaks while they worked.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: GUEST,Jim Knowledge
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 06:03 AM

I `ad that Sitting Bull in my cab the other day. I could tell `e was a bit miffed, `is `eaddress was all cockeyed and `is toma`awk was a bit blunt.
I said, "Whats up Chief?. You look like you`ve been to a pow-wow and somebody`s nicked the Pipe of Peace"
`e said, "Jim, I`ve just been looking at that Mudcat and you wouldn`t believe the claims some of `em are making. They reckon that since some of your lot came over in the 1700`s and `ad a few bundles they`ve got the right now to say comes in".
I said, "Seems reasonable to me, `fraid that`s showbizz. Might is Right and all that".
`e said, "Showbizz! My lot `ave been `ere since Adam was a boy but nobody listened to us when we kicked up a fuss!!".

Whaddam I Like??

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Lox
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 06:09 AM

On the issue of driving licenses,

It makes sense that if someone doesn't have permission to live in a place that they shouldn't have permission to drive in that place.

In response to the point that illegals will drive with or without a license, I don't see how this is an argument for issuing illegals with driving licenses. Surely it questions whether there is any point?

Finally, if someone is driving without a license then they will be "checked out" whether they are legal or not.

If in the process it is discovered that they are an illegal, then that is helpful to the immigration services and cuts down on beaurocracy and money spent trying to police illegal immigration does it not?


In response to PDQ - so you think fighting wars for a place gives you a legitimate claim to it? So China's war in tibet gave it legitimacy there? japans conquest of south east asia at the start of WWII gave it legitimacy there?

What a load of old cobblers.

I suspect that your uneducated approach has less to do with mexican pupils in your class and more to do with your inability to process information and preference to cling to preconception and prejudice.

How many mexicans were there lowering the standards of your school so much that you produce so much ignorant bile now?

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 06:20 AM

Gee, the Los Angeles Times estimates there were 10.8 million illegal aliens in the U.S. in 2009, down from 11.6 million in 2008. The total population of the U.S. is about 307 million.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Ron Davies
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 07:44 AM

It's fairly evident that this move is actually political positioning by Gov. Brewer.   Arizona, like some other states, is facing a deficit.    Gov. Brewer has indicated she might be open to raising some taxes.   This of course is anathema to the Right---which of course includes huge numbers of Republicans.   In order for her to win the tough Republican primary coming up soon, she had to try to win back conservatives (and reactionaries).   By signing this bill, she has in fact done this.

It's also fairly evident that this law will not stand. Court challenges will stop it. So Gov. Brewer will be able to say to the Right:   "Look, I did what I could on this issue."

It does force the President's hand to try to do something about a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, an issue he had not planned to deal with this year. Of course this is also partly due to pressure from Sen Reid, also facing a strong challenger, this time in the fall election.

More later.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Ron Davies
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 08:11 AM

As you probably know, there are many--legal--Hispanics in Nevada. Sen Reid realizes he desperately needs their votes. So he is pushing for a comprehensive bill dealing with illegal immigration, and most definitely including a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.   Like Gov Brewer, he will be able to say to the group whose votes he is angling for, that he did everything in his power to get it done now.

The difference of course, is that Sen Reid's approach, besides helping him politically, is the right thing to do. Gov. Brewer's is dead wrong.

We've been over this several times before.   Without a path to citizenship, no illegals will come out of the shadows. Nor would any other rational person. Any suggestion that the 11 million illegal immigrants can--or even should--return to "country of origin" is perfectly senseless.    They do many jobs Americans do not want.   Many have been here so long that "country of origin" is a feeble joke.

It is also pointless to suggest a crackdown on employers.   Many illegal immigrants are employed in the agricultural sector. A crackdown, particularly in border states, will only encourage them to move their operations elsewhere--Mexico is an obvious choice.   Yet supposedly those who yell loudest to crack down on employers are also complaining about jobs leaving the US.

The idea of changing current birthright citizenship is, like others of the so-called "anti-amnesty" group, a recipe for disaster.    Anybody who doubts this should look at France recently, which has a large group of young people who are not citizens--and therefore feel no stake in the success of the country--in fact, since jobs for them are hard to come by, they are prone to violent protest.

It is also a canard to suggest that illegal immigrants are responsible for much violent crime--for the obvious reason that they do not want to call attention to themselves, and therefore would tend to try to keep any interest of the law in them to a minimum. I have read, I believe (but can't locate the source right now) that for instance I believe it's El Paso, close to the Texas-Mexico border, has in fact one of the lowest rates of crime.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Ron Davies
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 09:07 AM

In fact, as has been noted before in other threads, anybody truly interested in the welfare of American workers, and not just trying to use this idea as a smokescreen for his own prejudice would, if he thought clearly about the problem, be in favor of a path to citizenship for illegal aliens.    It is obvious why:    if illegal immigrants are driving down wages for legal workers, the reason is that employers know they can pay below minimum wage, and the workers dare not complain for fear of deportation.   If all illegals were made legal, they could blow the whistle on any employer paying below minimum wage, or otherwise mistreating them.

It is also clear that the alleged concern with overpopulation, particularly as it affects the environment, is a facade for prejudice. Much current environmental degradation in the border area is caused by illegal immigration and by the current fence, planned to be extended. Both of these problems would be addressed by making illegal immigration legal immigration. Also it is a historical truism that first generation immigrants often have big families--but with education and more prosperity immigrants realize their quality of life is better with smaller families. And succeeding generations take this to heart. So extrapolation of large immigrant families into the future is not justified.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: olddude
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 09:54 AM

It is a terrible thing to think that anyone in America should have to show papers ... This is not pre WWII Germany. This is not what this country is about or was founded on ... verification while crossing international borders yes ... but stopping people at will ... Not in America.

Any country has the right to secure their borders ... so secure the borders but you do not single people out at random ... If you give up one of your rights you give up all of them.   Ben Franklin said it best that any nation that gives up its freedom for more security ... Has neither.

When laws are broken, laws should be enforced .. but do it according to the Constitution of the United States. Not by some third world policy or we will wake up to a country we no longer recognize

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Donuel
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 10:11 AM

Vacation Arizona,
but bring a birth certificate.


If arrested for not having proof of citizenship, the fine includes a $500 fine. This is equivalent to the fine for running a red light in Los Angelas.

That is alot for leaving your wallet in your other pants.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: olddude
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 10:11 AM

An interesting dynamic recently. In town a Mexican family had a child who came down with a serious illness. The whole town came out like gang busters to help. Fund raising, donations etc.   Yet if you go to a coffee shop you will hear the same people say " all the people hopping the border yada yada". What is the difference, One is looked at as our neighbour and our friends, why? because we know them. The other is some nameless face perhaps. Now any nation has the right to secure their borders, not only for safety reason but for economic reasons and provide a vehicle for lawful entry ... fair enough, enforce the laws. But dollars to donuts if you tried pulling the paper stuff on these good people that were just helped the cry of foul would echo to the highest office from this town. Yet the same people without thinking would say good idea when reading this paper work law .... I can only think that when it affects those we know, major issue with it, but if it is a nameless face ... ok fine .. well it is not fine. The folks wanting it , are not just not thinking and I do understand their frustration of lack of law enforcement ... but this is not the answer

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Charmion
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 10:17 AM

Like Canada and Britain, the United States is a "common law" country, where the state cannot, under normal circumstances, require an individual to prove his/her identity unless s/he is doing something that requires a licence from the state, such as driving a motor vehicle.

"Civil code" countries, such as France, Germany, Spain and Mexico, are different in this respect, which is why such countries issue national identification cards that their citizens and resident aliens are required to carry.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Riginslinger
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 10:25 AM

Now both Utah and Arkansas are talking of doing the same thing. It's about time.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: pdq
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 10:30 AM

For the who like to quote the Los Angeles Times, here you go:


                                                                   From the L. A. Times:

1.   40% of all workers in L. A. County (L. A. County has 10.2 million people) are working for cash and not paying taxes. This is because they are predominantly illegal immigrants working without a green card.

2.   95% of warrants for murder in Los Angeles are for illegal aliens.

3.   75% of people on the most wanted list in Los Angeles are illegal aliens.   

4.   Over 2/3 of all births in Los Angeles County are to illegal alien Mexicans on Medi-Cal, whose births were paid for by taxpayers.

5.   Nearly 35% of all inmates in California detention centers are Mexican nationals here illegally.

6.   Over 300,000 illegal aliens in Los Angeles County are living in garages.
                                       
7.   The FBI reports half of all gang members in Los Angeles are most likely illegal aliens from south of the border.
                                       
8.   Nearly 60% of all occupants of HUD properties are illegal.
                                       
9.   21 radio stations in L.A. are Spanish-speaking.
                                       
10. In L. A. County 5.1 million people speak English, 3.9 million speak Spanish. (There are 10.2 million people in L. A. County.)

                                 (All 10 of the above facts were published in the Los Angeles Times)

Less than 2% of illegal aliens are picking our crops, but 29% are on welfare. Over 70% of the United States' annual population growth (and over 90% of California , Florida and New York) results from immigration. 29% of inmates in federal prisons are illegal aliens .

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: IanC
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 10:53 AM

PDQ

What's your point exactly? Theat illegal people end up outside the law?

:-(

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: olddude
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 11:48 AM

In 1941 this country rounded up Japanese Americans and put them in prison. Why, because they were Japanese and we were at war. Decades later we cannot apologize enough, we cannot believe that we could do this to our own people.   So do we not learn anything from history? ... apparently not !!

Now there are plenty of laws on the books for enforcing illegal immigration ... so enforce it ... but this act is nothing more than a return to a dark and sad time in our history. More and more I see the Bill of Rights going down the tubes in the name of security. Exactly what Franklin warned against ... we better start learning from mistakes but sadly it seems like we just keep making more of them

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Ebbie
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 12:04 PM

pdq, you appear to be getting lazy. See this:
Some true, some not


http://www.snopes.com/politics/immigration/taxes.asp

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: pdq
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 12:11 PM

Ebbie, read what I said, not what you want to see:

                                     (All 10 of the above facts were published in the Los Angeles Times)

Can we assume that you are not outraged at the crime and carnage in LA?

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Ebbie
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 12:43 PM

And may I point you to the Snopes findings? "Origin: The various figure quoted above were not taken from a 2002 Los Angeles Times article. They appear to have been gleaned from a variety of sources and vary in accuracy as noted below:"

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 01:26 PM

It makes sense that if someone doesn't have permission to live in a place that they shouldn't have permission to drive in that place.

Bang goes the international long-haul trucking business right there. The consequences would make the Iceland volcano look like peanuts.

Surely this Arizona law is flagrantly in violation of the Fourth Amendment? How did anybody ever come to take it seriously for more than a few seconds?

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Genie
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 02:17 PM

Ron D, I agree that " this move is actually political positioning by Gov. Brewer," but I think the main reason is probably not just to win favor with Republicans and with anti-immigrant voters in general. This law is positioned to enable tens of thousands of Hispanic US citizens being disenfranchised this November, by being "challenged" at the polls -- or, more likely, by being intimidated into not showing up to vote at all.

Just as William Rehnquist made a name for himself within "conservative" circles back in the 1960s by "challenging" African-Americans' and Native Americans' right to vote, at the polls, many Republicans (including hired guns from out of state) will be at the polls to force anyone who "looks like they might not be legal" to show proof of citizenship (a voter registration card and driver license will not be sufficient).   Many people cannot take off time from work or child care long enough to go find the required documents, plus a notarized official copy of a birth certificate can cost over $100 (prohibitively expensive for poor people); and apparently this new law would might a would-be voter to actually be taken to the police station and booked, pending verification of their citizenship, just because they tried to vote.    Anyway, the fear of being harassed, fined, jailed, etc., just for trying to vote is likely to deter a lot of legally registered Hispanic Americans from voting.    That's the plan.

Even if the courts should rule this law unconstitutional -- and I'm really hoping the Roberts-Scalia-Alito-Thomas SCOTUS bloc doesn't get the chance to rule on that issue -- that won't happen till after the November 2010 elections.

Jan Brewer, while Secretary of State in AZ, "purged" the voter registration rolls of about 1 out of every 3 Hispanic-Americans, including many whose registrations were perfectly legal.   Just as Katherine Harris purged the Florida voter rolls of thousands of African-Americans' registrations in the fall of 2000.   

Make no mistake about it, this is a primary purpose of this new "anti-illegal-immigrant" law.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Bill D
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 02:25 PM

Some of the various opinions I read above seem very thoughtful and reasoned...and, except in certain cases, very moral and civil......but some of them also start from some arbitrary position with embedded premises, and do not really address or account for some practical considerations.

One example...Ron Davies, whom I know personally and usually agree with, suggests "a path to citizenship" for illegals. Now, I have not interviewed any personally, but I know that... if *I* were in another country, wishing to get into the USA, but afraid to take the chance, and I heard that 'if you just hide well and hold out until they get tired of looking for you, they will eventually give in and grant you citizenship'...well, I would take that as an incentive to try it myself.
Sure...I see the temporary advantage in an amnesty/citizenship program....but the next time? I see no way being suggested to deal with the basic problem of controlling how many immigrants of ANY type we can absorb, no matter HOW desperate & decent they MAY be...not to mention how to juggle the demographic imbalances that will result.
I read homilies about how "this country was BUILT on immigrants", but I don't read anything about 'how to tell when it's full'. The situation NOW is just not the same as it was in 1700...or 1845...or even 1912!
   I am truly sympathetic when I read about the struggles of folks in poorer, developing countries....but the ultimate solution is NOT to just pack up and create colonies in other countries where it 'looks better'. Immigration to ANY country should be on a basis designed to absorb them in a manageable way, in education, health, employment...etc.
   Simply chanting slogans about 'unfair profiling' and 'making everyone carry papers' does nothing to address the basic issues. And putting pressure on politicians to 'vote THIS way about my relatives who are here illegally or trying to just creates awkward, patchwork laws which vary from state to state.

When I look at all these issues, I try to see it as if I was not personally involved with any of the people, laws, or situations..(as hard as that is to do). I try to find KEY issues in the flood of side issues which are so easy to shout about or put on signboards.. "We are human,too!"..."Justice for all!..."Who are U without us?"

I do NOT want to uproot families or cause businesses to struggle to replace workers, or deny opportunity to honest, deserving people! But neither do I wish to see this situation drift aimlessly until it erupts in chaos.

My father used to baffle us boys when we were 8-9 with the question..."If you were carrying all the feathers you could carry, could you carry one more?"
I still don't know the answer.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: pdq
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 03:10 PM

Jan Brewer, while Secretary of State in AZ, "purged" the voter registration rolls of about 1 out of every 3 Hispanic-Americans, including many whose registrations were perfectly legal.

33% of "hispanics" living in Arizona are foreign-born. Brewer purged them from the voter rolls as she is required to by law. She did her job, nothing more.

As far as the "perfectly legal", you have no way to support that claim with fact.

"...Katherine Harris purged the Florida voter rolls of thousands of African-Americans' registrations in the fall of 2000.

Katherine Harris purged the voting rolls of convicted felons who had not yet restored their voting rights and people who were registered more than once. One guy was registered seven times.

She was required by law to make sure that voter rolls were not corrupted. She did her job.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Ron Davies
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 03:11 PM

Genie--

That's an excellent point--that it is partly to intimidate Hispanic voters. I would expect however that enforcement of the Arizona law will be halted long before the election-- by the court challenges now being readied. Of course you can never assume anything--but I would think the unconstitutionality of the law should be clear to most observers--certainly the unreasonable searches aspect of it--especially given that there is no doubt that on occasion legal citizens will be caught up in this.

Even if enforcement of the law is not halted before the fall election, I would think and hope it could be made clear to all voters exactly what proof of citizenship is required to vote.   And if good old boys-- and girls--are only required to have an ID--say driver's license--or non-driver's license, which is what non-drivers now get-- then it should be possible to make sure that no other requirement than this is asked of other citizens.   Just on the chance that the law is still in effect in the fall, groups interested in Hispanics voting should make a major campaign between now and the fall to make sure that any citizen non-drivers have a non-driver's license. Further, they should be firmly assured that this will suffice in order to vote.   This should be done now, not later.


And even perhaps escorted to the polls, to make doubly sure the possible intimidation you speak of does not happen there.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Ron Davies
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 03:23 PM

I expect that the Arizona law would not have to be ruled unconstitutional by the
Supreme Court to stop it;   a lower court can stay enforcement of it, pending further litigation.

Perhaps a constitutional scholar among us can address this.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Genie
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 03:25 PM

pdq, you are wrong about the validity of the voter registration purges of people with Hispanic-sounding or African-American sounding names. Many legal, duly registered citizens of Arizona and Florida were, in fact, unfairly purged -- e.g., because they had the same name as, or a name similar to, someone else who was a convicted felon (even in another state) or a non-citizen.   Brewer and Harris put the burden of proof on the registered voter, plus the purges took place to close to the time of elections for the purged voters to be able to get the record corrected in time to vote in those elections. Some states have thus enacted laws prohibiting such voter registration list purges within several months of a major election.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Genie
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 03:42 PM

In case the Snopes link ceases to work (as sometimes happens), here are just a few rebuttal and clarification points they made about the N Y Times list that was based mainly on Heather MacDonald's testimony before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims:

"1. 40% of all workers in L.A. County (L.A. County has 10 million people) are working for cash and not paying taxes. This was because they are predominantly illegal immigrants, working without a green card."

What portion of the 40% does that "predominantly" cover?   And what % of the illegals are Mexican or other Hispanics?
Many workers and small employers, including citizens, deal in cash to avoid paying various taxes.
Even then, workers do pay many taxes when they spend their $.

(Snopes) 'Studies in the early 1980s in Texas and New York concluded that the taxes paid by immigrants exceeded the cost of providing public services to them, but that the federal government got the surplus of taxes over expenditures, and local governments had deficits. Los Angeles did a study in 1992 that reinforced this conclusion.'


"2. 95% of warrants for murder in Los Angeles are for illegal aliens."

MacDonald's testimony was actually that 95% of OUTSTANDING HOMICIDE warrants (which includes involuntary manslaughter, self-defense, etc.) TARGETED illegal aliens.

(Snopes) Up to two-thirds of all fugitive felony warrants (17,000) were for illegal aliens.
If these estimates are correct, it could be partly because illegals are more likely to flee the jurisdiction before their cases are adjudicated than legal residents are (not necessarily because they commit a far greater share of the homicides in Los Angeles).

It could also be, to some extent, selective prosecution. Many homicides are never solved, and being arrested for homicide does not prove guilt.


"3. 75% of people on the most wanted list in Los Angeles are illegal aliens."

The Los Angeles Police Department's "Most Wanted" list generally does not immigration status or nationality, plus many entries refer to persons of unknown identity.

"4. Over 2/3's of all births in Los Angeles County are to illegal alien Mexicans on Medi-Cal whose births were paid for by taxpayers."

CA Vital Records Dept. estimated that 62.7% (not "over ⅔") of births were classified as "Hispanic" in ethnicity - not "illegal" or "Mexican").
(Also, if Barack Obama is "African-American," then several of my nieces and nephews are "Hispanic" or "Asian," even though one of their parents is "white, non-Hispanic.")

"5. Nearly 25% of all inmates in California detention centers are Mexican nationals here illegally."

The L.A. County Sheriff reported in 2000 that 23% of inmates in county jails were deportable aliens, not necessarily Mexican nationals.   
(Legal immigrants can be subject to deportation if convicted of a felony.
How many of them are in detention FOR the crime of being here illegally?)

"6. Over 300,000 illegal aliens in Los Angeles County are living in garages."
   
(If it's known where they live, why is it so hard to arrest and deport them?)

"7. The FBI reports half of all gang members in Los Angeles are most likely illegal aliens from south of the border."

No actual statistics are known, and the estimates we have are from the CA Dept. Of Justice, not the FBI, and mostly about one single Hispanic gang, not about street gangs in general.

"8. Nearly 60% of all occupants of HUD properties are illegal."

(Again, if it's known that illegals are living in these properties, why aren't the INF folks on the case?)

"9. 21 radio stations in L.A. are Spanish speaking."

Which says nothing about citizenship or legality of immigrant status.
Half the streets, towns, landmarks, rivers, mountains, etc. in the state of California have Spanish names. Same goes for those other Spanish-named states like Arizona and New Mexico.

"10. In L.A.County 5.1 million people speak English. 3.9 million speak Spanish (10.2 million people in L.A.County)."   

How many are bilingual?

---
Most of the comments added here are excerpts or my summaries of information from the Snopes.com article. A few are my own observations.
Urban Legends Reference Pages © 1995-2010 by Barbara and David P. Mikkelson.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Genie
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 03:49 PM

Oh, and on the driver license issue, of course you can legally drive in a state or country with a valid driver license from another state or country (in most cases, anyway). How else would tourist vehicle traffic, interstate and international commerce, etc., flourish?

I'm saying you shouldn't be able to get a license to drive in Arizona if you can't demonstrate that you are legally entitled to live in that state at least on a short-term basis (such as a student Visa).   

That said, I have seldom in my life ever had to produce a copy of my birth certificate or a passport to deal with most government offices. I don't even think I've had to show one to get a voter registration card in a state where I was employed or a student.    I've had to show proof of residence and maybe age (not recently *G*) and maybe give my social security number, but that's all.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Genie
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 04:05 PM

Pdq, Robert F Kennedy Jr followed up on Brewer's voter roll purge. Here's some of what he found:

Greg Palast, slate.com

[[In 2008, working for Rolling Stone with civil rights attorney Bobby Kennedy, our team flew to Arizona to investigate what smelled like an electoral pogrom against Chicano voters ... directed by one Jan Brewer.

… Beginning after the 2004 election, under Brewer's command, no less than 100,000 voters, overwhelmingly Hispanics, were blocked from registering to vote. In 2005, … one in three Phoenix residents found their registration applications rejected.

That statistic caught my attention. Voting or registering to vote if you're not a citizen is a felony, a big-time jail-time crime. And arresting such criminal voters is easy: after all, they give their names and addresses.

So I asked Brewer's office, had she busted a single one of these thousands of allegedly illegal voters? Did she turn over even one name to the feds for prosecution?

No, not one.

Which raises the question: were these disenfranchised voters the criminal, non-citizens Brewer tagged them, or just not-quite-white voters given the José Crow treatment, entrapped in document-chase trickery?

… [A] federal prosecutor … was sent … all over the Western mesas looking for these illegal voters. "We took over 100 complaints, we investigated for almost 2 years, I didn't find one prosecutable voter fraud case."

This prosecutor, David Iglesias, is a prosecutor no more. When he refused to fabricate charges of illegal voting among immigrants, his firing was personally ordered by the President of the United States, George W. Bush, under orders from his boss, Karl Rove.

Iglesias' jurisdiction was next door, in New Mexico, but he told me that Rove and the Republican chieftains were working nationwide to whip up anti-immigrant hysteria with public busts of illegal voters, even though there were none.

"They wanted some splashy pre-election indictments," Iglesias, [t]he former prosecutor, himself a Republican, [told me].

But Secretary of State Brewer followed the Rove plan to a T. The weapon she used to slice the Arizona voter rolls was a 2004 law, known as "Prop 200," which required proof of citizenship to register. ...

...

State Senator Russell Pearce, the Republican sponsor of the latest ID law, gave away his real intent, blocking the vote, when he said, "There is a massive effort under way to register illegal aliens in this country."

How many? Pearce's PR flak told me, five million. All Democrats, too. Again, I asked Pearce's office to give me their the names and addresses from their phony registration forms. I'd happily make a citizens arrest of each one, on camera. Pearce didn't have five million names. He didn't have five. He didn't have one. ]]

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: pdq
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 04:15 PM

Actually, the list I posted as "having appeared (at one time or another) in the Los Angeles Time" seems to have a reasonable base of fact.

The studies published by Heather MacDonald are important. An extensive article here but well worth reading:

                                                                     illegal immigration facts

"Police commanders may not want to discuss, much less respond to, the illegal-alien crisis, but its magnitude for law enforcement is startling. Some examples:

• In Los Angeles, 95 percent of all outstanding warrants for homicide (which total 1,200 to 1,500) target illegal aliens. Up to two-thirds of all fugitive felony warrants (17,000) are for illegal aliens.

• A confidential California Department of Justice study reported in 1995 that 60 percent of the 20,000-strong 18th Street Gang in southern California is illegal; police officers say the proportion is actually much greater. The bloody gang collaborates with the Mexican Mafia, the dominant force in California prisons, on complex drug-distribution schemes, extortion, and drive-by assassinations, and commits an assault or robbery every day in L.A. County. The gang has grown dramatically over the last two decades by recruiting recently arrived youngsters, most of them illegal, from Central America and Mexico.

• The leadership of the Columbia Lil' Cycos gang, which uses murder and racketeering to control the drug market around L.A.'s MacArthur Park, was about 60 percent illegal in 2002, says former assistant U.S. attorney Luis Li. Francisco Martinez, a Mexican Mafia member and an illegal alien, controlled the gang from prison, while serving time for felonious reentry following deportation.

Good luck finding any reference to such facts in official crime analysis. The LAPD and the L.A. city attorney recently requested an injunction against drug trafficking in Hollywood, targeting the 18th Street Gang and the "non–gang members" who sell drugs in Hollywood for the gang. Those non–gang members are virtually all illegal Mexicans, smuggled into the country by a ring organized by 18th Street bigs. The Mexicans pay off their transportation debts to the gang by selling drugs; many soon realize how lucrative that line of work is and stay in the business."

{a small part of article found a link above}

" In Los Angeles, 95 percent of all outstanding warrants for homicide (which total 1,200 to 1,500) target illegal aliens. Up to two-thirds of all fugitive felony warrants (17,000) are for illegal aliens."

So, Genie, you think your posts have refuted that statement?

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: pdq
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 04:27 PM

"So I asked Brewer's office, had she busted a single one of these thousands of allegedly illegal voters? Did she turn over even one name to the feds for prosecution?

No, not one."

That's silly. Jan Brewer was Secretary of State. The job of law enforcement is that of state Attorney General.

Besides, Palast is not a journalist, he is journalistic terrorist. As bad as Pilger.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Ron Davies
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 04:28 PM

Sorry, PDQ

1)   "95%".   No source given except Heather McDonald

2)   Heather McDonald:   scholar of the Manhattan Institute--very conservative group.   Possibly not immune to cherry-picking figures.   We need somebody with a bit more credibility as far as objectivity, e.g. WSJ article (not column).

Quoting her is just quoting a column. On this controversial topic, not good enough.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Genie
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 05:06 PM

pdq, Brewer's office could easily have handed off to the Attorney General or other state officials to prosecute any criminals they'd found, if any had been found. And Robert Kennedy offered Pearce's office that he would see that any of these felons were arrested - publicly - if they would give him the names of any illegal aliens who had attempted to register to vote.   Nada.

You dismiss Palast because he is a liberal.   But he does solid investigative reporting and carefully cites his sources and facts.   The investigation he cites was done by Robert F Kennedy, Jr., who is also very credible (even though he is a [shudder] populist progressive).

Much of Heather MacDonald's testimony was extrapolation from stated facts, mischaracterization, and unwarranted assumption.   Nobody is disputing the allegations in the NY Times column just because of her politics; her allegations were followed up and found to be erroneous in many cases and merely speculative in others.

---
pdq: " In Los Angeles, 95 percent of all outstanding warrants for homicide (which total 1,200 to 1,500) target illegal aliens. Up to two-thirds of all fugitive felony warrants (17,000) are for illegal aliens."

So, Genie, you think your posts have refuted that statement?

As has been pointed out,
MacDonald omitted the word "outstanding," further paraphrased, thus making it sound like 95% of "murders were committed by illegal aliens.

1) not all homicide is "murder"
2) not all suspects are actually guilty
3) outstanding warrants are for people who have not been apprehended -- e.g., if they have fled the area
4) illegals are more likely than US citizens to flee if wanted on suspicion of a crime -- EVEN IF THEY ARE INNOCENT -- because they are subject to fine, imprisonment, and/or deportation simply for BEING illegal residents.

Is it really surprising that a high percentage of the homicide SUSPECTS who are avoiding arrest are those who are here illegally?

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: pdq
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 05:21 PM

Again, the actual quote from Heather MacDonald's article is:

"In Los Angeles, 95 percent of all outstanding warrants for homicide (which total 1,200 to 1,500) target illegal aliens. Up to two-thirds of all fugitive felony warrants (17,000) are for illegal aliens."

Read it again. It has not been properly quoted not reasonably refuted.

I would hope that any figure even close to 95% would bring shock and a bit of outrage at the carnage being inflicted on innocent people, citizens and non-citizens alike, but sadly I see no such outrage, just excuses.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Donuel
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 05:21 PM

Dear Mr. Old Dude,
You said, "It is a terrible thing to think that anyone in America should have to show papers ... This is not pre WWII Germany."


Police already have the authority to demand that you identify yourself, including some proof of your identity when any kind of complaint is made against you. As for Germany, papers were demanded before, during and after the war. Since 9-11 I have had to show a driver's license every time I take my wife to work, not because I am a terrorist but because some nut wit thought it was going to be a deterrent to terrorists.

If the Arizona suspicion law is allowed to progress to other states, as Mr. Rigshitanslinger hopes, white nut wits will end up causing another unecessary war against America from within. Then the nit wits will cry, where is all our California produce?! Where is our lawn care guys?! Why are the normally peaceful hispanics now violent?! Hey, where's the maid?

The hardship of immigrants, with or without green cards, having to leave their children behind or having their wife or husband deported is already so outlandish that new repressive laws aimed at 1/30th of our population will be the straw that broke the donkey's back.

No, old dude this is not Nazi Germany, it is America with many people who do not even know when their brand of patriotism or fear is actually more fascist than freedom loving.

888888888888

Mr. Rigshitanslingit, wants MORE States to adopt the Arizona law. Perhaps he is right in that the law does not go far enough. Perhaps a suspicion of being an immigrant without papers is only a start.
The law should go farther and include being stopped for suspicion of being an Ass Hole. In which case Rig would be arrested at once.
If you think SUPER SIZING our suspicions by giving Police more powers of suspicion will solve anything regarding border control and immigration policy, then you are just plain superstitious and superstupid.


IF ANY OF YOU REALLY WANT MORE ARIZONA LAWS...consider this:

suspicion of being a non believer? been there done that.
suspicion of being a Jew? been there done that.
suspicion of being a socialist? been there done that.

suspicion of being hispanic? Let's see how this one turns out.

\DH 2010

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Donuel
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 05:24 PM

We are lucky to have journalists like Greg Palast.

btw he is not a liberal.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Ron Davies
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 05:28 PM

PDQ--your "source" is still Heather. Lacking credibility.   Also need context.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Ron Davies
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 05:31 PM

Also, particularly Genie's #4 is very germane--even if the 95% has any credibility, which is not yet established.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: olddude
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 05:41 PM

all of that aside we cannot throw out the constitution period

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Sorcha
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 05:44 PM

Does this mean I need to carry my (expired) passport and birth cert in my wallet now? If so, I need new ones....

IMO, it just SUCKS!

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Greg F.
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 05:57 PM

40% of all workers in L. A. County (L. A. County has 10.2 million people) are working for cash and not paying taxes. This is because they are predominantly illegal immigrants working without a green card.

Hmmm.....if they're working for cash, and they're working off the record with no paper trail or record, precisely HOW did the L.A. Times arive at this figure? Pull it out of their a$$, perhaps?

BOGUS!

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Lox
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 06:00 PM

Sorcha,

What if you're stopped on the way to the passport office as you drive down to collect it?

Looks like a life of virtual reality for you ... unless you want to be deported ...

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Bill D
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 06:10 PM

Out of vague curiosity, did anyone actually READ why I said back there? Or were you all too caught up in double-checking each other's detailed statistics and sources and bickering over arcane points of definition, as if showing something was 93% instead of 95% proved something in particular?

The law proposed in Arizona IS flawed, and will likely be wiped away before it ever goes into effect, and Ron is correct that Brewer is mostly just positioning herself politically......but the situation that allows anyone to PROPOSE such a law is gonna be with us indefinitely. Does anyone have any idea what to **DO**, even if this stupid law disappears in a few weeks?

There are several questions...should ANYONE be required to be able to prove who they are whenever a law officer thinks he has cause to inquire? Should ANY profiling be done for the purpose of enforcing immigration issues? By whom and under what circumstances? How should quotas, if any, be established? What should BE the criteria we use to even answer those questions?

   The answers to such questions are not obvious & automatic, but almost no one is asking the questions or addressing the actual situations that deal with the basic problems.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Ron Davies
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 06:26 PM

Bill--


It's not "93% vs 95%" but the entire credibility of anything Heather McDonald says. I suspect PDQ would not especially like figures tossed out by, say, Keith Olberman, attributed to some other group.

Heather has, for instance written on the "controversy over so-called racial profiling".   Though racial profiling may not occur as often as Mudcatters think, it does exist.   Someone who denies it totally loses believability. She is plainly a polemicist.


Like Keith Olberman in a similar situation, at this point Heather has no credibility without backup. And if the 95% proves without foundation, PDQ's argument falls.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Genie
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 06:33 PM

pdq, you're ignoring most of the refutations and clarifications of those stats MacDonald states about homicides and illegals.   
By ignoring the word "outstanding" (and its implications) and by assuming too much about where "illegals" are from, you are reaching unwarranted conclusions.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Ron Davies
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 06:41 PM

Even if the "95%" can be supported, a few other aspects:

Look where the "95%" is alleged to occur. Not on the actual border with Mexico, but in LA. LA is like many other large cities, with gang warfare. A possible theory is that the homicides are predominantly the result of gang activity--primarily killing each other. Information in gang killings is not easy to come by--and we are not even sure how diligently the police would pursue it.

If this is so, it is obviously not indicative of illegal immigrant activity in general--since as noted earlier, most illegal immigrants would want as little contact with the law as possible--for obvious, and already discussed, reasons. Gangs are not "typical" illegal immigrants.



This is all pure speculation--but the "95%" is a totally unsupported, practically meaningless number--so at this point it deserves speculation.

We can return to it if more context--and particularly source-- is provided.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Bill D
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 06:47 PM

*sigh* I have no interest in what Heather McDonald said... *I* doubt she is to be trusted to provide unbiased information....but that has no relation to what I was asking and concerned with.
It seems to be more important to pin pdq to some wall with 'error' written across his forehead ...or for him to get YOU on some point....than to address what I said...

Ok...carry on. I'll leave you all to it. I guess I should have realized it's just an Israel/Palestine game of "I can Google more statistics than YOU" game transferred to another topic.

Who me? Cynical... ☺...naawwww....

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Genie
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 06:57 PM

Bill D, you may be right that the enforcement of the law may be put on hold until all constitutional challenges have made their way through the court system. (I'm not confident that the same 5 SCOTUS justices who just overturned 100 years of precedent, plus the original intent of the Constitution, to allow unlimited campaign contributions from coporations will not somehow find a contorted argument for ruling this obscene law constitutional.)   
But some of this kind of harassment and persecution has already been going on, even before Brewer signed this law into effect. And it will probably get worse now that this law is on the books, even if it's challenged in court.

There may be situations in which "profiling" is warranted - e.g., if a robbery suspect is described as a tall white male with a beard, you look for people who kind of fit that description, not for short black women.    But even if the majority of illegal aliens in Arizona are from Mexico, that does not imply that even a large percentage of "Mexicans," much less of all "Hispanics," are illegal.    Targeting most "Hispanics" because most illegals are "Hispanic" is badly designed profiling - the kind that persecutes innocent people without really helping deal with crime.

Before a law like Arizona's would be fair or sensible, better, clearer criteria need to be established for what constitutes probable cause to suspect someone is illegal.   Not speaking English could be a component of such a profile but neither a sufficient nor a necessary one.    Being paid cash "under the table" for very sub-standard wages might be another component (in which case probably the employer needs to be investigated) too.
But I can't see why anyone who is minding his or her business and not violating any other laws should be stopped and required to prove they have legal resident status, except in the case of businesses suspected of hiring illegals so they can exploit workers.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Ron Davies
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 07:47 PM

Hey, Bill, the rest of us can "sigh" too.

But even you sometimes come up with straw men.   I don't know anybody who wants to have the situation "drift aimlessly" til it explodes.

The general consensus, aside from PDQ and Rig, seems to be:   path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. That is the foundation of our answer to the problem.

Unless I've missed something, your postings have mainly tended towards "this is a tough problem"--but no proposed solution.   The "solutions" proposed by other posters have been, to put it bluntly, recipes for disaster and or wildly impractical:   crack down hard on employers;   end birthright citizenship, etc.

We at least do have a proposed solution, which is not, by the way, "amnesty"--there would be stiff requirements (learning English, no criminal record except those "crimes" associated with illegal entry itself, etc.) which we went into back in 2007). Obviously the terms of the path to citizenship still need to be ironed out.

But what we need now is a true agreement among all those of good will that in fact the path to citizenship is the only long term solution for illegal immigrants now here. And we have to open the door to others from the outside a bit wider, so that the immigration which will happen anyway will be legal, not illegal.

Still haven't seen anything else remotely practical.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Don Firth
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 07:51 PM

What the hell, Rig and pdq, let's cut to the chase here!

Why don't we just round up everyone who looks like they might not belong here (you know, dark skin, they talk funny) and whisk them off to concentration camps?

Concentration camps will need a lot of guards, so that will help solve the unemployment problem. We could employ even more people to build gas chambers and dig mass graves. . . .

If you're going to do it, quit pussyfooting around. Just DO it!!

Don (A Modest Proposal) Firth

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Ron Davies
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 07:52 PM

Also, I said this morning that court challenges would probably result in a stay of enforcement of the Arizona law.

I would guess this will happen without a Supreme Court decision.

Do we have any expert testimony on whether this is so--or not?

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Genie
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 08:09 PM

Bravo, Don! You've solved the whole mess in just a couple simple steps! : ) *g*

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Ron Davies
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 08:15 PM

Shall we call you Dean Firth?

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Genie
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 08:16 PM

Ron, am I the only person concerned that the Roberts SCOTUS just might finagle some way to rule this IS constitutional?

And that the only way to avoid the charge of "racial profiling" would be to start randomly checking ALL people in the US - even when they're not at work or driving or voting or anything like that?    (You're in your Speedo at the beach and you get arrested and hauled off to the police station because you chose not to take your wallet with you?)

And that, since carrying around valuable, sensitive identification documents isn't safe, the solution is to implant a microchip into every person, from birth or whenever the law takes effect, whichever comes later?

The illegal-immigrant problem notwithstanding, my concern in this thread is about the possibility that we are moving toward Nazi Germany, etc., where all of us have to be able to prove, at any moment, that we are not breaking the law by actually living and breathing here.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 08:37 PM

"We could employ even more people to build gas chambers and dig mass graves"

You're a bit late Don - if you had been keeping up with the net conspiracies - think they even been here on Mudcat - there ARE already such large constructions all around the US, ready for just such a contingency....

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Bill D
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 08:44 PM

What makes it "a tough problem" Ron, is what I posted at 2:25PM...check it out...

short version: 'a path to citizenship' solves nothing for the long run, and the approaches by politicians are temporary and self-serving.

When all suggested solutions are only band-aids, the wound will never really heal.

" I don't know anybody who wants to have the situation "drift aimlessly" til it explodes."...right...they just want to delay the explosion till THEY are gone.

You want my solution? It is similar to Will Rogers when he suggested "boil the ocean" as a solution the German submarines. When told that was silly, he replied. "I'm just the idea man, we have experts to figure out how."

I suggest that we must 1)Begin to control population...worldwide. 2)Work with Mexico (the biggest immediate concern) to **control** borders, and also to stop the drug cartels IN Mexico, much as we approached it in Colombia, as this is causing a lot of the fear in Mexico and adding to the desire to leave. 3) Devise a GOOD way to allow temporary worker to come here....and to be sure they ARE temporary. 4) and...NO amnesty ..any 'path to citizenship will require that everyone identified MUST go home and get in line and file proper applications. 5)a total end to the idea that 'a child born here gets automatic citizenship, and thus special treatment for his family.....and.... 6)NO drivers licenses for illegals. If someone is already breaking the law, certifying that they know how to drive is irrelevant.

and maybe 7,8 & 9 ....but those may be harder than boiling the ocean.

Yes... I see all the objections to my suggestion, but *I* see the problems with all *I* have heard so far. I don't expect a BIG explosion, but rather, an increasing number of small ones as hot-headed bigots begin to react in classic hot-headed bigot ways until this situation begins to resemble the border wars in the Middle East.

...and OH, would I love to be proven wrong and see quiet diplomacy and international cooperation deal with the basic problems, instead of the 'band-aids until someone else has to cope with it' approach.

Now, I guess I'd better go brace myself for the sputtering and metaphorical bricks

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Sorcha
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 08:47 PM

Deport me to WHERE? Are they going to cut me up in little peices?
That could be next.

Bill, I have a ton of respect for you, but this law just SUCKS. Let us HOPE that it is NOT upheld when it finally reaches SCOTUS. That could take years.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: beardedbruce
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 09:02 PM

BillD,

"3) Devise a GOOD way to allow temporary worker to come here....and to be sure they ARE temporary.
4) and...NO amnesty ..any 'path to citizenship will require that everyone identified MUST go home and get in line and file proper applications. "


These are OBVIOUSLY bad ideas- since I agree 100% with them.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Bill D
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 09:38 PM

"... but this law just SUCKS. Let us HOPE that it is NOT upheld"

Yes indeed... THIS law,as written is stupid & unfair.

Bruce.. " since I agree 100% with them."...uh-oh, what did I miss? ☺ I wonder if our motivations are similar?

Let me be clear... I do not LIKE most of the approaches I recommend. Even the most 'fair' ideas are sad and frustrating, as they mean delays and harassment for those involved. There weren't enough lifeboats on the Titantic either, and not everyone in the Oklahoma land rush had a good horse.

One verse in the Bible admonishes humans to "be fruitful & multiply".... I would think that if an omniscient god meant that, he'd have assumed they understood that it didn't mean infinitely.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Ron Davies
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 10:39 PM

Jan here!


I was on parole in this country for the first five years that I lived here, according to the INS . "On parole" was stamped into my passport, and that was done every time I came into this country.   And supposedly the UK was the #1 US ally!   It took them four years and a lot of money from us for them to finally give me my green card. I could have been chucked out of the US for any little thing in that time, and I wasn't allowed to leave the country for the first eighteen months. So because of that I didn't see our first grandchild until she was nearly two years old. Now I will have to go through lots more INS nasties to gain citizenship here.

This country takes my fingerprints at every opportunity, and every time I come back into the country from visiting my family in the UK. (It also has my sons and their families' fingerprints. It has all my fingerprints and whole hand-prints several times over. My own country doesn't have my fingerprints at all because I have never done anything wrong. Every person who wasn't born here is treated like a criminal, so why would I ever want to become a citizen of such a paranoid unwelcoming country? The reason for me is I want this nonsense to end, and as I pay taxes and work twelve hours a day I want to have the right to vote so that I can change things here!

Added to this, every thinking person should realize that our families were all immigrants at one point. It's a shame the 1492 Homeland Security didn't take our fingerprints and turn us away.   There but for fortune go I, and we should all recognize this.   Only the Native Americans have a right to complain. They were here before any Europeans.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 10:41 PM

"One verse in the Bible admonishes humans to "be fruitful & multiply""

No, the scribe misheard him and misremembered it later while sober - He really said - "Have some fruit, it's good for the eyes"!

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Janie
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 10:46 PM

Bill and Joe,

Well said, both of you.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Ron Davies
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 10:53 PM

Bill--

I'm sorry:   "go home" and get in line is just wildly off-base.

1)   As I indicated earlier, many have been here so long that "go home" to "country of origin" is a feeble joke.

2)   If you ever make "go home" and get in line a condition for path to citizenship, no illegal immigrant will ever come out of the shadows voluntarily.   Would you, in their place?   I would not.

3) Since they will not voluntarily come forward and "go home" how will you enforce this?   Informants? You know what direction this is leading.

4) If they did all magically get whisked "home", you'd see what a huge hit to the US economy that would cause.   Not anything that should be wished by a thinking person.


It's clear that the proposals put forward by Genie, Art, and I, among others, are the only sensible ones.


Among other things, again, as Genie and I have already pointed out once today, any person truly concerned about illegal immigrants forcing down wages of US workers should be in favor of a path to citizenship for illegals. If they were legal they would not be vulnerable to unscrupulous employers paying less than minimum wage, or otherwise mistreating them, then holding the deportation threat over their heads if they complained. All workers would benefit.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Donuel
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 11:09 PM

It is sad to hear people like Bill essentially say that immigrants are wounding our country and that the wound won't heal if all we do is use band aid fixes... what? he didn't say exactly that? Well that doesn't matter since he still sounds suspicious.



This is a subject that Christians (like Foolstroupe) should be quoting Jesus and not racist degenerates like Palin and Hunter. (present company excluded - for now). and yes I meant Jesus and not Haysoose.

I would wager that Latino Immigrants are not a net loss for our country. Even illegals average 1,600 dollars in taxes per year. Hospitals get federal and state subsidies. Schools are desperate everywhere since Wall St. sacrificed 11 million US jobs for a handful of millions of dollars in temporary profits.

I learned today that part of the new AZ law says that any citizen may sue any law enforcment officer who does not do his duty to satisfy the reasonable suspicion law. Now that is another damned if you do - damned if you don't 14 million ton can of worms.

As for the lengthy debate over the validity of a quote regarding 95% percent; 95% is in fact an actual valid statistic, in search of a scenario to fit.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 11:10 PM

"country takes my fingerprints at every opportunity"

One of the things about the US that horrifies Australians! And this is the important continent where critical parts of US Military spy stuff is hidden - even from Aussie citizens - the Aussie Govt has 'no right to even inspect the facilities'! The US No 1 pacific Ally!

Other horrors include frenetic 'hog tie' handcuffing by the Police at any excuse! What about that poor truck driver too? A while ago footage from a US program show a guy whose wife had thrown a hot frypan - probably fat, but could have just been hot water in his face. He was screaming in pain, but was hog tied. At least the cop was human enough to turn the hose on his face AFTER the mandatory hogtieing... what next, the execution after the fair trial?

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 11:14 PM

"This is a subject that Christians (like Foolstroupe)"

How dare you insult me sir! Watching the behaviour of many of those who publicly and obnoxiously loudly PROFESS such beliefs and demand that others should also convert to THEIR narrow minded hysteria sickens me to the extent of almost regretting my Lutheran upbringing!

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Ron Davies
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 11:16 PM

I've also pointed out--more than once--that though first generation families are often large (and this has been historically true for many groups), often they realize with education and more prosperity that quality of life is higher with smaller families--and they act on that in succeeding generations.

So extrapolation of large Hispanic families into the future indefinitely is not justified.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Donuel
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 11:26 PM

So what do we do about ALL this?

















Don: I KNOW, lets put on a play about the AZ law and hire immigrant actors and stage hands!

Bruce: Well you better make sure they're legal first.

Rapaire: I'll check the girls!

Ebbie: I'll do the boys!

Ron: I'll handle the statistics!

Genie:    I think you're missing the point.

Group in unison:   hmm maybe you're right.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: ichMael
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 11:33 PM

I'd have to look, but I believe it's Article IV of the constitution that says the feds will ensure each state a republic form or government and protect each state from invasion.

What Arizona has on its hands is an invasion. Illegals pour across the border. They come to the US for the government programs. Can't blame them, but it's hard on the economy.

But if the feds would hold up their part of the statehood contract, the border wouldn't be porous. Aren't we "at war with terrorism?" The first thing you do in a war is shut the borders to protect attack. So why is the Mexican border so open? Arizona had to do something to protect itself.

It'll be interesting to see what the courts say.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Ebbie
Date: 29 Apr 10 - 12:04 AM

Good gracious! How do I "do" the boys?

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Sandy Mc Lean
Date: 29 Apr 10 - 12:10 AM

Are we not all of The Family Of Man? (Woman as well)
Borders are nothing but artificial lines drawn upon this beautiful Earth that we all share!
Let us all sing in unison Woody's Refugees!

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: mousethief
Date: 29 Apr 10 - 12:24 AM

"Invasion"? You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

You can't be at war with an abstract noun. It's a bit of political wank which somehow the public fell for. Then again given some of the "public" that have posted on this thread, it's not so amazing after all.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: artbrooks
Date: 29 Apr 10 - 12:46 AM

You ever been down along that border? Most of it is scrub oak and sagebrush with no water anywhere. Where there are cattle grazing, they speak in terms of 2 or 3 cattle per square mile! "Defend" the border? "Close" the border? There aren't enough soldiers, Guardsmen, Border Patrol officer and FBI agents in existence to do it. Sure, put up a 2 thousand-mile-long, 12-foot-high wall...and anybody who wants to cross it will get a 14-foot ladder and wait for a dark night - or tunnel under. 400-500 people per year are known to die trying to cross that desert - and that is almost certainly a low figure.

Some of you just don't get it. For some of these people, living 15 in a room, getting paid less than half of minimum wage and being under constant threat of being summarily arrested and sent back is worth it...simply because this is better than the lives they lead wherever they come from and because this the only way they can send money home to support their families. They will only go home and stay home if something happens to break that link. At least one estimate I've seen recently said that the number of illegal Mexican nationals in the US decreased from 11 million to 10 million last year simply because the economic bust dried up jobs. Laws like Arizona's will only drive them further underground.

A solution? Damned if I know, but repression and mass deportation ain't it. They'll be right back next month - hiding better, paid less and treated worse. If I were charged with putting some kind of a program together, I think it would include a modern version of the old bracero program, with necessary protections for employees and some assurance that they would go home when their time was up. Most of them would, believe it or not, rather be in Sonora than Alabama or El Salvador than Arizona! Much as I hate to exacerbate anyone's coronary problems, I also think it has to include some type of (oh, that dirty word!) amnesty program. There has to be special consideration for those who came to the US as young children and who have no ties to their "native lands" and to those who were born here of illegal migrant parents (and let's leave "birthright" for another day). I know some of these kids - and they think of themselves as Americans and they are Americans...except for a piece of paper.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Fossil
Date: 29 Apr 10 - 06:23 AM

pdq = troll. Rest of you, wasting your time.

I spent a long time living in Belgium where the citizen's ID card is the most useful bit of paper anyone can have. Banks, police, pubs, whatever. Flash the bit 'o paper, bearing your photo, which fits neatly into your wallet and which everyone carries everywhere, and you're home free. When you *have* an ID card the words "Your papers please" hold no terrors at all. If you don't, you'll have a lot of explaining to do. Which is the way it should be.

All that trucker's problems could've been solved if his state had had a proper ID card system, instead of leaving it to low-level functionaries to decide what's a proof of his legitimate existence. Given the ass-covering culture that exists in modern bureaucracies, something like this was inevitable. And it will happen again, and again. Mark my words!

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 29 Apr 10 - 06:36 AM

Don't you think that if the political parties would uphold the Constitution, of which they swore to uphold, instead of pandering to the interests, which pay them off, that we would be having this problem?? The very fact that they don't should be anyone's clue, that serving this nation IS NOT what they are about!!

There is NO REASON that the illegals cannot come across legally, pay taxes, like the rest of us, and freely go home when they want to their families, and come back again.

We citizens can barely build a shed, without filing an environmental report, as to the impact of the environment, but the same hypocrites who pushed for that, somehow think that 15 to 20 million, people flooding our system should be free to do that unaccounted for. Now does that make sense to you?

I think we can all remember where the police could pull you over, and fill out an FI card. I thought that was a pain in the ass, and did not see the need to be rousted, for nothing! Guess what??...They still can and DO! Now for some ridiculous reason, they can't for checking for citizenship??...and I am not for that, either..but the hypocritical, non law abiding political hacks, in Washington, have made that a 'necessity'..by not doing their job, and ignoring the law of the land!

Then what? I'm supposed to be all excited about 'electing' one of these lying jerks???
'Fraid not!!!
And that goes for most all of them!

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: olddude
Date: 29 Apr 10 - 08:52 AM

Donuel,
my point about the papers is with probable cause.   You are correct we all have to identify ourselves in many cases. But what concerns me is pulling over ethnic people and ask for papers because of their looks.   Even if a police officer thinks you are DUI but are driving down a road and violating no law they still need probable cause to pull you over. The only way around that is a road check where they check all vehicles. My fear with this is singling out one group of people. That to me is wrong ... my opinion with respect. I don't think this law makes sense, they can check alright, hence by setting up a road block and ask for ID . They do that here, for seat belts for safety inspections, for DUI.   Stopping all cars is legal since no one group is singled out. This law targets a single group and is dangerous I think to walk that road.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: artbrooks
Date: 29 Apr 10 - 10:43 AM

This wasn't in the original post: "A representative at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) returned 3TV's calls after researching the incident and she said this was standard operating procedure. The agents needed to verify Abdon was in the country legally and it is not uncommon to ask for someone's birth certificate. She also said this has nothing to do with the proposed bill or racial profiling."

It is worthwhile to note that it was the Feds who pulled this guy over, not the Arizona state or local authorities. That doesn't make it any better, of course.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Bill D
Date: 29 Apr 10 - 12:40 PM

"It is sad to hear people like Bill essentially say that immigrants are wounding our country and that the wound won't heal if all we do is use band aid fixes... what? he didn't say exactly that? Well that doesn't matter since he still sounds suspicious."

No, I DIDN'T say exactly that. What I DO say is that we have laws that are 'supposed' to regulate immigration. Someone needs to answer the question "Should those laws BE enforced?" If the answer is 'yes', the next question is either "How?" or if the answer in 'no', the next question is "What now?"

Those of you who advocate leniency and 'paths to citizenship' and 'amnesty' need to reflect on 'exactly' what what is implied in such policies.

Ron Davies, at 10:53PM last night said "If you ever make "go home" and get in line a condition for path to citizenship, no illegal immigrant will ever come out of the shadows voluntarily".
Yes, that's probably true....and if you do NOT make it a condition, those who ARE waiting in the legal line in Mexico, who may be suffering, would have a pretty good reason to cry "foul!"

I have seen no answer to this dilemma....do we just shrug and say, "Hey...we give up. No more rules, lines or waiting, since everyone agrees that strict enforcement is too hard and we can't design a fair solution. Everyone just come on over and take your chances about finding homes and jobs...but don't complain when the job market won't support you HERE any better than it did THERE."

This is not about mean ol' Bill wanting to be hard-nosed and demanding nice folks be rounded up like cattle and deported...it's about SEEING the long-term consequences of ANY policy! (drilling for oil in the Gulf leads to spills...nuclear power can bring on Three-Mile Islands... allowing people to build in 10 years flood plains means regular rescue and billions in damages)...and the list is long.

What I did was try to construct a list of consistent policies....I was not suggesting they were 'happy' policies or 'easy' policies. Perhaps MY list can be disputed...but it needs to be disputed by providing BETTER alternatives that ARE more than just a band-aid.

   I can imagine the debates among the Native Americans in the 1600s to the late 1800s..."Should we try to keep these intruders out? Or make friends and accommodate them?" Could it be that no matter WHAT the decision, the result was inevitable? Is it now the case that this country has no choice? If so, the laws need to reflect that, and we need to quit spending money on enforcement and making people take chances walking across those deserts artbrooks describes. If we do that, we need to realistically confront the logistics implied by such a decision....like... how does fairly unlimited immigration affect this new health-care legislation? You can supply many other problems in education, housing, broadcasting...
If we do NOT wish to accept the idea of free-for-all immigration, then someone needs to find GOOD answers to my list. If there are to be any limits, there must be some way to enforce those limits fairly...which means considering those waiting on LEGAL lines, as well as those who snuck in awhile back and were just lucky or good at hiding.

Much of my life has been spent with civil-rights as a background theme. I WANT everyone to be happy, free, respected and comfortable...and I spent time in Mississippi in 1964 advocating for those whose ancestors were forcibly dragged FROM their native lands. I also have spoken out for those whose ancestral lands were invaded by....US... Now I have to decide how to think about 10s of millions who want to come here from Mexico and Central America. I am trained in philosophy, and I SEE the inconsistencies in applying both pragmatism and compassion in this situation....and it hurts!
All that is why I said WAY back up there ^ that:

"From: Bill D - Posts - PM
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 02:25 PM

Some of the various opinions I read above seem very thoughtful and reasoned...and, except in certain cases, very moral and civil......but some of them also start from some arbitrary position with embedded premises, and do not really address or account for some practical considerations."

There is a concept in environmental policy called "carrying capacity"....it is just what is sounds like, the theoretical limits of what any system, large or small, can sustain on an ongoing basis. It can be applied to rats in a cage or to entire continents.....or to the entire planet.

When my father teased my brother & I by asking ."If you were carrying all the feathers you could carry, could you carry one more?", he didn't begin to see all the implications. The problem is, we don't KNOW how many we can carry....and we don't know what may trigger major problems before the theoretical limit is reached. I don't drive way over the speed limit because the danger, from the law and my own reflexes, increases with speed. Some DO. Ask them how they decide.

Ok....most of you quit reading this a long ways back...for those who are still here, or who have skipped to the end, just be aware that I try to insert all the disclaimers and qualifications and explanations I can reasonably (see?) manage in my opinions....and I am STILL not able to divert out-of-context objections. So be it.

The population of Earth is now about 3 times what it was when I was born, and many of those people are not doing well and are unhappy where they are. There are no easy solutions to this. What this thread is about is only a subset of the overall situation. Think about it.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: John P
Date: 29 Apr 10 - 01:38 PM

I don't have a solution for the problem of illegal immigration, other than possibly bring home all the jobs our large corporations have been allowed to send overseas. If there were plenty of jobs for US citizens, maybe immigration wouldn't be such a problem.

I do have a solution for the state of Arizona directing all police officers to stop anyone they think might be an illegal. All we need to do is, every time they stop a citizen without probable cause, sue the officer, the law enforcement agency, and the state of Arizona.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: artbrooks
Date: 29 Apr 10 - 01:46 PM

100

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: olddude
Date: 29 Apr 10 - 03:06 PM

As a matter of security, as a matter of economics, every country needs to have and enforce their immigration policy. If that policy is not correct then the law needs amended ... That is not any call I am making in any manner. If you have a law ... enforce it, if you don't want to enforce it then throw it out ... However, random stopping of "suspected illegals" at will, without probable cause is against the constitution of the US ...One needs probable cause under the bill of rights. Once we start throwing out portions of the bill of rights like I have been seeing lately, we will fail as a nation. My only point.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Don Firth
Date: 29 Apr 10 - 03:48 PM

"Shall we call you Dean Firth?"

Well and Swiftly spotted, Ron!

####

"My family has been for this country since 1789 and fought in seven wars, died in five.

We have earned the right to say who comes here and who does not."

Really? I have a Native American friend who has an interesting take on this kind of jingoisting remark.

####

A blogger who lives in Arizona suggested that all native-born citizens of the State of Arizona should carry identification with them, and every time they see a law enforcement officer, go up to them and insist on showing their identification.

She also pointed out that the problem is not so much the illegal immigrants, but the surge of immigrants who are become naturalized. Now legally permitted to vote, they tend to vote overwhelmingly Democrat. The Republicans, feeling the tide rising, are scared spitless, and are taking desperate measures to try to stop any kind of immigration to the state.

####

The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
                                                          —Emma Lazarus

Respectfully submitted for your serious consideration.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Genie
Date: 29 Apr 10 - 03:54 PM

Astute comment, that, Art. *g*

GfS, you and some others (mostly of the male persuasion) keep saying it's no big deal to "always" carry your ID card (in your wallet, etc.). But I wonder if you really do, and if so, how big a risk you're taking of identify theft, if that ID card contains all the info an identity thief would need.   Or how big a risk you're taking of a MAJOR ordeal should that card be lost?

Do you have your ID card on your person when you're swimming or water skiing or when you're in the shower at the gym.   Aren't there some situations where you don't carry a wallet?    For women it can be even more problematic, because we often carry a purse instead of a wallet, and that can mean the contents are more vulnerable to loss of theft since it's not always on our person.

Aside from the fact of pockets being picked, anything you routinely carry with you is more vulnerable to loss or theft than something you keep, say, in a safety deposit box or a safe place at home.    That's why people have such safe places to keep really valuable, hard-to-replace documents.   

Canadian citizens working in the US with a "green card" are advised NOT to carry it with them, but to keep it in a secure location, since it is so hard and time-consuming (and expensive) to replace it, and it has such a high black market value.   I think the same goes for things like birth certificates, passports (when you're in your own country), and other documents that contain more "secure identity" info than most driver licenses do.

It's reasonable to expect people to carry such ID as is relevant to the situation. E.g., driver license when driving, making certain monetary transactions, flying, purchasing alcohol (if you look young), applying for a job, etc.   Social Security card when applying for benefits, applying for a job, etc.   Passport when travelling outside your country of residence. Birth certificate when applying for Social Security Benefits and in a few other situations where verification of your age, parentage, etc. is important.
But I think it's a violation of the Fourth Amendment to allow law enforcement to "search" people by demanding that they present such sensitive documents unless they have "probable cause" that a crime is being or has been committed.    They should have to cite specifically what violation you are suspected of and on what grounds (e.g., the sworn testimony of someone else, or tangible evidence). And even in a case where there is probable cause, it is undue harassment to just arbitrarily make you stop what you're doing, take you into custody, book you, etc., if the ID documents they seek could be produced within hours or days without depriving you of your liberty or property (e.g., income) in the process.

Yes, I have my driver license on me 99% of the time when I'm away from my home. I also have credit cards, my cell phone, Kaiser card, asthma inhaler, kleenex, glasses, lipstick, pens, & misc. keys with me too. But I'm not required to carry those, nor would I choose to (except for the asthma inhaler) if I just wanted to take a walk for a few miles.      I hate to think of the US becoming a place where you're not allowed to just bike or walk to a friend's house or a park without carrying something with you.

If I'm walking or on a bus and stopped by a cop who asks "Your papers, please," the first thing I would ask is "Why are you stopping me?" And if there was a good reason for the stop and I didn't have it with me, I'd just say "It's at home." Why should any more explanation than that be needed?


When you say "everyone" in Belgium carries the citizen's ID card "everywhere," I suspect that is an exaggeration. I certainly hope so.

As for the trucker being stopped, the problem was the ignorance of the "low-level functionaries," not his ID.   They should have known it constituted legal residency status.

Would a national ID be better? Probably. As long as it did not contain too much sensitive information ON the card, and as long as you're not required to have it on your person at all times.    If someone steals my VISA card, in many if not most cases, if they try to use it, they will be asked to show other ID such as a DL or to provide other identity info. The credit card issuer has my SSN, mother's maiden name, my address, DOB, etc., but that info is not all ON the card.
Similarly, my DL does not have my SSN on it, even though the state has all my relevant info on file.
If we are going to have a national ID, it should be done in a similar way, with the card itself not having much of that sensitive info on it.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Genie
Date: 29 Apr 10 - 04:02 PM

Don, it's not just that the Republicans in Arizona fear the influx of NEW legal Hispanic immigrants (who tend to vote Democratic 2:1). This new law aims at disenfranchising Hispanic-Americans who are already citizens -- either by "purging" the voter registration rolls of people whose legal status someone challenges (even if they've been legally voting for decades) or by intimidating citizens of Hispanic ethnicity from showing up to register or vote.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: DougR
Date: 29 Apr 10 - 05:50 PM

Genie: If you are walking to a bus stop under the new law, a policeman would be in violation of the law if he/she asked to see your papers. That is the misconception that is being reported by just about everyone. The law states that it is against the law to use racial profiling as an excuse to ask for citizenship papers and that the only way a lawman can ask to see your papers is if he is arresting you for ANOTHER crime! Why is that so difficult to comprehend? Example: some calls 911 and reports a suspected "break-in" in the neighborhood. The cops come and arrest those responsible,IF arresting officer has reason to believe the perps are not citizens, he/she can ask for citizenship papers or some other form of identification that proves he/she is in the country legally. Now that is a fact.

Sorcha: You think the new Arizona law sucks. Do you think federal immigration laws suck? Arizona's new law MIRRORS federal law.

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Genie
Date: 29 Apr 10 - 05:59 PM

Doug, from what I've read of the AZ law, the language isn't that clear. I believe it says something like "any lawful contact" by the police, and that term is too vague to suit me.

We already have hundreds of unarmed people being shot and killed by police because the police officer "thought his life was in danger" or "thought he might be armed."    It is very easy to find some "lawful" reason to stop and question someone.   They spit on the sidewalk or maybe were sitting on it, or they "appeared intoxicated" or they "fit the description" of a suspect or they were jaywalking, etc., etc.   

And if I understand the law correctly, if someone calls the police and says "I think those people in Apt. 2-B at such and such address are illegal," some cops may think that's sufficient reason to ask them to show proof of legal residence.   

Anyway, as I said before, a major intent of this law (not officially, of course) is to make Hispanic US citizens fear harassment (or worse) by the police -- e.g., if and when they try to vote.

Until the AZ officials really start cracking down on the businesses that employ illegals, and making the penalties for them very stiff, I won't be convinced that this law is primarily about deterring illegal immigration.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: artbrooks
Date: 29 Apr 10 - 07:36 PM

According to the legal eagles consulted and referenced on Politifact.com, "Lawful contact can occur in many instances when there is no reasonable suspicion of a crime. A consensual encounter, such as asking a police officer for directions, reporting a crime to a police officer, or being a victim of a crime or a witness and being questioned by a police officer, is a 'lawful encounter.' Also lawful are some stops premised on absolutely no individualized reasonable suspicion -- think about DUI checkpoints where everyone is stopped even if there is no individualized suspicion for the stop. The bill is clear that so long as the initial encounter is lawful, a police officer can then ascertain my legal status upon suspicion that I am undocumented." I read somewhere else, but I couldn't find that quote again, that simply saying, "good morning, officer" constitutes a "lawful contact".

I suppose that it's always possible that the Arizona legislature didn't know what they were passing and the governor didn't know what she was signing. I understand the the mayor of Phoenix has asked the city council to consider suing the state to prevent implementation of the new law.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: DougR
Date: 29 Apr 10 - 08:07 PM

Genie: you are correct. You do not understand the law. My last post outlinging the circumstances under which a law officer can ask to see identification is correct. I guess it's more fun to believe the opposite (much more controversial)but that simply is NOT the case.

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: olddude
Date: 29 Apr 10 - 08:17 PM

i guess i better hold off judgement until i know more if doug is right. too many coflicting statements on the web now

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Bill D
Date: 29 Apr 10 - 09:10 PM

Well....lookee here! Immigration reform introduced in Senate

"With an estimated 10.8 million people in the United States illegally, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and fellow Democrats said the first step toward reform must be bolstered U.S. border security.

They also called for creation of a high-tech identification card for immigrant workers, a process to admit temporary workers, "tough sanctions" against U.S. employers who hire illegal immigrants, and, eventually, a path toward U.S. citizenship for people in the country unlawfully.

The Democratic proposal would also "require those here illegally to register with the government, pay taxes, learn English, pass criminal background checks and go to the back of the line to earn legal status," Reid said."



One can argue details, but they obviously see the issues. That "go to the back of the line" seems like a compromise between Ron Davies idea and my own. It 'might' work.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: artbrooks
Date: 29 Apr 10 - 09:48 PM

DougR, I'd be very interested in seeing an opinion from someone who knows about the law which agreed with your position - which I have seen contradicted by several law professors and other legal experts.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: mousethief
Date: 30 Apr 10 - 12:22 AM

I don't think that "you haven't come up with a good solution" is a good reason to accept a bad one.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Genie
Date: 30 Apr 10 - 12:46 AM

Doug R, please read Art Brooks's last post. He beat me to the punch on that "lawful contact" phrase and what it may encompass.

Bill D, I really don't want to take on the whole immigration issue within this thread (which is more about the idea of everyone, including citizens, having to carry and "show papers" on command at all times). But I agree that it's important for any "amnesty" for illegals NOT to allow them to jump line in front of people who have been plodding their way through legal channels for years.   

I also think it's important not to let immigrants - whether illegals or "guest workers" - drive down wages in the US for workers across the board.   

I know "we" love our cheap produce, etc., but if those low supermarket and Wal-Mart prices are purchased at the cost of virtual slave labor -- whether within our borders or in "outsourced" off-shore factories -- then I say we need to rethink our values and priorities.

Maybe if produce and other consumables were not so easy to get hold of so cheaply, we Americans would purchase less and waste a whole lot less.

FWIW, I don't always find the produce, eggs, etc., from the big agribusinesses all that much cheaper than what's available from small local farmers.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: mousethief
Date: 30 Apr 10 - 01:11 AM

We pay, at the grocery store, far less than the real cost of the food we buy. The rest of the cost is picked up by the underpaid and physically endangered workers, the illegally fouled environment, and the people whose lives are affected by them. If farm workers were paid minimum wage, and their working conditions were required to meet OSHA standards, and the factory farms were really forced to conform to existing environmental regulations, our food would cost a lot more. And we don't want that. So we don't do anything about it.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 30 Apr 10 - 02:33 AM

Genie: "GfS, you and some others (mostly of the male persuasion) keep saying it's no big deal to "always" carry your ID card (in your wallet, etc.). But I wonder if you really do, and if so, how big a risk you're taking of identify theft, if that ID card contains all the info an identity thief would need."

NOW THIS IS A REALLY FUNNY POST!

MALE PERSUASION?????...ROFLMAO!!

And keeping my ID with me is no big deal at all, nor am I paranoid of identity theft! Shit, who wants to admit that they're from Sanity?????

Genie: "Do you have your ID card on your person when you're swimming or water skiing or when you're in the shower at the gym.   Aren't there some situations where you don't carry a wallet?    For women it can be even more problematic, because we often carry a purse instead of a wallet, and that can mean the contents are more vulnerable to loss of theft since it's not always on our person."

What?? What do you suggest?...that we all be chipped???? I certainly hope you're not one of THOSE crazies!

Then you go on about Belgium??

Shit, let me tell you, when I'm driving down the street, and see a cop, and being as I live in a reasonably small town, by choice, I wave to them, and they wave back. Being as I'm pretty well known and favorably thought of, and respected, as not having criminal behavior or tendencies, I'm not terrified of the 'heat'!

I'm also a well known musician, who has helped raise over $200,000 for the local community, for those needing financial assistance, without going to the state.

I was stopped about 5 or 6 months ago, for not coming to a full stop, and the state cop, gave me just a warning....I told him, that I had just gotten out of the studio, in the course of our chatting, on the side of the road, and for him being so cool with me, that the next time I saw him, I'd get him a copy of what I was working on recording, the next time I saw him.
That came about 41/2 months later, and I had one in the car, which I turned around, and found him in town(I live just outside town)...pulled up next to him, waited for him to conclude his business with another car he had pulled over, and when he was walking back to his car(it was night), I called to him by name, and asked him if he remembered me. He thought for a moment, and said, "Yes! Hey you owe me a CD!"...Which I was holding up in my hand for him. He cam over to my window and we yakked for a bit...then asked him if he had a CD player in his patrol car. He thought o sec, and replied, "Yeah, I think I do, but I've never used it before"
So I got out of my car, and helped him figure out how to make it work, adjusted the treble and bass, for the right sound, and as the opening notes started, I said to him, Hey, with all the turmoil going on now these days, we could all use some of this!"
As he listened, He just said," Boy, we sure could. This is beautiful"

Moral of the story, which is absolutely true, by the way, is NO, I don't worry about identity theft...nor do I always carry my ID with me!...( Shhhhh... sometimes I don't always 'buckle up', either!)

The best defense is sometimes an offense.....Love might be that!

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: mousethief
Date: 30 Apr 10 - 03:35 AM

Sanity must be a different place than any I've ever visited.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 30 Apr 10 - 03:45 AM

mousethief: " Sanity must be a different place than any I've ever visited."

I'd love to get you there. Once you've been, it's life-changing!
Until then, I guess you can always side with politics!

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: GUEST,Fossil, somewhere else tonight
Date: 30 Apr 10 - 03:50 AM

Certainly in Belgium, also I believe in Germany and France it is a *legal requirement* to carry your State ID card with you and to produce it if asked. And most law-abiding people (certainly in Belgium, which is the only place I can speak about with absolute certainty, having lived there for 20+ years), *do* carry their cards everywhere. And if you don't have an ID card in your wallet you had better have something equivalent, such as a passport, to show if you come up against officialdom, or you are in for a hard time.

I mostly carried the card, except in special circs, such as when I went out jogging. But having come across a dead body while running in the Groenendaal forest (a whole other story) and having then had to deal with the police without my ID card, I took to carrying a waterproof pouch round my neck to have it with me at all times, even when wearing sports gear.

I can never really get to grips with why it is that people in the "Anglo-Saxon" world get so het up about the countries who use the ID card arrangement. Mostly, for the average Joe, it seems to work very well.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Monique
Date: 30 Apr 10 - 05:12 AM

Identity document wiki article. I do carry my ID everywhere. Besides being a legal requirement -though no police officer ever asked me for it so far except at the border when visiting countries we don't need a passport for- I needed it whenever I took an exam, competitive or not, opened a bank account, took a loan, I need it whenever I pay by check or whenever I go to the bank to withdraw a new checkbook if the guy doesn't know me. Besides stating my nationality, on my ID there are my photo, full name, date and place of birth, height, address + the date and place of release, so no big secret. As far as I remember they take our forefinger prints but they don't show on the ID -they used to.
Anybody can be easily traced as soon as they have credit cards and/or cell phones... so much for freedom!
Carrying an ID doesn't mandatorily mean police harassment. IMO, when people are twisted enough to harass you just for the sake of it they usually find a legal way to do it, ID or not.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 30 Apr 10 - 06:19 AM

While only slightly related in theme, this article points one of the core ideas expressed in this thread:

Pregnant Iowa Woman Arrested for Falling Down

QUOTE
That's right, a pregnant woman was jailed for admitting to thinking about an abortion at some point early in her pregnancy and then having the audacity to fall down some stairs a couple of months later.
.....
Of all the horrible, shocking elements to this case, perhaps one of the worst is the breach of confidentiality on the part of the hospital staff. Christine Taylor came to them emotionally vulnerable in order to seek help for her unborn child. She thought she was in a safe place talking to professionals in whom she could confide. Oops, her bad. As Robert Rigg, professor at the Drake University Law School, said, "How in the heck did the police get a statement made by a patient to a medical person during the course of treatment?
UNQUOTE

If serious stuff ups and breaches like this can not be stopped, why should anybody have any trust in 'public officials'?

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Genie
Date: 30 Apr 10 - 09:13 AM

Fossil, where is one supposed to carry that ID card when skinny dipping? ; )

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Genie
Date: 30 Apr 10 - 09:31 AM

Sorry, Fossil, Monique, et al., but I don't think it's paranoid to be reluctant to carry something as hard-to-replace and confidential as the IDs you describe "at all times."

My purse and/or wallet has been lost or stolen at least 6 or 8 times over the past few decades, and it was a hassle to deal with that, but nothing like it would have been had my passport, birth certificate, etc., been inside.    Those purses/wallets have been stolen from the trunk of my locked car, the filing cabinet in my university office, a shopping cart (which I never left unattended), the seat beside me in a dance club, etc. My cars have been broken into a number of times; my houses never have been.   I think it's a lot safer to keep valuables at home when not needed.

It is partly BECAUSE I need my driver license or similar ID to do things like travel by air, cash checks, drive a car, make many credit card purchases, etc., that I would probably NOT take that ID with me if, for instance, I went to the beach or swimming pool or hiking in the woods and was not going to be driving.   

I consider it very repressive for a government to require that everyone carry their papers on their person at all times. Might as well inject a microchip into everyone when it's considered a crime to have to tell an officer, "I left my ID at home," if you weren't driving.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 30 Apr 10 - 09:44 AM

I provided a link to the law above. Repeat after me.. Oh fuck what's the use.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: GUEST,Neil D
Date: 30 Apr 10 - 10:04 AM

OK then lets lock down the border with Mexico. But first let's restore it to where it was in 1835, before we started stealing their land. Sorry Arizona, you're all Mexicans now. You too Texas and California.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: GUEST,David E.
Date: 30 Apr 10 - 12:21 PM

"Sorry Arizona, you're all Mexicans now. You too Texas and California."

I believe that Oregon, Idaho, Colorado and Oklahoma already have laws to keep Californians out anyway... (joke)

David E.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 30 Apr 10 - 12:50 PM

For the benefit of those who appear not to know, Dicey, the great constitutional lawyer, and probably the most influential writer ever on common-law constitutional law (which for this purpose includes US law since the US constitution overlies a body of a common law ethos) postulated that in common-law jurisdictions one was free to do anything that was not prohibited (which he regarded as the essential foundation of true freedom under law) whereas in civil law jurisdictions the fundamental was that one merely had the right to exercise those rights that were specifically conferred.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: beardedbruce
Date: 30 Apr 10 - 03:36 PM

Just to compare with what the Obama Administration wants:


--------------------------------------------------------------------

"National ID Card Included In Democratic Immigration Bill
         

Thu Apr 29, 8:05 pm ET

Democrats pushed forward on an immigration overhaul on Thursday evening with no Republican support, as Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) continues to hold out, arguing that the divisive issue will make progress on climate change legislation impossible.

The Senate is also in the middle of debating Wall Street reform, which is expected to take up the next few weeks of floor time. Reid, however, said that the chamber would be able to handle the task. "We can do more than one thing at once," he said.

The Democratic proposal includes increased money for border patrol and drug war agents, equipment, helicopters and unmanned drones. It would create a national ID -- which is dubbed a "biometric social security card." Though Democrats insist that it is not an ID card and can only be used for employment purposes.

The proposal would also include a crackdown on employers who hire undocumented workers. It works to deport some immigrants who are not in the country legally and creates a limited pathway to citizenship for others.

Democrats brought out their heavy hitters for the announcement: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.); Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.); Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), who's been leading the push for immigration reform; Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.); Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy (D-Vt.) and Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.).

The crackdown on employers relies on the creation of national identity cards. "These cards will be fraud-resistant, tamper-resistant, wear resistant, and machine-readable social security cards containing a photograph and an electronically coded micro-processing chip which possesses a unique biometric identifier for the authorized card-bearer," reads the bill summary.

Broadly, the proposal includes:

1. More Border Patrol officers
2. More Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, worksite inspectors, document fraud investigators and drug-war agents
3. The "installation of high-tech ground sensors throughout the southern border and for equipping all border patrol officers with the technological capability to respond to activation of the ground sensors in the area they are patrolling."
4. More prosecution of drug smuggling, human trafficking and unauthorized border crossing
5. "[I]ncreases in the number of sport utility vehicles, helicopters, power boats, river boats, portable computers to track illegal immigrants and drug smugglers while inside of a border patrol vehicle, night vision equipment, Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), Remote Video Surveillance Systems (RVSS), scope trucks, and Mobile Surveillance Systems (MSS)."
6. All prisoners will be checked for immigration status and deported if found to lack documentation.
7. DHS will "identify, investigate, and initiate removal proceedings" against folks who came here legally but didn't leave.
8. The bill would create "a broad-based registration program that requires all illegal immigrants living in the U.S. to come forward to register, be screened, and, if eligible, complete other requirements to earn legal status, including paying taxes."




source


----------------------------------------------------------------

Note number 6.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: DougR
Date: 30 Apr 10 - 04:46 PM

Genie, Art: I urge both of you to check out the actual wording of the Arizona law. It's probably online and if I find it I'll post the website. Before the legislature adjourned today, they sent the governor some revisions to law intended to more clearly define how a policeman/woman can legally ask someone stopped for breaking a law must provide proof of citizenship. I don't know if the governor has accepted the changes.

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: mousethief
Date: 30 Apr 10 - 05:55 PM

DougR, that's useless. If you get pulled over by a cop, whether or not they pulled you over legally is your word against theirs. Whom is the judge going to believe? If you selected "mine" go back 10 spaces.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: DougR
Date: 30 Apr 10 - 07:21 PM

I think your reaching, Mousethief. The law is not that loose. Read it. Google Arizona SB 1070 and read the law itself. Be sure, however, to read the law at the official state website listed rather than the opinioned Huffington Report which also is listed at that site.

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: mousethief
Date: 30 Apr 10 - 07:31 PM

I don't read HuffPo. What does it have to do with the law being loose? It has to do with the police being racists. No matter how tight the law is, it will very often come down to a case of his word against his. And cops win.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: GUEST,David E.
Date: 30 Apr 10 - 07:56 PM

"It has to do with the police being racists."

I am so grateful that my son decided not to pursue a career in law enforcement and have to deal with people with bad attitudes all day long. What a thankless job.         

David E.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: pdq
Date: 30 Apr 10 - 07:58 PM

"It has to do with the police being racists."

So that's what it's all about. The cops are guilty of racism before they even talk to a suspect.

Do process? Presumption of innocense? Constitutional rights must be stripped from someone when they put on a badge?

In the real world, cops in the western US usually have a college degree and must speak fluent Spanish to do a job where they meet the public. They also have to take more psychological tests than any other profession.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: DougR
Date: 30 Apr 10 - 08:27 PM

Mousethief: I doubt, Mousethief, that it would be impossible for any legislature to craft an immigrant Bill that would be acceptable to you. Any Bill would have to involve the police and you've made it quite clear that all law enforcers are racist, so ...

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Genie
Date: 30 Apr 10 - 08:42 PM

David E, "I believe that Oregon, Idaho, Colorado and Oklahoma already have laws to keep Californians out anyway... (joke)"


That's right, David. Here in Oregon, we stop California beer trucks at the border and won't let them in.   Our great microbreweries and Henry Weinhardt got that passed.
; )

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 30 Apr 10 - 08:50 PM

pdq "It has to do with the police being racists."

So that's what it's all about. The cops are guilty of racism before they even talk to a suspect.

Mouser: "It has to do with the police being racists."

Let's get off the over-worn 'racist' bit!! Seems like every time the left wants to intimidate others with 'political correctness' overdoses ad-nauseum, they blurt out 'racist'.
First of all, Mexicans are a nationality, not a race! A lot of them are here ILLEGALLY!!! Now the law can be enforced on the grounds of 'racism??..what a crock of shit!!!

Beardedbruce: "It would create a national ID -- which is dubbed a "biometric social security card." Though Democrats insist that it is not an ID card and can only be used for employment purposes."


Big Corporatism has been wanting to chip everyone for a long time, and now, like the Machiavellian, bullshit their foisting on us, it seems like to 'appease' everyone, they offer chips to us. THAT IS BULLSHIT!!!...and once again the public is being MANIPULATED, by corporate heads, through the political parties, to a worked up emotional people, through a problem that they CREATED...to achieve a goal they have long wanted...and under normal sanity, YOU DON'T WANT, EITHER!!!

As long as we're there, one of the steps along the way, is to discredit Christianity, which they are obsessed in doing, BECAUSE 2000 years ago this was predicted, and their big obstacle is the remnant, of Bible literate Christians who know about it. Unfortunately, lots of them have deluded themselves with the 'rapture' doctrine, in which they think they won't be here for this...boy, are they in for one helluva surprise!

Chipping everyone should be opposed by EVERYONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: beardedbruce
Date: 30 Apr 10 - 08:55 PM

GtS,

I did not post that article because I agreed with it- but it seems Obama will not be criticised for doing what Az is being labeled racist for.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: artbrooks
Date: 30 Apr 10 - 09:01 PM

Doug, I have read both SB 1070 and HB 2162, in detail, on the official site. My opinion that this law violates our Constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure is unchanged. Saying that a police officer did not have "probable cause" after a person has already been locked up for not having proper ID is unacceptable. Today's change includes the lovely concept that lawful contact can include an officer's use of the new immigration law "in the enforcement of any other law or ordinance of a county, city or town or this state." Taking this to an extreme, I'd imagine this could include immigration checks based upon overdue library books.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Genie
Date: 30 Apr 10 - 09:26 PM

Aarrgghh!   The Mudcat software just ate my reply to Bearded Bruce, and it was the hardest to redo.

What you say the Obama administration is proposing, BB, is not a microchip that could be read by merchants, etc. Nor is it a card that contains all your security info right there on the card to be seen by anyone who gets hold of the card. Nor is anything being said about people having to have the card on their person at all times.

If I lose my driver license or credit card, I can report the loss and the card is immediately invalidated. Then it's not extremely hard to get a new one issued; usually just a matter of a day or two for a DL (if I go to the MV office in person) and maybe a week for a credit card. These cards have an exclusive ID number which, when run through a data base by the legitimate authorities (the credit card issuer or the police), will link to other identifying info. A person who has my card won't automatically be taken to be me, if they don't match my description and can't answer the security questions in the database.   That security info doesn't need to all be ON the card, and SHOULD NOT be.

I would not even mind "carrying" an ID tag on me at nearly all times if it were small, like my cat's pet license tag, and had only my ID number on it. That sort of thing could be carrried or worn unobtrusively even if you were in a swimsuit, and it could be very helpful to authorities if you were injured and unconscious away from home.   Like the ID card or my pet's license, the tag number could be run through an official database to determine the identity of the person it was issued to.

But it should not have a chip in it that was readable by merchants or just anyone who wanted to snoop.   In fact, there should be some technology that allowed the chip to be turned off at most times, so that your every movement would not be tracked.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: mousethief
Date: 30 Apr 10 - 09:59 PM

DougR: you've made it quite clear that all law enforcers are racist, so ...

You no read so good. Bzzzt. Try again.

GfS: The post below is mine...forgot to sign in.

Would never have known.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: artbrooks
Date: 30 Apr 10 - 10:23 PM

I've been unable to find any reference to a 'chip' on any neutral site, nor can I find the text of the draft proposal itself. CNN.com simply says 'machine-readable', which would include both bar-coding and magnetic strips.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 30 Apr 10 - 10:58 PM

Beardedbruce, I never thought you were in support of what you posted, I was just adding to it, and underlying, the understanding of what is ACTUALLY going on, with our corrupt idiots in power!

To all those who posted, in reply to my post: I understand your positions. I was NOT taking exception, to your posts....Thanks for broaching the subject!!

Respectfully,..(and humming a new composition),

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Ron Davies
Date: 01 May 10 - 12:52 PM

I have now read the text of the new law, so kindly provided to us by Doug's link.

It would be appreciated if he himself would read it. Indeed, we all should.

First, it makes clear the goal is to fight illegal immigration, and that many citizens plan to use it to do that.


A few problems: If lawful contact is made by a law enforcement official and "reasonable suspicion exists that the the person may be an alien" the person may be apprehended.

And "a person may bring an action in Superior Court to challenge any official who...implements a policy that limits or restricts the enforcement of federal immigration laws"   "Limits or restricts"--as seen by the irate citizen.

Put those together:   If the policeman does not find "reasonable suspicion" when informed by a citizen that the person in question "may be an alien", he may be sued.

So when a citizen points at a person as an illegal alien, how many policemen will refuse to apprehend the person, and thereby risk being sued?

That seems to be the crux of the law--and the reason Arizona under it would be rapidly heading towards Third Reich status.   Instead of Jews, it would be aliens.

No wonder some police themselves were against it--including the Association of Arizona Chiefs of Police. They have enough to do without being tasked with enforcing immigration law.



I'd like Doug to give us an actual citation from the law which proves that the person would have to have already be involved in a non-immigration related crime.

I've read what Arizona would plan to use in this regard is the "Terry" law--that a policeman may stop and frisk someone for weapons if they have a "reasonable suspicion that a crime has taken or is about to take place and the subject is armed and dangerous without violating the Fourth Amendment prohibition on unreasonable searches andd seizures."   Affirmed by the US Supreme Court.

However I see nothing in the Arizona law about requiring "a reasonable suspicion" that the subject is armed and dangerous.   

Finally, the whole foundation is "reasonable suspicion".   That is entirely too hazy a concept for a law like this.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: GUEST,David E.
Date: 01 May 10 - 01:29 PM

And oh yes by the way, yet another Arizona cop has been shot by drug smugglers. Not that that will get much attention in the media...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100501/ap_on_re_us/us_arizona_deputy_shot

David E.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: artbrooks
Date: 01 May 10 - 01:41 PM

Actually, DavidE, it is all over both the on-line and print media. What does that have to do with illegal immigrants? Other than, of course, that they tend to cross the same border region?

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Genie
Date: 01 May 10 - 05:12 PM

I'd say people getting killed in connection with drug smuggling has more to do with our insane "war on drugs" than with immigration issues.   
And that's a topic for another thread.

Ron, you're right about "reasonable suspicion" being too vague a concept for a law like this. As I said, this law seems to be designed to line the pockets of those dreaded "trial lawyers" (plus some bounty hunter types) - at the expense of the state of Arizona and many of its cities.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 02 May 10 - 01:24 AM

Genie: "I'd say people getting killed in connection with drug smuggling has more to do with our insane "war on drugs" than with immigration issues.   
And that's a topic for another thread."

As I've previously posted, being as they are allowed to ignore our laws, I suppose for the sake of equality,(our own, this time), We should all get to pick a law, that we can ignore with impunity. That might kill two birds with one stone!..(smirk)....unless you pick taxes! That should get their attention!

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: mousethief
Date: 02 May 10 - 02:10 AM

At least the "war on drugs" is a war on a concrete noun, unlike the "war on terror" which is a war on an abstract noun.

Used to be wars were fought against countries. It was easier to know when the war was over and funding could be diverted back to useful domestic programs. Wars against nouns tend to look like excuses for funneling money in certain directions, while pandering to popular fears or hatreds.

But then as the Foremen said, it's "in" to be in a war.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Genie
Date: 02 May 10 - 05:19 AM

The "war on drugs" may be concrete, but I'm not going to blame "illegal immigrants" for people being killed for the sake of prohibition of marijuana and cocaine.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: mousethief
Date: 02 May 10 - 11:20 AM

Not sure what point you're making, Genie.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Ron Davies
Date: 02 May 10 - 11:33 AM

OK, I've read the Arizona law again, kindly provided to us by Doug in a link to his posting of 30 April 2010 7:21 PM.   

We are--again--getting off track here. Let's get back to the wording of the law itself.

It would be advisable if all parties were to read it, prominent among these being Doug himself.

Doug assures us that no person would be picked up under the new law unless the person is already involved in a non-immigration-related offense.

Fine, Doug.   Exact quote needed, with page number.

The closest thing I have found is "law enforcement officer, without a warrant, may arrest a person if the officer has probable cause to believe that the person has committed any public offense that makes the person removable from the US".

"Any public offense":   that would, it seems, include immigration-related offenses.

So where exactly is the provision that an offense which has nothing to do with immigration must be present before the officer arrests the person?

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: artbrooks
Date: 02 May 10 - 11:35 AM

Mousethief, I believe Genie is responding to the attempt by GUEST.DavidE to conflate illegal immigration in Arizona with the shooting of a police office by MJ smugglers.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: mousethief
Date: 02 May 10 - 11:44 AM

I knew I had missed something.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: artbrooks
Date: 02 May 10 - 11:51 AM

Ron, did you see the part where it says that it is now illegal in AZ to participate in a street-corner labor market? As I read that, and we have them here in Albuquerque, if someone pulls up and says "anybody want to mow my lawn?", anyone who responds is breaking the law, and is then liable to an immigration check. Oh yeah - so is the guy asking for a short-term employee.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Ebbie
Date: 02 May 10 - 11:56 AM

For more, read Leonard Pitts, Jr.

"If we really wanted immigration reform, we'd have had it years ago.

"In 2006, President George W. Bush supported a proposal that would've required undocumented immigrants to take English classes and pay fines and back taxes in exchange for guest worker status and, eventually, citizenship. "I know this is an emotional debate," said Bush. "But one thing we cannot lose sight of is that we're talking about human beings, decent human beings that need to be treated with respect."

"But Bush was shouted down by angry people carrying "Go back to Mexico!" signs. Their counter proposal? To somehow round up and bus an estimated 11 million people to the border, an idea that was to pragmatism and practicality as Lady Gaga is to modesty and restraint. Similar thinking, if you want to call it that, is evident in the bill recently signed into law by Republican Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona, that has vaulted that state into a raging controversy."

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: mousethief
Date: 02 May 10 - 12:17 PM

As usual, Pitts hits the nail on the head.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 02 May 10 - 02:03 PM

Ron, did you see the part where it says that it is now illegal in AZ to participate in a street-corner labor market? As I read that, and we have them here in Albuquerque, if someone pulls up and says "anybody want to mow my lawn?", anyone who responds is breaking the law, and is then liable to an immigration check. Oh yeah - so is the guy asking for a short-term employee.

Sounds like a Hiring Fair to me - fortunately the UK has progressed since the mid 18th century!!

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: mousethief
Date: 02 May 10 - 04:02 PM

Strangely you don't see a lot of pasty skin out in front of the Home Depot looking for day labor jobs. And yet they complain that the illegal immigrants are taking away jobs from "Americans". Do I believe my eyes, or the rhetoric of the known-to-be-quite-capable-of-lying-through-their-perfect-teeth right? The eyes have it.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 02 May 10 - 04:13 PM

Having looked (briefly) at the Huffingpoop linked by bb, I must advise that most people probably should NOT bother with it. In usual Huff-n-Puff manner, it fails to identify any source. It "cites" things "included in the bill" but doesn't identify "a bill" that exists.

A link at the bottom of the "report" goes to a "FULL SUMMARY" as a source:

I'm at a loss to discern the meaning of "full summary" here, since it gives no source that is "summarized," and I'm unable to distinguish between a "full" summary and an "ordinary" summary (which might, of course, be a summary of a full summary?)

The "source" linked by Huff-n-Puff is NOT a piece of legislation, or even proposed legislation; but is - at best - a "proposed position" statement that enumerates a multitude of "pie-in-the-sky-possibly-good-things" that might be worth considering when the business of actually writing a bill gets under way.

Most likely it's from an intercepted email "homework" assignment by some newby legislator who was told to "write a proposal for practice."

It must be conceded that the extreme reliance in Huffy's "source" on "modern technology" is something of a joke, in light of recent admissions that the exisitng "electronic/remote-sensors" on the border are a near-total failure, the newest FAA flight control computer system is too dangerously flawed to be safely deployed, and that the Census Bureau's new "automatic" database automatically crashes so frequently that it may be unusable; but that's something to be reviewed later IF actual legislation can be started.

The Arizona Senate Bill linked later is at least "credible;" but careful readers will note that only amended sub paragraphs of the law are included in the text available. I found numerous "amended paragraphs" whose meaning, intent, and likely effect cannot be discerned without pulling the full Arizona State Code to see what the "overlying section" says.

"Anyone in violation of X.xxx.# may be held liable for ..." has no meaning unless you know what X.xxx.# says, and the bill, as published, does not tell you without additional (and difficult) research of Arizona codes.

The most glaring (apparent) failure of the Arizona law that I perceive is that I can find NO INDICATION of what constitutes "reasonable proof of legal presence." This means that anyone who "might be required to show proof" is given NO INDICATION of what proof is sufficient. This places all legal persons at risk of arrest if the local cop (given authority to adjudicate the case by the AZ Senate Act¹) makes the decision.

¹ Arizona SB-1070 page 3
1 B. IN THE ENFORCEMENT OF THIS SECTION, THE FINAL DETERMINATION OF AN ALIEN'S IMMIGRATION STATUS SHALL BE DETERMINED BY EITHER:
…
A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER OR AGENCY COMMUNICATING WITH THE UNITED STATES IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT OR THE UNITED STATES BORDER PROTECTION PURSUANT TO 8 UNITED STATES CODE SECTION 1373(c).

What does "communicating with" actually mean? If a local cop calls immigration and says "I've got this guy" does that constitute "communication" and allow the cop to decide to imprison, fine, and/or deport the person? It probably does if "report to ICE" is the only action required of the cop by the US Code. I suppose the cop could look up USC 1373(c), but I've known several who probably would rely on the "chief" (who also might not bother to look it up) for advice.

Advice: Read very carefully, and think about whether what it looks like the law says is what it actually does say. At present, I find it impossible to be too sure of much of anything.

John

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Ebbie
Date: 02 May 10 - 05:22 PM

Someone above mentioned 'bounty hunter' type activity. What are the chances that this law will breed that kind of gainful employment? Bounty hunting used to be very common, and it would seem that the opportunity of nosing around to find and apprehend illegal "aliens" could be very lucrative.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: DougR
Date: 02 May 10 - 07:23 PM

Ron Davies: I have read the law. I am not a immigration lawyer, are you?

You state, in a recent post, "First if is clear the goal is to fight illegal immigration and than many citizens plan to use it (the law I assume) to do that.

The purpose of the law is to STOP illegal immigration, NOT fight it.

You also state, "A few problems: if lawful contacts made by a law enforcement official and 'reasonable suspion exists that the person may be an alien', the person can be apprehended."

If the person is stopped by a law enforcement officer while commiting a crime the officer can ask to see identification identifying the person as a legal citizen of the U.S. If the suspect cannot provide proof of citizenship, the officer will contact ICE to determind if an arrest should be made. That's not quite what your post says.

I am not going to get bogged down discussing whether or not the law is constitutional. That will be determined by the courts. If the Supermes rule that it is not, that will be the end of it. Until then, it seems to me arguing constitutionality is a waste of breath and time.

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Genie
Date: 02 May 10 - 08:05 PM

Alex, my point is that when we talk about the draconian new Arizona "papers, please" law or the issue of illegal immigraton in general, someone always drags in the issue of drug smuggling - often as rationalization or justification for these sweeping new laws. I'm just saying that drug smuggling isn't always done by illegals or other non-citizens and that most of the crime associated with drugs would probably go away if our government didn't single out drugs like marijuana and cocaine for prohibition and spend so much money and manpower on trying to prevent their recreational use.    Neither of those two drugs is inherently any more dangerous than alcohol or some prescription meds, but the latter are tolerated and merely regulated, while we waste money and lives trying to stamp out the use of the former.    To blame illegal immigrants or the "porous border" for the violence associated with drug trafficking is misplacing the target.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: pdq
Date: 02 May 10 - 08:17 PM

If you stop all illegal immigrants at the border you will also be stopping the drug smugglers.

That is not as difficult a concept as people are trying to make it.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: mousethief
Date: 02 May 10 - 09:53 PM

Only if the drug smugglers are all illegal immigrants. Your proof?

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 02 May 10 - 10:28 PM

Mouser: "Only if the drug smugglers are all illegal immigrants. Your proof?"

You must be an AC/DC fan!

Genie: "Alex, my point is that when we talk about the DRACONIAN(?) new Arizona "papers, please" law or the issue of illegal immigraton in general, someone always drags in the issue of drug smuggling...(blah blah blah.."

These naive dreamers tend to do a lot of 'what if's' and stuff like that..come on, Genie, Get real!..What is more illegal?..ILLEGAL drugs or ILLEGAL immigration????

Ebbers: "What are the chances that this law will breed that kind of gainful employment? Bounty hunting used to be very common, and it would seem that the opportunity of nosing around to find and apprehend illegal "aliens" could be very lucrative...."

Stick to house cleaning and baking whole wheat bread, with glazed fixed eyes over the bay!

Ebbers: ""If we really wanted immigration reform, we'd have had it years ago."

This time you are exactly CORRECT!! I posted what their goal is, on a previous post. Neither party's administration will enforce it, because the corporate heavies won't allow them too...and after all, who do you think is calling the shots???...The President??????
The international bankers, and those behind them has wanted chips in everyone, for total control. There are plenty of sites to go into that further...Oh, by the way Ross Perot's company EDT developed them years ago..since the have been 'new breakthroughs'(?)..however, cancer and other health problems have also developed with them..as tests have shown!

Mouser: "I knew I had missed something."

We hold these truths to be self evident.

Genie: "The "war on drugs" may be concrete, but I'm not going to blame "illegal immigrants" for people being killed for the sake of prohibition of marijuana and cocaine."

A bit of advice: Don't party or hang out at your dealer's house!

Mouser: "Not sure what point you're making, Genie."

See above.

Mouser: "At least the "war on drugs" is a war on a concrete noun, unlike the "war on terror" which is a war on an abstract noun."

But one thing they have in common, they are both part of 'slight of hand' lies!!!

Genie: "Fossil, where is one supposed to carry that ID card when skinny dipping? ; )"

Love to tell you, but discretion is the better part of valor...however, here's a hint:...To extract them, pick the two fingers you like the least.........

Winking at all!
GfS

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Ron Davies
Date: 02 May 10 - 10:56 PM

Gee Doug, you somehow have forgotten to give us the exact quote in the new law that specifies that involvement in a non-immigration- related crime must be present in order for a person to be apprehended under the new law.

Can't understand how that could have slipped your mind.

Yet you assure us that this provision is in the new law. Surely it would be no problem for you to give us the page number and exact quote.

We'll be waiting for you to do so.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Ebbie
Date: 02 May 10 - 10:56 PM

Frankly, GfS, I admire you even less when you try to be cutesy and funny. 'Tain't fittin.'

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: mousethief
Date: 02 May 10 - 11:48 PM

Added to my "scroll past" list: GfS

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: DougR
Date: 03 May 10 - 01:51 AM

Ron Davies: No, I haven't forgotten, but you said you read the law. Perhaps you only have a reading level of first grade, I have no way of knowing, but IF you really read the law, it's quite clear that a law enforcement officer would be in violation of the law if he asked for proof of citizenship from someone who has not committed a crime. Racial profiling is clearly prohibited.

Read the Bill!

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: mousethief
Date: 03 May 10 - 01:53 AM

Has not committed a crime? You mean who is not suspected of having committed a crime? Only a jury can say if a person has committed a crime or not. Not a cop.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 03 May 10 - 01:59 AM

Mouser: "Added to my "scroll past" list: GfS"

Promise??...Thank you!

Ebbers: "Frankly, GfS, I admire you even less when you try to be cutesy and funny. 'Tain't fittin.'"

Well, it figures, you thought it was 'cutesy and funny'...but still couldn't crack a smile.....Brrrr, must be cold up there!

Oh well,..but still smiling!

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 03 May 10 - 03:16 AM

For DougR:

Arizona Senate Bill S.B. 1070, ENACTED:

ARTICLE 8. ENFORCEMENT OF IMMIGRATION LAWS

A. …

B. FOR ANY LAWFUL CONTACT MADE BY A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIAL OR AGENCY OF THIS STATE OR A COUNTY, CITY, TOWN OR OTHER POLITICAL SUBDIVISION OF THIS STATE WHERE REASONABLE SUSPICION EXISTS THAT THE PERSON IS AN ALIEN WHO IS UNLAWFULLY PRESENT IN THE UNITED STATES, A REASONABLE ATTEMPT SHALL BE MADE, WHEN PRACTICABLE, TO DETERMINE THE IMMIGRATION STATUS OF THE PERSON.

"Lawful contact" undoubtedly includes asking (presumed innocent) witnesses to an antisocial act or other event in which a crime may have occurred for their observations of events they may have witnessed. In many situations, the police have the authority to detain "for questioning" persons NOT SUSPECTED OF PARTICIPATION IN ANY UNLAWFUL ACT. Hesitation in responding, while it might be due to simply "not wanting to get involved" or fear of retaliation by someone who might be accused of an offence, could be considered by the officer, and is NOT EXCLUDED, as a cause for "reasonable suspicion," in which case the officer would be bound, by this law, to attempt to determine the legality of the person's presence in the US.

It is NOT, under the definitions and terms stated by this law, necessary that the person who's lawful presence MUST be questioned must be suspected (reasonable cause or otherwise) of ANY VIOLATION OF ANY LAW.

John

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: DougR
Date: 03 May 10 - 01:17 PM

The wording of Senate Bill AR 1070 has been modified to clarify the language of the portion of the Bill you copied, John. I'll see if I can find it online and copy it.

The purpose of the new wording was to clear up any misunderstanding that existed regarding a police officer requesting proof of citizenship from anyone arrested for allegedly commiting a crime.

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Genie
Date: 03 May 10 - 03:02 PM

Gfs,

Crude jokes aside, who is going to hide something the size and shape of a credit card or passport in any bodily orifice?   

If you really had to have your proof of identity and citizenship with you at ALL times, the method would have to be much less cumbersome.    A microchip would be convenient to carry, but lots of us would oppose that for the reasons you mention.

[["Ebbers: The international bankers, and those behind them has wanted chips in everyone, for total control. There are plenty of sites to go into that further...Oh, by the way Ross Perot's company EDT developed them years ago..since the have been 'new breakthroughs'(?)..however, cancer and other health problems have also developed with them..as tests have shown!"]]

None of us wants either the government nor the big corporations to be able to track our every movement.

If it is really important for everyone to be identifiable when needed (even if unconscious or deceased) without being trackable or having their identity stolen, the government should use iris-identification technology -- and pay for the program with tax money (not imposing a financial hardship on already-impoverished people).   Unlike fingerprints, iris recognition does not leave traces of where you've been or where you are now (unless you're being scanned, e.g., by the police).    And unlike passports, ID cards, etc., this type of identification could not be forged. All the law enforcement people would have to do is run your iris scan through a database to see who you are and whether you were a legal resident or not.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Ron Davies
Date: 03 May 10 - 09:28 PM

Doug--


"...kindergarten reading level....."

Temper, temper, little man.



Doug R 29 April 2010 5:50 PM:

"The law states that it is against the law to use racial profiling as an excuse to ask for citizenship papers and that the only way a lawman can ask to see your papers is if he is arresting you for ANOTHER crime".



"arresting you for ANOTHER crime"

In fact, as I recall, you were rather harsh with Genie for not knowing this.

So now it's time for you to give us the exact quote in the law which specifies the requirement "he is arresting you for another crime." Please make sure the "crime" you cite is not an immigration-related crime only.

So far, as indicated by John in Kansas, it appears you are dead wrong on this.



But I'm sure you can clarify the situation.

We're waiting.

Thanks so much.


And I hope you get more sleep.

Obviously for some reason you were out of sorts.

Pobrecito.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Riginslinger
Date: 03 May 10 - 09:41 PM

Wow! Have you seen this?

http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/05/03/frum.immigration.education/index.html?section=cnn_latest

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: GUEST,SAULGOLDIE
Date: 03 May 10 - 09:43 PM

Perhaps this has already been mentioned--I didn't read the whole thread--but what if the ORIGINAL residents of this land started asking the rest of us to prove that WE belong here?? My people came from Russia, ca 1900. Guess I'd have to "go back," eh? Lookout UK, Germany, China, India, Africa(!) and basically the whole bloody REST OF THE WORLD!!!

This is what happens when people act from their lizard brains, instead of the superior ones G-d gave 'em.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Riginslinger
Date: 03 May 10 - 10:08 PM

...what happens when people act from their lizard brains, instead of the superior ones G-d gave 'em.?

             You end up with illegal immigrants for Central America.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 03 May 10 - 10:33 PM

Good post, Genie. ...and by the way, your skinny dipping scenario, was a little over the top, as to suggest that you'd have to carry an ID with you even for that!..So I replied as I did. It was only to be a light-hearted reply. Too bad 'others' thought it was meant as anything more than that!

That aside, if the government would control the borders, as the Constitution mandates them to do, ALL of this would not be a problem! A lot of politicians are reluctant to get on board, because they want the Hispanic vote..and for them to actually enforce, or back enforcement of the LAW, as given in the Constitution, they fear they'd lose the vote. This is NOT representation, NOR is it upholding the oath they swore to, when they took office. ALL of those CON MEn should be thrown OUT of office!

Hey, best to you!

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Ebbie
Date: 03 May 10 - 10:52 PM

I sometimes think it is not possible that some of the American posters have any idea of how long our borders are, not to mention the kind of terrain and vegetation there is along the way. Just how is the US to be expected to "control its borders"? Do we really want vigilantes patrolling for practically 2000 miles?

And if we accomplish that, we still haven't even begun patrolling the *northern* border. And then there is the border of the West Coast. And the border of the East Coast.

Dang. It just doesn't end. Of course, patrolling will have to be 24/7, so there will be shift changes. Man, we're going to have to import some Mexicans to work on the line when we run out of previously unemployed USians.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: mousethief
Date: 03 May 10 - 10:58 PM

Interestingly, the people demanding all this patrolling are the same ones that bitch about the size of government, and deficit spending.

They will not be happy until all of their conditions are met:

1. Federal gov't shall receive no income.
2. Federal gov't shall continue to pay our medicare.
3. Federal gov't shall consist entirely of the military, the prison system, and the border patrol. All other duties will devolve to the states.

And then they wonder why the liberals think they're dumb. Can't imagine.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Ebbie
Date: 03 May 10 - 11:32 PM

I know - 'cause taxes are not constitutional. :)

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Riginslinger
Date: 03 May 10 - 11:35 PM

The stupid part of the whole thing is, you don't need to patrol the boarder at all--or at least not much--all you have to do is prosecute illegal employers. In fact, you could even go to the drug laws and confiscate property. That would pay for a whole lot of boarder enforcement--if you thought you needed it.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 04 May 10 - 01:10 AM

Rigs, Yup!

Now as long as Mouser is posting how are we supposed to do all this, let me ask you this: Why is it so bad, or wrong, to ask to see an illegal alien's papers, as to his legitimacy in being here, but the same hypocrites think its not so bad for the government to see your health insurance papers???

I think its all out of hand, and YES the government, both state and federal have gotten WAY to intrusive ,and WAY too big, and quite unsustainable.

And as far as the hypocrisy of 'racial profiling', I guess the left don't count affirmative action's racial profiling!..as a double standard!

And what next?..the government telling people where to work, just to keep them employed??..Great! Some one just off food stamps, who has no skills, making guitars at CF Martin?(for example)..just because affirmative action placed him?

Supply and demand, and get the government off people's backs, EXCEPT an eye on corruption...but that's like letting the wolves guard the hen house!

The answer is going to have to lie, in our own personal integrity and morals, of which the bullshitters 'representing' us have shown very little of!..and that is an individual responsibility!

So before we jump off the deep end, choking everyone with stupid laws, FOR THE OTHER GUY, let's look in the mirror, and do the best we can....shit, even make it a little hipper, than profit first, no matter the means!

That is a cultural thing, and can be encouraged through music and the media, possibly churches and schools....and JOBS, not being undercut by illegals!....(among other things, as well)!

Manufacturing should be brought back to OUR shores, and not shipped overseas, for cheaper labor, whose profits only the corporation. The savings is NOT passed on to us, the consumer. Things cost them less to make, but they didn't get any cheaper to buy!

Not only that, we waste a lot of fuel, shipping the crap across the ocean, just so the mega corporations make a bunch more money, while we at home pay higher costs for it, and are out of work!

The federal government is solely to blame for this, by breaking the laws that govern them!!!!!...and still the clowns, on both sides of the aisle keep wanting to shred the Constitution, to suit their own wills...over the rights of 'WE the People". It's now them and us..what's THIS shit?????

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: mousethief
Date: 04 May 10 - 01:22 AM

The stupid part of the whole thing is, you don't need to patrol the boarder at all--or at least not much--all you have to do is prosecute illegal employers.

True. But politically impossible.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 04 May 10 - 01:25 AM

Not when you have citizens out of work!!!

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: DougR
Date: 04 May 10 - 01:39 AM

Ron Davies: I read your last post, and I, obviously, caused offence when I cast aspersions on your ability to read. That was unfair of me and most unrealistic. If you can type, reading is not a problem at all!

I do apologize if I caused you anguish. Upon reflection, my suggestion that you cannot read was most assuredly unfair. Since you obviously CAN read, the problem you have with the subject under discussion must be comprehension.

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Ron Davies
Date: 04 May 10 - 07:38 AM

And I in turn am sorry I misquoted you.   It was not "kindergarten" but "first grade". I can't tell you what a difference that makes.

Nice try, Doug.

Good to know you got enough sleep and your temper has cooled a bit.

Who knows--perhaps you've even learned that if you lose your temper, you automatically lose the argument--a lesson it seems hard for several Mudcatters to master.   Congratulations to you.



But we're still waiting for the direct quote from the new Arizona law that indicates the lawman must be arresting you "for another crime" in order to ask to see your papers under this new law.

Seems like you're joining some other illustrious Mudcatters in the rather widespread malady of seeking out the least sea -worthy vessel you can find, then lashing yourself to the mast.

I quoted you directly--and accurately-- on the "for another crime" issue.

So far, your smokescreen is quite impressive--but not quite good enough.

Where is that quote from the law about "for another crime"?

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: artbrooks
Date: 04 May 10 - 08:08 AM

GfS, I ordinarily scroll past your posts, but something caught my eye and I think you have missed a point here. Nobody at all is questioning that illegal immigrants should be subject to deportation or whatever other legal sanctions are applicable. The issue is Arizona's new law which permits any law enforcement officer to require anyone with whom they come into official contact to prove that they are not an illegal immigrant, and allows them to be taken into custody until acceptable proof is provided.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 04 May 10 - 11:54 AM

Art, According to the law as I understand it, (now), and because of an amendment to it, they can run the check only if it is in conjunction with another 'offense'...however, as we all know, you(we), can always be pulled over, or stopped for virtually any excuse, for them to run a check.

Hey, I don't like this anymore than any of us..but Arizona is being choked with crime, from a flood of them coming in, whether looking for work, or smuggling drugs,..or whatever. SOMETHING had to be done, and the federal government, under both administrations, have fallen down on their job.
As I've posted before, should we be allowed to pick one law WE get to ignore?........................................(and I'm sure we all do)....with impunity??

Hey Art,..Respectfully,
GfS

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Genie
Date: 04 May 10 - 12:28 PM

GfS, I recognize some of your banter as tongue-in-cheek (plus I agree with some of what you've been saying).

My skinny dipping scenario, though, was not really so far-fetched.   We have two main "clothing optional" beaches near Portland (as do some other cities such as San Diego), and there was a time I used to frequent them.   It wasn't a good idea to take your valuables with you to the beach itself (not even money, because there were no booths selling anything), and unless you were the driver (we usually carpooled) you may not have left things like your credit cards and ID in the car. Vehicles parked in the lot or on the side of the country road were routinely broken into.

Now, some men's bathing trunks have places to safely stash an ID card, but even if you're not completely au naturel, most women's bathing suits don't.    The kind of law some are proposing would leave you vulnerable to harassment, major disruption of your day, and possible arrest and incarceration just for not having documentation of your legal residency with you at a time like that. I used the "skinny dipping" scenario because that one doesn't even offer the remedy of sewing a special little pocket into your Speedo to hold your "papers."

BTW, I keep hearing on radio that Arizona law ALREADY permits law enforcement to ask for proof of legal immigrant status or US citizenship if you are stopped for some other criminal code (and maybe even traffic law) infraction.    The new law changes it to
1) law enforcement MUST (not "may") ask for such proof and can be sued by anyone if they don't
and
2) this applies whenever there is "lawful contact" between law enforcement and an individual - not just when there is probable cause to suspect that a crime has been or is about to be committed.

If the law is currently being "tweaked," we'll judge the final product when it goes into force.   But as it stands, I think there is great cause for concern about undue racial and ethnic profiling and about violation of the 4th Amendment.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Genie
Date: 04 May 10 - 12:31 PM

Rig, I agree. If you don't control that boarder, he's likely to eat you out of house and home. ; )

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Ebbie
Date: 04 May 10 - 12:42 PM

What happens when your neighbor, disgruntled or not, calls the police and says that s/he believes that her/his neighbor is selling drugs and that s/he believes that lots of the Mexican-appearing visitors are illegals? What are police required to do, given that scenario?

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Genie
Date: 04 May 10 - 12:55 PM

C'mon, GfS, let's not be too specious here. LOL

You obviously can't require ONLY illegal aliens to show papers, now can you?   (Think about it.) : )

And does the new health care law say anything about carrying your health ins. papers WITH you?

Whether and to what extent "affirmative action" is comparable (in reverse) to racial profiling is a topic for another thread, I think, because a lot depends on how and to what extent minorities (and non-minorities such as women) are actively recruited or even given "extra credit" in hiring, etc.   Still, in the absence of "affirmative action," de facto racial, ethnic and gender "profiling" was the norm for decades (centuries?).

Since when do government work programs put people in jobs they're not qualified for? (Unless, of course, you include things like hiring recent law school graduates to replace highly experienced attorneys in the DOJ
because the latter weren't tied to your administration's political ideology, or appointing a former Arabian horse judging commissioner to head FEMA.)

You say you want manufacturing brought back home, you decry the power of "for profit, at all costs") corporations, unnecessary international shipping of goods, the constitution being "shredded," etc., but your solution is to get "big government" out of the picture?   How are we, the people, to control the excesses and abuses of those who are abusing the law, commerce, manufacturing, etc., except by way of our government officials (which, except for the Federal judges, we elect and can remove from office)?

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: GUEST,number 6
Date: 04 May 10 - 01:03 PM

Mexicans have been crossing the borders (illegally) for years.

It seems to me this became an issue when the violence started .... and that is directly aligned with the big $money$ to be made with drug smuggling ... when the general populace of the U.S. developed a taste for illegal drugs .... demand grew and so did the profits to be made in importing of drugs, and with those profits came violence.

I say the violence in marketing drugs is the real issue, not illegal immigrants.

biLL

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Genie
Date: 04 May 10 - 01:22 PM

I think that's a huge contributor to the problem, Bill.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: pdq
Date: 04 May 10 - 01:46 PM

Another item that people don't see coming is the death of the Middle Class.

Al Gore just bought a mansion in Montecito (CA, near Santa Barbara) for over 8 million dollars.

He will be neighbor to Barbara Streisand, Barbara Walters, and to countless other rich "celebrities" and the elite.

California is begining to look like much of the world, including India, Arab oil-rich states, and much of established Europe. Mexico also has an "elite" minority who own almost everything and the "peons" who do all the gunt labor and own almost nothing.

I wonder how much Al Gore will pay the Mexicans who mow his nice lawn?

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: GUEST,number 6
Date: 04 May 10 - 01:52 PM

could you imagine having Barbara Streisand and BaBa Walters as neighbors?

Good grief ... you'd think Al Gore would have more sense than that.

biLL

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: pdq
Date: 04 May 10 - 02:13 PM

Instead, perhaps I should have mentioned that Montecito is home to Oprah Winfrey, Rob Lowe, Avril Lavigne and several Hiltons.

Al Gore's little heart is all a'twitter. He has finally "arrived".

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Genie
Date: 04 May 10 - 02:34 PM

Is Gore's "mansion" just a private residence? Or does it perhaps also contain offices (as Bill Gates's Redmond, WA "mansion" does)?
I agree it sounds bad (though a $1 million house in some places in California would be be a $200 house in other locations), but I'd need more details.

E.g., how much of that $8 million price tag was for things like state-of-the-art solar panels and weatherization, maybe a rooftop garden, etc.?   

And what makes you think Gore needs or wants to hire low-wage laborers to mow the lawn?

(Not sure what this has to do with the Arizona law or the issue of a national ID card, anyway.)

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Genie
Date: 04 May 10 - 03:05 PM

Just an aside (not to derail this thread onto the issue of villas and environmental sustainability),

here's a little more on Al Gore's new $8 million villa:
Gores Buy Montecito Villa

and maybe the rest of the story?
Ecorazzi.com on how the Gores equipped their Tennessee home

Most of the cost of this estate is no doubt the property itself (high-cost real estate with ocean view), not the house itself or the pools, etc.   As to how big a carbon footprint such an estate leaves, that depends a lot on how much of the home (and pools, etc.) is being used at any one time, what kinds of energy sources and conservation devices they use, what kinds of landscaping methods they use, etc.   And it sounds like they bought an existing house, so the 9 bathrooms may not have been their idea. However, if you are entertaining guests in a large house, having bathrooms on all floors and adjacent to the various rooms (5 bedrooms, a dining room, a rec room or exercise room) and next to the pool doesn't seem unreasonable. Bathrooms aren't using energy or water when they're not in use.   
The issue of environmental stewardship has more to do with how you use and maintain your property than with how much you own.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Genie
Date: 04 May 10 - 03:06 PM

Oh, and I just noticed: I got #200!   (Neener neener)

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 05 May 10 - 02:25 AM

Ebbers: "What happens when your neighbor, disgruntled or not, calls the police and says that s/he believes that her/his neighbor is selling drugs and that s/he believes that lots of the Mexican-appearing visitors are illegals? What are police required to do, given that scenario? "

If you went through the 60's, it could have been long hair. Where have you been, all these years?..People do it all the time...their called CI's, narcs, finks, informers..rats. What;s new?..and what does that have to do with the price of eggs???

Remember, "Maintain"?....especially if you were doing something ILLEGAL..or appeared to be doing something ILLEGAL???

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: DougR
Date: 05 May 10 - 07:56 PM

GFS: I assume if the neighbor made a formal complaint, either the Sheriff's office or the police would investigate. Many, many, neighborhoods in towns in Arizona contain houses that Coyotes rent and dump their loads of illegals in them. Then they are transported to other states or are assimilated in the local population.

It is not uncommon for either law enforcement agency or ICE, raids such a house and arrests 25 or 30 illegals at one time. Sometimes the Coyotes hold the illegals for ransom which relatives in the country from whence they came are expected to pay. This is after the Coyote has already collected a sizable fee to him to be transported to Arizona.

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 06 May 10 - 03:01 AM

I betcha' some of them even turn in their 'cargo', if they could collect a reward, as well!.
Just the same, 'Maintain'..and being as I doubt Ebbers is involved with that mess, I doubt if anyone will be turning her in....unless to win an award for her wonderful whole wheat bread!

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Ron Davies
Date: 06 May 10 - 08:44 PM

"either the Sheriff's office....would investigate."

Precisely.

And this is exactly why this law is considered a disaster by quite a few law enforcement professionals--despite any rabid supporters among the good citizens of Arizona.

The sheriff's office has enough to do already, thank you.

The sheriff of Pina County, which has a 123-mile border with Mexico, had a very interesting column in the Wall St Journal 5 May 2010 (yesterday).   "My deputies have referred more illegals to the Border Patrol and ICE than any other state or local law enforcement agency in Arizona."

And what does he think of this wonderful new "tool" for the police?

It's a total loser.

It puts his men in a no-win situation.

Reason:   either they anger a citizen or legal immigrant by asking to see papers or stand accused of non-feasance when they don't (ask).



It's also interesting that there were Hispanic groups favoring Republicans as recently as 2008. But now at least one which calls itself "Somos Republicans" is outraged at this obvious profiling of Hispanics.    How many votes for supporters of this law will come from this group in the fall?   Take a guess.

After all, anybody who doesn't think that Hispanic appearance will be a long step towards establishing "reasonable suspicion" should start thinking.

Especially since, as I pointed out earlier, if the policeman declines to act, he can now be sued by the stalwart citizen.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Riginslinger
Date: 06 May 10 - 09:54 PM

'The sheriff of Pina County, which has a 123-mile border with Mexico... "My deputies have referred more illegals to the Border Patrol and ICE than any other state or local law enforcement agency in Arizona."'

             Of course he has. That's were most of them are coming over, and that's why the people of Arizona wanted the law.

             I wonder how many he misses. I wonder why the New York Times publishes an op-ed letter from a sheriff in Arizona. Can anybody spell Schumer?

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Bobert
Date: 06 May 10 - 10:20 PM

I read recently that the number of illegals has dropped off considerably over the last 3 years??? Why the law now if illegal immigration is in decline??? Why not 3 years ago???

(There wasn't a black Democrat in the White House, Boberdz...)

Oh??? I get it...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: mousethief
Date: 06 May 10 - 10:28 PM

Desperate attempt to curry favor with the MOR racist whites when the Republicans are out of power? Just guessin'.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Ron Davies
Date: 06 May 10 - 11:20 PM

"how many he misses..."

Not as many by a long shot as the poster--who still hasn't learned to read. Pobrecito.i

Situation normal.

The paper was the well-known leftist rag, the Wall St. Journal.   As somebody who could read more than just what he wanted to see would have noticed.

Point is:   the sheriff has enough to do without zealous citizens second-guessing him and telling him what to do every step of the way.

That is perhaps the main problem with this wonderful law:   it takes away the discretion of the police officer to judge whether a person should be apprehended or not--since if he does not comply with the would-be Dick Tracy citizen, he could be sued.

As Genie has pointed out, it's a bonanza for trial lawyers, a classic mess for everybody else.

Not that the poster, blinded by the "Brown Peril" should be expected to see this.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Ron Davies
Date: 06 May 10 - 11:21 PM

"Pobrecito"   (no i, in case you wondered)

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: mousethief
Date: 06 May 10 - 11:23 PM

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Ron Davies
Date: 06 May 10 - 11:26 PM

But no, Bobert, as you know, the main reason for the decline in illegal immigrants recently is the economic decline in the US. After all, they don't come here just since they have an urge to travel.

As Art, I think it was, said: if there were good jobs in Sonora or wherever, they'd stay home.





Unless of course you were just jerking the chain of the illustrious Mr. Rig.   And I know you wouldn't do anything like that.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: DougR
Date: 07 May 10 - 03:51 PM

Ron Davies: Wall Street Journal a well known "leftist" paper? That's a hoot!

I read the article in the WSJ. Suppose the same paper printed an op-ed peace written by Sheriff Joe Arpio, who supports the Bill. Would you believe what he wrote?

The latest Fox News Poll out today shows that 61% of Americans polled support the Bill. Note I wrote Americans, not just Arizonans.

Doesn't it get a bit tiresome being in the minority so much of the time?

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: mousethief
Date: 07 May 10 - 06:00 PM

Ron Davies: Wall Street Journal a well known "leftist" paper? That's a hoot!

I rather think that was meant as sarcasm.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Bill D
Date: 07 May 10 - 07:18 PM

"The latest Fox News Poll out today shows...

I'd really curious how **Fox News** worded their questions.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: GUEST,Calico
Date: 07 May 10 - 07:33 PM

I remember other polls showing that a majority of Americans would vote to overturn most of the bill of rights if they could.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: mousethief
Date: 07 May 10 - 07:39 PM

That would be comforting to the Republicans under GWB.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Bill D
Date: 07 May 10 - 07:42 PM

It's hard to find a poll that doesn't 'load' its questions to guarantee the answer they want to wave about.

Even some of my favorite lefty TV programs do that... *sigh*

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Ron Davies
Date: 07 May 10 - 09:01 PM

..."in the minority all the time".   So the poster believes perhaps that the Republicans are in the majority in the Senate and House.

Anything you say, Mr. Van Winkle.   You may possibly want to wake up soon.   You seem to have missed the 2008 election.

And Sheriff "Arpio" (sic).   The poster's proofreading skills mirror his grasp of logic.   It might be an idea to actually read what he writes before he posts it. Might possibly save some him from some embarrassingly stupid errors.

Mr Arpaio was recently under investigation--may still be.   The mayor of Phoenix, Phil Gordon, on 4 April 2008, requested the US Attorney General to investigate "his pattern of ....discriminatory harassment, improper stops, searches and arrests".    Ah yes, Mr. Arpaio is a true role model for law enforcement officers.

His response to "discriminatory harassment...."?:   "Arrest them all". This philosophy is not exactly constitutional--unless of course the poster prefers the constitution of the Third Reich.   Perhaps he does. That would explain a good bit.

So sorry the poster doesn't recognize the WSJ as a "leftist rag".   Can't understand what the problem might be.

Point is: a sheriff with 123 miles of border with Mexico, and who already is in the forefront of stopping illegal immigration, might just possibly know more about the problem than the poster does--especially what it would be like to have rabid anti-immigration fools...uh, I mean sterling citizens... threatening his men with lawsuits every time they did not apprehend somebody the citizen fingered as an illegal immigrant.

Not of course that the poster would be one of the above-cited fools.   In the time-honored phrase of Mr. Cheney, I can't say that.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Ron Davies
Date: 07 May 10 - 09:04 PM

..."in the minority so much of the time?"

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: mousethief
Date: 07 May 10 - 11:08 PM

People turning other people in to the police. What famous 20th century country does that remind me of? Let me think. Let me think.

I've got it! The Soviet Union!

Subject: RE: BS: 'Your papers, please' - for US citizens?
From: Genie
Date: 08 May 10 - 01:42 AM

Bill D, yes, many polls do sort of "pull" for one kind of answer or another by the way they are wording, but not all polls are equally slanted in that way.
It is possible to word a poll objectively or neutrally, or at least come close. And in general I think those done by nonpartisan, nonideological research organizations come closest.

What's important, though, is to look carefully at the questions asked and the respondent sampling methods used when trying to interpret what the results mean.

In the case of the Arizona law, I'd want to make sure those being polled clearly understood what the law allows and demands before asserting that most Americans "support the law."