Immigration law: No offence

BubbleBliss wrote:
What's your assessment?

I haven't read it in depth yet, just skimmed it.

kronos wrote:Tex, do you seriously believe that racial profilers are always caught?

Like BubbleBliss said, it's hard to prove, and therefore, easy to get away with.

No.

Do I also believe that all minorities are victims of profiling? No.

The problem here is that many minorities live in shit areas of cities. There's a lot of crime. Are all folks in these areas shitty people? No.

But it irritates me to no end that people (not here specifically) try to equate the two. It really irritates me that many are fine with illegals being here.

kronos wrote:

BubbleBliss wrote:
What's your assessment?

I haven't read it in depth yet, just skimmed it.

I haven't either, that's why I asked. It is a pretty long read...

I already have one objection to this report, and that is its title:

IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT OFF TARGET - Minor Offenses With Major Consequences

I do not call willfully violating a nation's immigration laws and securing falsified identification "minor offenses."

The title of the report already exposes a certain bias.

I've not yet read it, but after I do I'll be back with my assessment.

The minor offences is in reference to the minor offences people commit that result in a traffic stop or ID check.

BubbleBliss wrote:The minor offences is in reference to the minor offences people commit that result in a traffic stop or ID check.

You're right. I don't think the article is saying that "willfully violating a nation's immigration laws and securing falsified identification" is a minor offense.

But the title isn't quite honest. The "major consequences" are for being in the country illegally, not for failing to signal or come to a complete stop.

And the police are, after all, entitled to pull you over for minor offenses. Broken tail lights, frost on the windshield, illegal right turns...these are all fair game. If the cops pull you over for something like that, and you happen to be an illegal alien, and as a result of this minor offense, the cop realizes you're here illegally (a major offense), it's a fair bust, as far as I'm concerned.

Of course, if the police have made it a priority to target Latinos committing minor offenses simply as a pretext for demanding ID to catch whichever ones happen to be illegal immigrants, that's fucked up. I don't know if this is happening, or if it is, to what degree.

Also, what I just said doesn't apply to some of the examples given in the article--for example, the man who was asked for ID while leaving a convenience store, or the guy who was a passenger in a car with a licensed driver. On the face of it, these seem to be reminiscent of South African apartheid, where the cops could just walk up to a black or an Indian and demand his "papers" for no reason. But I'd be leery of accepting these reports as gospel; there may be information we're missing.

TexasBlue wrote:
I really get sick of the bastardization of this topic as if we here are racists and are unlawfully profiling our own citizens. Again, we ave severe penalties on the federal level against profiling and if you think that it's not enforced, one has rose-colored glasses on..

Mayhap it's cos America has a long, long history of "unlawfully profiling our own citizens".. I'm sure our forum's resident American historian will remind us how Chinese Americans where unlawfully profiled in the 18th - 19th - 20th century.. come to think of it the unlawfully profiling of Catholics as felt in the building of St. Pat's in New York... Race Color Religion as just some of the ways Americans where unlawfully profiling out for Abuse by their own police force over the century.. it's no good to say but that was yesterday, and yesterday has gone.. one must never forget that the main function of police (in every country) is to control the lower orders.. law has always comes secondary to keeping order..

to answer Tex's over heated "we ave severe penalties on the federal level against profiling" as though cos there are laws, one can forget there is profiling... as profilers are caught and punished. America have laws against theft BUT we know not all thieves are caught let alone punished.

BubbleBliss wrote:The minor offences is in reference to the minor offences people commit that result in a traffic stop or ID check.

kronos wrote:Of course, if the police have made it a priority to target Latinos committing minor offenses simply as a pretext for demanding ID to catch whichever ones happen to be illegal immigrants, that's fucked up. I don't know if this is happening, or if it is, to what degree.

in those few short words is what this whole debate is over... not Tex's disquiet over illegal immigrants or my disquiet over the snow whiteness of police