If an officer enforcing this law indulges in clear racial profiling, they are supposed to be disciplined or prosecuted as per the law.

This does not mean the law is racist.

Well aware of that.

If there exists reasonable suspicion that the person is here illegally.

Federal US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Officers already have this power.

And when you give the cops your name (which you are required to in many states including AZ), they type it in a database. Depending on what comes up could lead to reasonable suspicion about legal status in which this law would allow further inquiry to be made.

So when some brown guy with Mayan features is questioned, all he has to say is "My name is John Smith"?

If his name is really John Smith.

This is hilarious. So, you're not racist, but you are absolutely opposed to changing the current demographic make up of the USA? Your whole proposed immigration solution is about keeping excess brown people who want to come here out.

If the strategy of the GOP to remain relevant in the face of changing demographics is to, rather than trying to win the hearts and minds of voters with sound governing policies, fight off changing demographics with the full military might of the USA and struggling to ensure that no brown person becomes a citizen unless there is a corresponding white person, then may the party die a painful death.

this is a great example of why illegal immigrants are great. I assume you're talking about the first guy mentioned in the story. The one who makes that amount of money because he does backbreaking work for 70 hours a week.

The average US person over 18 isn't interested in doing back breaking work nor do I suspect do they want to work 70 hours a week to get it.

If American Workers wanted to do this work I'm sure it would be available for them.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/njmag...00501_1765.php

another look at the bill.

Obviously, it's those scheming liberals who can't get voters otherwise. That's the problem, not a political party who's unwilling to give a big middle finger to it's xenophobic branch and try to win the hearts and minds of brown people with sound governing.

hello dino,

your inquiries are serious and i'll give my thoughts knowing full well they may be unpopular with the majority here. that a representative of the 43 administration supports some form of amnesty doesn't surprise me as his policy was to leave the border unprotected for 8 years.

while i don't think anyone should be rewarded for committing an illegal act (violating us sovereignty) , i understand the impracticality of rounding up and deporting 12-20 million people. while it wouldn't be ideal in my eyes, i could agree to granting them permanent resident status as long as the border was completely secured and they, nor their children could ever become citizens.

before y'all scream 14th amendment, i understand the supremes have ruled in United States v. Wong Kim Ark that children of foreign citizens legally in the usa are conferred us citizenship, but i don't believe they have ever taken a case ruling on children of illegals born in america. i know most of us agree with the concept of the fruit of the poisonous tree in 4th amendment cases.... why isn't it applicable in 14th amendment cases?



i get your point, but we are incapable of making mexico the economic equal of the usa or canada. we import about 1.3 million barrels of oil a day. that's close to $100,000,000.00 a day we ship to mexico. we passed nafta making it attractive to ship american manufacturing jobs to mexico. other than ship every mexican citizen a yearly cash bribe, what the hell else are we supposed to do for them?


say what you may about the soviet wall, even though many still tried to escape, the wall was 99.99999% effective.

of course the situation isn't analogous since the soviet wall was built to keep people in, not out. however, if electronic means aren't successful, i have no problem with a wall to secure the border. now, that is a "shovel ready project" that could really alleviate unemployment with good, well paying jobs for years.

as a matter of fact, i like the caesarian idea of 2 walls like at the battle of alesia that ended the Gaelic wars. caesar while attacking the gaelic forces encamped at the walled city of alesia under vercengetorix, built one wall around the city to starve them out and then built another wall around the outside of his troop encampment to keep reinforcements from aiding the besieged city. interestingly enough.... it worked to perfection.

there is an old saying, "good fences make good neighbors." i'm sure most of you that are homeowners have fences and front doors with locks on your properties, don't you? you don't generally allow strangers to come and squat in your house eat you food, etc. you select who you are going to allow into your home and who you are not going to allow in.

why shouldn't america do that?

i'm all for a reasonable immigration policy, just not one that allows unlimited squatting on american soil and citizenship whenever they decide to do it.

Yes, I think that's conceded by everyone. The concern is that, given that no one, from the governor of Arizona on down, can actually identify non-racial variables that would constitute reasonable suspicion, the cops are going to just use race and violate the law, and it's going to be pretty much impossible to prove the case against the cop, because in practice, cops can pretty much invent reasonable suspicion out of thin air.

As a libertarian freedom fighter for freedom from oppressive government, I would assume this would be intuitive to you -- at least the part about law enforcement creating "reasonable suspicion" out of nothing suspicious at all.

Again, so we turn back to what in the world would constitute reasonable suspicion a person is here illegally.

Federal customs agents have the right to question the legal status of people who are being detained; they find dudes at a border checkpoint in the trunk of a sedan, detain for reckless endangerment or whatever, and check on immigration status.

WTF is going to constitute reasonable suspicion that someone is here illegally that isn't race for someone merely violating an ordinance like loud barking dogs or a car parked on the front lawn?

I realize you're not a cop and by your own admission can't answer this question, so I'm not exactly sure what concerns you're addressing. But if you have no coherent answer here, then I don't think you're addressing the arguments of the law's critics.

The fear is that the law provides the authorities a very low threshold to check for immigration status ("reasonable suspicion"). "Reasonable suspicion" is, in practice, basically anything a cop can dream up.

Just repeating that the cops need reasonable suspicion isn't really addressing any of the concerns here. We can all read the law.

That police often invent reasonable suspicion out of think air is basically uncontroversial, and should be especially to you, given that you're a "libertarian".

And corollary to that, if you can't imagine what would constitute reasonable suspicion outside of race, and neither can Governor Brewer -- and if everyone from the Fox News pundit class on down agrees there's obviously going to be racial profiling -- then again, you haven't really addressed any of the concerns of the critics of the bill.

1) Again, you have the order of events backwards. Why are they searching this dude's name in a "database" WITHOUT reasonable suspicion? As we'll see below, cops probably aren't allowed to take your name and then go crime hunting with it. At the very least, I would hope a "libertarian" would agree this kind of police behavior envisioned in your scenario (made legal by the proposed change to the law) is perhaps more draconian than the Arizona law as currently written.

2) What database you think authorities are going to be searching (there's no national citizen database, nor a database of illegal immigrants) that will prove someone is here illegally?

It's true they might find an outstanding warrant or something like that, but even then...

3) This police action is not even necessarily legal; in fact SCOTUS holds that if you suspect the cops are going to go "search a database" such that providing your name might incriminate yourself, it might be a 5th Amendment violation.

You don't even have to spell the name for authorities when they ask it for a Stop & Identify; you don't have to provide ID. You just say it. Or communicate with the office in any other way. The information doesn't even have to be "credible or reliable".

So your imagined scenario (cops reasonable suspects an ordinance violation -- dog is barking too loud, car parked a little too close to the grass on your law, who the **** knows), the cops can come ask your name and you're required to respond and that's legal given Stop & Identify laws, but the cops won't necessarily even be given useful information to go search their "database" with to come up with reasonable suspicion of illegal presence:

From Hiible:

So if an Arizona police officer takes someone's name and goes database hunting for illegal presence in the US (an exercise I'd argue: 1. is already assuming reasonable suspicion -- you seem think the reasonable suspicion comes after the database search and 2. makes no sense in the context of trying to determine if someone is here illegally), and then discovers the person is here illegally, that's not even necessarily legal for the cop to do anyway.

no. my solution is to put immigration policy in the hands of congress as mandated by the constitution, not in the hands of any foreigner, who, on a whim, decides he wants to come here. that's pretty simple.

is that too difficult to understand? nahhhh... throwing racist around is far more fun. you just don't have a good constitutional answer to my position.

american immigration policy belongs in the hands of the congress, not in the hands of citizens of mexico, india, sweden or ireland.

plz argue against that idea.

Huh? I'm criticizing your opinion. What does the Constitution have to do with anything? I thought we were talking about what we want Congress to do, not about whether you, bobneptute yourself, will actually pass and execute immigration reform. If Congress tomorrow voted to allow open immigration, would you think that was a good idea?

I know I'm responding to old posts but this is one of my current favorite DaveT posts...

Yeah, that one is gold, but it can't touch the one about him forgetting Spanish because some Mexicans insulted him.

its funny. I have people in my family who do construction in North Carolina. I have friends who work on houses in Massachussetts and in Chicago. All of them say they love working with non-Americans because they have a better work ethic, do good work for a lower wage and are happy to do it.

My father has been a life long conservative. Seeing his son work in construction and having contracted people to do work in their area, he has done a 180 and supports immigrants because of their work ethic.

Best post ITT, not close. Srsly, what does he do if people insult him in English? Purposefully forget it and communicate only in Pidgin?