[Sean]

Originally Posted by 34958hq439-qjw9v5jq298v5j

Maybe the reason why you think it's so "scary" is because you don't live in Arizona, so you can't really understand what's going on there.

I live in Los Angeles, so I have a pretty good idea. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for controlling immigration to keep things legal, but I don't believe we should be doing it through bills that literally take us in an undeniably bold step towards fascist policy - and I don't throw around terms like "fascist" lightly at all. The reason I think it's "scary" is that we as American citizens should never embrace policies that place undue burden on a single group for no other reason than their ethnic origin. It won't be white people getting asked to show their papers every time they get pulled over for a traffic violation. Simply being of Mexican heritage is what will inevitably be the single biggest factor in determining if they must carry multiple forms of id with them at all times to avoid being arrested - and having multiple forms of id with us at all times is something that Americans don't legally have to do.

Originally Posted by 34958hq439-qjw9v5jq298v5j

I'm not claiming to be an expert or anything but I have lived in Tuscon a few years and have travelled to Mexico five times in the last two years, spending nearly three months there. It's easy for liberals (no offense, but it's only liberals I've seen do this) to paint this as an excuse for racism and little else, and while I admit the bill is undoubtably going to lead to some racial profiling, it's not like Arizona as is a state that hates Mexican people. Hell, half the police I saw while I was there were Latinos.

Well, I'm not a liberal, and I'm saying it. I say it because I refuse to look at this bill in isolation. I look at it coupled with Arizona's resistence to recognizing Martin Luther King Day, the details of this legislation, their recent decision to not allow teachers with accents to continue teaching, and this past Tuesday's new bill banning ethnic studies classes in Arizona schools. These are all examples of a very disturbing trend in Arizona that I'm absolutely floored by.

Originally Posted by 34958hq439-qjw9v5jq298v5j

The reason this bill was passed is pretty much a direct result of what's going on in Mexico. You really can't overestimate the amount of power the drug lords have there or the extent of the drug violence that goes on. They are not exactly acting discretely there. It's pretty well-known that most of the Mexican politicians are working with them - unlike America, they barely even try to cover that up. The police in particular are pretty much all corrupt. It's not their fault - either you run protection or your family gets killed...easy choice. I was in Merida, Yucatan for a month when the governor had basically declared "war" on the drug dealers, filling the streets with heavily (like, ridiculously heavily) armed police vehicles ready to lay waste to an entire city block if need be (completely unnecessary, but still a striking image). The drug dealers' reponse? They threatened to kidnap 50 people from a graduation party I was at - sure enough it was over by 9 PM (when they typically go until the sun rises). They threatened to kidnap people from nightclubs, and soon there was almost NO nightlife in the city whatsoever. 90% of these were just empty threats, but some people, mostly college students, were kidnapped, held for ransom, then brutally murdered. Hell, just look up the news coming out of Juarez, where innocent people are literally killed every day thanks to stupid, drug-related violence.

We're in complete agreement about the heinous nature of the drug wars in Mexico. A good friend of mine had a house down there that he sold last year because 4 severed heads were left on the sidewalk down the street from it. It's absolutely a serious problem.

Originally Posted by 34958hq439-qjw9v5jq298v5j

Okay so that's Mexico, but some of that spills over into border states, especially Arizona. It's not as severe, but last I heard they were averaging one kidnapping per day, with public threats occuring somewhat frequently. It's not the legal US Citizens that are doing this. A lot of people think that the illegals in border states were mostly poor dudes trying to make a better life - a drain on our tax system but not really a threat. The truth is there is a lot of drug-related violence there which is overwhelmingly linked to the illegals. I'm not an expert on this bill but I've known for years that border states needed to do SOMETHING about this. That's why the (slight) majority is in favor of this. There's no way this would pass in a place like Ohio. Whether or not the bill is a good one, I don't really know, but yeah if I knew someone who was kidnapped and murdered I'd support anything that would at least try to curb the problem. The liberal point of view seems to be "so immigrants will be out on a family dinner, the police will investigate them because they look foreign, lock them up because they won't have a passport, and try to deport them". There is no way this is going to create a new wave of racial profiling from officers who enjoy hasseling innocent foreign people. It's just a step to try to curb something that is a REAL problem in the South, something that sadly doesn't get a fraction of the news coverage this new bill has.

You say "Whether or not the bill is a good one, I don't really know". Well, knowing whether or not it's a good bill is crucial to forming an opinion on it. The biggest two key problems in it for me are that:

1) it stipulates that law enforcement personnel are required to demand proof of citizenship "where reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States", and yet it doesn't define what constitutes "reasonable suspicion". And when asked what an illegal immigrant "looks like", even Arizona's governor that signed the bill into law answered "I don't know". So who will be targetted under this kind of loose wording? Mexicans, whether here legally or not.

And 2) couple the above point with the fact that the bill also says "a person who is a legal resident of this state may bring an action in superior court to challenge any official or agency...that adopts or implements a policy or practice that limits or restricts the enforcement of federal immigration laws to less than the full extent permitted by federal law". So simply put, if a white person walking down the street sees a cop pull over someone of Mexican descent and NOT ask for their papers, they can sue that cop. Basically, this stipulation will place added pressure on police to racially profile.

So again, I have no problem with immigration reform, and common-sense approaches to administering laws that are already in place regarding illegal immigration, but I do not support in any way a policy that victimizes an entire ethnic group for no other reason than their ethnicity. I honestly feel like we're headed towards repeating one of the most shameful chapters in American history, when we had Japanese internment camps during World War 2.