{"id":3882,"date":"2010-05-01T15:14:40","date_gmt":"2010-05-01T22:14:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=3882"},"modified":"2022-01-13T10:15:27","modified_gmt":"2022-01-13T17:15:27","slug":"what-part-of-illegal-dont-i-understand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=3882","title":{"rendered":"What Part of “Illegal” Don’t I Understand? (Part I)"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Arizona<\/a>
Yes, it’s fascism … but it’s a dry fascism!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What part of “illegal” don’t I understand?<\/p>\n

Uh, the part where loudmouthed white assholes get to speed and smoke pot and cheat on their taxes, while American citizens of Hispanic descent have to prove they’re not breaking a law any time a cop looks at them sideways, and oh by the way while Mexicans, Hondurans, Nicaraguans, and Guatemalans who can’t make living wages in their own countries get rounded up and deported when they come here to do work Americans need them to do because they won’t do it themselves?\u00a0 Yeah, that part.<\/p>\n

All nations control immigration; the USA seems to do a poor job of it compared to others.\u00a0 Then again, we have thousands of miles of border with Mexico (and Canada, though Canadians have little incentive to come here illegally); even if we had hundreds of thousands of Border Patrol agents working around the clock we’d still have a huge illegal immigration problem.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, I’m for tightening our borders to the extent possible.\u00a0 We can do a better job than we’re doing, and I don’t object to the use of National Guard troops to augment the Border Patrol.\u00a0 I’d much rather have them doing that than killing civilians and breeding new terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

With regard to the 10 or 11 million illegal immigrants already living and working in the USA, no matter how much you hate the idea of them being here, they are here, and there’s no effective way or deporting more than a few thousand of them.<\/p>\n

I estimate that the Border Patrol catches around a hundred illegal border-crossers a day in Arizona alone.\u00a0 Anywhere you go in southern Arizona, you see Border Patrol checkpoints and the big white ex-Greyhound buses they use to haul the day’s catch back to Nogales and Agua Prieta.\u00a0 The Border Patrol and US Immigration & Customs Enforcement have repatriation agreements with Mexico, which can can handle those kinds of numbers.\u00a0 They can’t handle much more than that, though, and if we start rounding up thousands and thousands of illegal immigrants, we’re going to find the border checkpoints closed to us from the Mexican side.\u00a0 What do we do then?<\/p>\n

I’m afraid that what most white Arizonans (and Texans, and southern Californians, and white citizens of all the other states that are now tripping over themselves in their haste to enact Arizona-style anti-immigrant laws) would want to do is to round up illegals anyway and put them in temporary prisons until we do find a way to convince Mexico (and the other Latin American countries illegal immigrants come from) to take them back.\u00a0 And that would mean concentration camps.\u00a0 In the USA.\u00a0 And a large element of our population would be all for it.<\/p>\n

The only sensible thing to do is to create a path to citizenship for those already here, less the few thousand criminal illegals who ought to be deported anyway.\u00a0 Whatever kind of immigration reform congress eventually passes, that’s going to have to be part of it.\u00a0 The right will howl bloody murder and call it amnesty — and I suppose it would be amnesty — but in truth there’s no other way.<\/p>\n

And we need a guest worker program for agriculture, like we had in the 1940s and 1950s.\u00a0 I don’t know about you, but I for one do not want to pay $20 for a trip to the salad bar.\u00a0 And I buy the argument that we won’t be able to find sufficient numbers of US citizens to do stoop labor in the lettuce fields.\u00a0 I’m not willing to do that kind of work.\u00a0 Are you?<\/p>\n

Anyway, all this brings me back to Arizona’s un-American immigration law, which requires police to demand proof of citizenship from anyone they suspect may be here illegally.<\/p>\n

I believe the new law, if not quickly blocked by the courts, will result in mass roundups, temporary imprisonment, and forced deportation of illegals already in the state, and that before long we’ll literally have concentration camps along Arizona’s southern border.\u00a0 It will be another dark time in our nation’s history, as shameful as slavery, the fugitive slave act, and the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII.<\/p>\n

But my revulsion toward the new law primarily comes from what will be routine police harassment of American citizens and legal immigrants who look or sound Hispanic, who work as day laborers, who have Hispanic names, or who live and shop in predominantly Hispanic areas.\u00a0 If the white racists in the state house and governor’s mansion who introduced and passed this law thought for one minute the police might stop them<\/em> and demand proof of citizenship, then detain them if they couldn’t instantly prove they were Americans, they never would have gone down this fascist road.<\/p>\n

I suspect the joke is going to be on all of us, though, not just Hispanics.\u00a0 The TSA, remember, very quickly figured out that their performance would be measured and graded at all levels of the federal government, and since they were forbidden to apply racial profiling in their searches, they adopted quotas to ensure they search and question people of all races and ages.\u00a0 You know damn well that’s what’s going to happen here.\u00a0 We’re all going to have to start carrying proof of citizenship.<\/p>\n

Exactly what are we supposed to carry around with us to prove we’re American, now that we can be legally challenged at any time?\u00a0 Our birth certificates?\u00a0 Flimsy pieces of paper that’ll fall apart in our pockets, purses, and wallets, forcing us apply for new ones every few weeks?\u00a0 Have you ever applied for a replacement birth certificate?\u00a0 If you have, you know what a pain in the ass it is, how long it takes, and oh by the way how much it costs.\u00a0 Passports?\u00a0 Less fragile, but even more of a pain in the ass to obtain & renew, not to mention the cost, which is even more than replacement birth certificates.\u00a0 I think Arizona just mandated national ID cards for all American citizens!<\/p>\n

The more I think about it, I think this immigration law owes its existence to one man, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.\u00a0 I’m certain one of the reasons the Arizona senate passed the bill in the first place was to protect Sheriff Joe, who’s been rounding up illegal immigrants all along, and who is in constant trouble with the feds for doing so.\u00a0 The new Arizona law gives Sheriff Joe cover.\u00a0 And I’m certain Governor Jan Brewer signed the bill in order to appear at least as tough on illegal immigration as Joe Arpaio, who is a serious threat to unseat her as governor, should he decide to run (and I’m told he will).<\/p>\n

As I write, two Spanish-speaking men are clearing brush behind our house. Arturo, I believe, is a US citizen, though he speaks little English. His assistant . . . well, I have no idea. If he’s illegal, I’m as liable to arrest as he is. Am I supposed to demand proof of citizenship before hiring a day laborer? Yes, actually, I am, and that was true even before the governor signed our new immigration law last week.<\/p>\n

But here’s the question: will I demand proof of citizenship from someone I’m hiring to do work around my house? No, absolutely not.\u00a0 I’ll be damned if I will.<\/p>\n

Do I support a tourist and business boycott of Arizona?\u00a0 Reluctantly, yes, even though I live here and don’t want to see any of my friends lose their jobs or businesses.\u00a0 Universal revulsion, sanctions, and boycotts helped convince South Africa to end apartheid, after all, and it will help convince Arizonans to vote the current crop of childish racist right-wingers out of office.\u00a0 Hey, we’re already a third of the way there, because you know every Arizonan of Hispanic heritage — at least one-third of Arizona’s voting population — is going to turn out for the next election, and not one of them will be voting Republican.\u00a0 Now all we need are a few proud non-Hispanic Arizona Democrats to put us in the majority.\u00a0 Si, se puede,<\/em> brothers & sisters!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What part of “illegal” don’t I understand? Uh, the part where loudmouthed white assholes get to speed and smoke pot and cheat on their taxes, while American citizens of Hispanic descent have to prove they’re not breaking a law any time a cop looks at them sideways, and oh by the way while Mexicans, Hondurans, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,10,8,29],"tags":[65,66,67],"class_list":["post-3882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-brother","category-current-events","category-politics","category-the-economy","tag-az-sb-1070","tag-illegal-immigration","tag-rule-of-law"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3882"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3882\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30256,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3882\/revisions\/30256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}