The laws that apply to us should also apply to them
— Just my thoughts on the new immigration laws that will soon go into effect in the state of Arizona.
In the United States of America, if a citizen is stopped by a police officer, the first thing that officer will request is a photo I.D. In the state of Arizona, if an illegal immigrant is stopped by a police officer, that officer will have the right to ask that illegal immigrant for an I.D. or documents proving who they are.
If the citizens of the United States of America are required to carry a photo I. D., then why is it called “racial profiling” if we require the illegal immigrants to do the same thing that we require from our own citizens ?
Seems to me that the other states should pass the same laws that Arizona has passed requiring everyone to have proper I.D. and show proof of the same if requested by a police officer.
And also, I would like to add that every person who lives or works in the United States of America, either, learn the English language or “Adios, amigos.” (Sorry if that offends you, but I have never been “politically correct” and Im not going to start now.)
May God Bless the U.S.A.
Donnie Rice
Mount Savage
They’ll need an ‘illegal spotting’ device
In response to a letter to the editor in the May 25 Time-News from Donnie Rice (“The laws that apply to us should also apply to them”):I don’t think the issue here is that the United States of America requires everyone, including illegal immigrants, to carry some form of identification — that is in fact what makes an illegal immigrant’s status “illegal,” when they are not a citizen and consequently have no ID to show it.
You are correct, sir, that is not racial profiling. The United States does not discriminate between anyone as to whether one need obtain citizenship in this country and have the identification to prove it.
The issue is that (Section 2, Part E of Arizona’s SB 1070) “A 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 United States,” gives an extreme amount of power to that law enforcement officer to arrest someone if that officer has “probable cause” to suspect that that person is an illegal immigrant.
Perhaps I may be naive, but unless the law enforcement of Arizona has recently obtained some “illegal spotting” device, then how can any law enforcement officer have “probable cause” as to whether someone is an illegal immigrant, when such a status is only confirmed by stopping that person and asking him/her for their ID?
It becomes racial profiling because to have any more “probable cause” than the actual ID itself in front of that law enforcement officer is to stereotype a race of people that have crossed the border illegally.
What checks the power of the officer when he harasses the young Mexican mother who has three kids by her side, and two jobs in order to support them and the exorbitant amount of debt she has already been handed by becoming a citizen, because she looks like a “border hopper”?
And don’t tell me it doesn’t happen. Even locally, young adults are constantly harassed because they either look like they are too young to drive or because they might be carrying some drugs — and all under the power of “probable cause.”
The question really in this issue is when the people of Arizona — and perhaps, as you want it, the whole country — give the power to law enforcement to suspect a person of having an illegal status solely on the basis of race, where does that power stop?
And does that power build a better and more accepting “blessed by God” nation as you so desire?
Additionally, in respect to your last statement, Mr. Rice, requiring that every person speak one language is not only a genocide of language, but of culture, and of a people who have had a big hand in building the Christian religion, and is what I would call a disgrace to the One Christianity believes in.
Alex Grabenstein
Fort Ashby, W.Va.
Your friend,
Alex
Boosh, is that smoke I smell because someone just got burned!!!!
ReplyDeleteMr. Rice has it wrong in the first place. Every person stopped by a police officer is required to show a driver's license/photo ID. Any person of proper age can get an ID/driver's license even if they are not a US citizen. What's required now, for those people who are asked by a police officer, is their proof of citizenship. I guarantee Mr. Rice, assuming that he is caucasian, would not even be asked for his proof of citizenship...he probably would not even be stopped by a police officer unless he was doing something obviously against the law. If Mr. Rice, however, were hispanic, then I guarantee he would be stopped (just because he was hispanic and not because he was doing anything obviously against the law), and then asked to show his proof of citizenship. That is where racial profiling comes into play and that is wrong. I live in Arizona.
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