45 states, 4 commonwealths, and a police state

[calimac]

I've indicated to various friends in Arizona that I'd like to come visit them sometime, but I don't think it'll be anytime soon. I'm not that close to Hispanic-looking, but even were I as pasty as John McCain, I'd be reluctant to enter its new regime without a U.S. passport. I have one, but to need to clutch it in my own country seems excessive.

Comments

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

I look very Irish, and there are tens of thousands of Irish in this country illegally (though maybe not many in Ariz.), but I doubt that the police will be questioning people who look like me. And I love landscape of Arizona, the desert, the Grand Canyon, all of it. But I too think I will not be traveling there anytime soon.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Yeah, in fact the only person I've ever met whom I knew to be of dubious immigration status was a dark-haired young colleen from the Republic of Ireland. She was a co-worker at a long-ago job.

[richardthe23rd.livejournal.com]

Those laws don't apply to people who look like you and me, silly.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

We don't need no steenkeeng badges.

[scribblerworks.livejournal.com]

Is avoiding the state really the best way of countering an action of which you disapprove?

To do so only leaves in power those whom you disagree with, plus strengthing their power, since you lessen the voice of the opposition.

Just one of my thoughts.

Another of my thoughts: if you wish to understand why the people of Arizona felt the need to do this, go spend some time in Yuma, and listen to the problems caused by the coyote people-smugglers and the drug runners. And just how "wonderfully" effective the Federal government has been in enforcing the already standing laws regarding border crossing.

I'm not saying I agree with the state's action, but I do understand where it comes from.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

So what am I supposed to do to counter it, then? Move there so I can vote against it? I'm busy enough voting against wacko propositions in my own state, thanks.

Avoidance of Arizona is less an attempt actively to counter their policy as a moral refusal to enable it, and even more an expression of personal fear. As I noted in the post, even were I as pasty-white as John McCain, which I hardly am, I could not count on not being interrogated by cops rendered over-zealous by a law which encourages citizens to sue the police if they're not enforcing it zealously enough.

I already know why they want to pass laws like this, because they're always telling us loudly enough. I wonder, though, why they choose a form so ill-suited to serve their purpose. If they really want to stop illegal immigration, than instead of insanely, ineffectively, and insultingly forcing the police to constantly re-comb through the hundreds of thousands of Hispanic inhabitants of Arizona, insulting and terrorizing the vast majority of legal ones, and stomping out any desire of legal Hispanics to cooperate with investigations, why don't they just target employers? Illegal immigrants come here for jobs. If they can't get jobs, they'll stop coming, and we can dispense with all this expensive, tax-money-wasting draconian over-policing, silly attempts at fences along a 2000-mile border, and so on.

But then how would businesses get so much cheap labor at low wages, and who would then clean the pools, mow the lawns, and take out the garbage in Scottsdale? We wonders, yes, we wonders.

Legislation such as this, so ludicrously ill-suited for achieving its stated goals, and so corrosively corrupting along the way of everything the U.S. is supposed to stand for, when there are much better ways of doing it, remind me of the man who defended an equally unwise policy by saying "We desire only strength to defend ourselves, strength in a just cause." Do you remember who said that? Do you remember why, even though his arguments were justified, the conclusion he drew from them was wrong?