I. No Wonder Americans Say they Support SB 1070.
As we non-racists see poll after poll showing large majorities of Americans supporting Arizona’s draconian immigration bill SB 1070, we’ve been thinking a couple of things:
1. How is it that similar huge majorities support comprehensive immigration reform with an easier path to citizenship, i.e. what Republicans contemptuously call “amnesty?”
2. Do these people really understand what SB 1070 entails?
Well, the answer to question #2 just came a lot closer to “probably not.” I noticed a story in Sunday’s New York Times describing SB 1070, twice, as a law that “would allow the police to check the immigration status of people they suspect are illegal immigrants when they have been stopped for another reason.”
That just sounds sensible and reasonable, doesn’t it? No wonder nobody sees any problems with SB 1070. Only a couple of problems:
“allow?”
No, SB 1070 requires AZ police, under pain of lawsuit, to check the papers of people they come in contact with, whom they could “reasonably suspect” of being “illegal.” This explains, apart from any civil liberties concerns, why so many AZ cops are against it: It forcibly diverts their attention and resources from more serious crimes, and it intimidates potential witnesses to more serious crimes from coming forward. Not to mention, many Arizona lawmen are Latinos who would prefer not to be hounding their cousins. Not their choice any more.
“when they have been stopped for another reason?”
No, the language of the bill is any “lawful contact.” That means if someone who looks Latino approaches an officer with a question or problem, or if someone who looks Latino is a witness to or victim of a crime, then the police are required to check them for their papers, and they damn well better have them on them if they don’t want to spend the rest of their day in handcuffs and talking to judges.
This obviously makes second-class citizens of people who look Latino, whether they’re documented or not. And also ties the hands of law enforcement in a really unacceptable way. If Americans contacted by pollsters understood all that, no doubt their reactions would be less sanguine. But how can we expect them to understand when even the damn “paper of record,” the supposedly “liberal” New York Times, can’t describe the law accurately?
We’ll see if they print my letter to the editor…
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II. Good news: Racist Bigots Dying Off Slowly But Surely.
Or anyway, that’s the takeaway I get from this new pair of studies: a May 29 USC / LA Times poll, and this recent Brookings Institution study, both of which show a dramatic difference in attitudes toward race, diversity and immigration between older and younger generations: a generation gap of racism.
The Brookings study looked specifically at the “Arizona question: Is Arizona out of touch with the rest of America? Or, is it the precursor of things to come elsewhere?” And one thing it finds is that Arizona has the largest ethnic generation gap – in the Phoenix area, folks over 65 are 85% white, while folks under 18 are 44% white, making for the largest gap in the nation – 41%. That’s called unstoppable demographics, but it does make for violent, insecure reactions.
But it’s not just the “ethnic” generational gap; both studies show a dramatic difference in attitudes toward diversity between younger and older Americans of all races. The “boomers” in the middle are split on most of these issues, but “millennials” – those under 30 , who have grown up taking diversity for granted – are much more comfortable than their elders living and working with immigrants, gays, etc… for example, heavily opposing AZ SB 1070 while those over 50 strongly support it.
Calitics’ Robert Cruickshank sums up,
…What we see is that the battle over immigration isn’t a battle between white and brown, but a battle between young and old, a generational war over the future of California. Given the realities of human existence, it is a war the young are destined to win. But we’ll see if the old are able to take our prosperity and our values of diversity and equality down with them.
Dude, I think that’s a call to get out and vote.
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III. Dog-bites-man-bites-dog: Harman & Cedillo agree on an immigration resolution.
An e-mail I received from my state senator Tom Harman on Monday made me do a double-take. Apparently Harman, running for Attorney General and hard at work trying to out-race-demagogue and out-death-penalty the other Republican candidates, wrote an immigration-related resolution that not only passed the Senate nearly unanimously (with one no vote) but received full-throated support from longtime immigrant defender Senator Gil Cedillo (known derisively as “One-Bill Gil” for his tireless attempts to allow drivers licenses for the undocumented.)
I HAD to check this one out. What is this amazing resolution that everyone from Harman to Cedillo could agree on? Looks like it’s a call on the Federal Government to do its job; to enforce its laws; to secure the border; to fund its mandates; and – as I understand it – to get with the Comprehensive Immigration Reform finally!
Harman’s press release:
For Immediate Release – June 1, 2010
Contact: Eileen Ricker – 916-651-4035 – eileen.ricker@sen.ca.gov
Harman Immigration Measure Clears the Senate
California Senate urges the federal government to quit ignoring the immigration problem.
Sacramento – Senator Tom Harman (R-Huntington Beach) announced passage today of his Senate Concurrent Resolution 108 (SCR 108), a bi-partisan measure urging the federal government to act immediately on federal immigration law. In a landmark display of unity, Senator Gil Cedillo, a leading immigrant rights activist in the Senate, spoke in strong support of the legislation, agreeing with Senator Harman on the importance of immediate federal action. The measure passed 31 to 1.
“We don’t agree on much here in the legislature, but I am glad we can agree that the federal government should, at a minimum, enforce existing immigration law,” said Harman. “With California facing a $20 billion dollar budget deficit, the legislature would be remiss to not demand action on a federal problem that costs California taxpayers upwards of $10 billion a year.”
… [elision here to omit the inevitable dubious & incendiary “facts” which I don’t need to reprint … check out Harman’s site if you want] …
“The porous borders are helping no one. Not the US cities and counties stuck footing the bill for fighting increased drug crimes and gang related violence; not the US citizens that are victims of these crimes; and certainly not the innocent victims of human trafficking that are brought across our borders so easily,” said Harman. “This is a situation that must be stopped for financial, moral and safety reasons.”
Last month Senator Harman sent a letter to President Obama warning him that lack of federal enforcement would result in Border States and local governments passing their own “Arizona style” measures. Harman cautioned the President that if the federal government continued to ignore its responsibility to the citizens of Border States, those states would likely take matters into their own hands and pass a hodge-podge of hastily enacted laws that would only add confusion and anger to an already complicated problem.
When they get done building the wall, we’ll need all the illegals we can get to clean up the shoreline from the gulf oil flow. Probably need the national guard too when they tell people to move back 25 miles or more from the shoreline for health reasons after the first hurricane hits.
i was waiting when far left vern was going to come and do a take and use the one sided masage usc/la times poll . john n ken ripped this poll to sherd and exposed how one side it was ..did you happened to see how the questions where asked . they did . polls can be manipulated on how the questions where asked . it favored your side with the loaded questions and you still lost . 50 % favored the law . when you ask it in a simple way . do you support the law 80 % do
Did those great intellectuals John and Ken explain the part of that poll which was my main point – the generational difference – why do younger people support immigrants and oppose the AZ law wihle older ones do the opposite?
Or did you have to go out of the room for your Geritol at that point in the program?
no i left the room to hear some bald guy play piano but i vomitted because it so bad like his politics .
Well OK then, that explains why you missed the part where John got all depressed because he realized that California was just gonna just keep getting more and more Latino no matter what he did, and he took a screwdriver and tried to poke his eye out, and Ken stopped him at the last moment and declared his love for him, and they started french kissing right on the radio, and the producer got so grossed out he grabbed a semi-automatic and blew them both away before turning the gun on himself, and Barbara Streisand heard all the noise and came in from the studio next door, and when she saw all the bloodshed she broke out into an improvised lamentation, which shattered the windows of the studio and caused President Obama to declare a blanket amnesty for all foreigners except for ancient stinky white-skinned Cubanos.
You really missed a lot, Great One, and I am sorry about that.
no i did come back when sherriff joe called in and all the illegals started runnning
the great one
Posted June 3, 2010 at 4:40 PM
no i did come back when sherriff joe called in and all the illegals started runnning
Illegal immigrants do not listen to John and Ken. Mano ha mano 99.9% of them can kick joe’s ass.
Vern,
FYI, a lawsuit under SB 1070 can only be brought if an official fails to enforce federal immigration law, not if they don’t check a person’s immigration status under the Arizona law as you incorrectly claim at the top of your post (unless you’re willing to concede that such a check is required under federal law). See section 11-1051(H) of the bill for confirmation.
The Tea Bag Party are just “haters not debaters” or as others have dubbed them “screamers not dreamers”, with their failed attempts at stopping Healthcare reform, they say they respect the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence but they do not mind passing laws, through weak Governors (no one voted for this crazy) who only cares about getting elected Governor, on the backs of undocumented workers, that will not pass Constitution muster.
Brewer signed into law;
1. S.B. 1070,
2. No permit conceal weapons law,
3. The famous Birthers law,
4. Banning Ethnic studies law,
5. Could she be behind the Mural in Prescott, Arizona, ordered to be whiten,
6. On deck to pass, no citizenship to babies born to undocumented workers,
7. If she can read she should look up Arizona’s House Bill 2779 from two years ago (which was un-constitution and failed when legally challenged),
8. The boycotted Martin Luther King Day, what idiots don’t want another holiday? Yes, you guessed it Arizona.
Well Arizona, you can boycott new holidays and keep passing crazy laws and the rest of us will continue to challenged them in a court of law and continue to add cities to our Boycott of your state.
I real cannot believe anything that comes out of Brewer’s mouth, in an interview she first said her father had died in Germany fighting the Nazi in World War II (war ended 1945) but of course we find out the truth that father was never in Germany and died in California in 1955. But we are suppose to believe everything else she says, right! No one voted for you for Governor, yet you keep listening to the tiny brains of the crazies and signing into law everything that comes into their feeble minds, it only make you look dumb, stupid or racist, or maybe all three.
As for the Tea Bag Party, their phony patriotism is sickening; they are just racists going by another name. We all know you are just itching to put a sheet on their head? Let’s face it the Republicans had eight years to deal with health care, immigration, energy (remember Cheney’s secret meetings with oil companies where loosening regulation and oversight were sealed), climate change and financial oversight and governance and they failed. It appears that the Republican Party is only good at starting wars (two in eight years, with fat contracts to friends of Cheney/Bush) but not at winning wars as seen by the continuing line of body bags that keep coming home. The Republicans party will continue turned inward to their old fashion obstructionist party (and their Confederacy appreciation roots) because they continue to allow a small portions (but very loud portion) of their party of “birthers, baggers and blowhards” to rule their party. I will admit that this fringe is very good at playing “Follow the Leader” by listening to their dullard leaders, Beck, Hedgecock, Hannity, O’Reilly, Rush, Savage, Sarah Bailin, Orly Taitz, Victoria Jackson, Michele Bachmann and the rest of the Blowhards and acting as ill programmed robots (they have already acted against doctors that perform abortions).
The Birthers and the Tea Bag party crowd think they can scare, intimidate and force others to go along with them by comments like “This time we came unarmed”, let me tell you something not all ex-military join the fringe militia crazies who don’t pay taxes and run around with face paint in the parks playing commando, the majority are mature and understand that the world is more complicated and grey than the black and white that these simpleton make it out to be and that my friend is the point. The world is complicated and people like Hamilton, Lincoln, and Roosevelt believed that we should use government a little to increase social mobility, now it’s about dancing around the claim of government is the problem. The sainted Reagan passed the biggest tax increase in American history and as a result federal employment increased, but facts are lost when mired in mysticism and superstition. For a party that gave us Abraham Lincoln, it is tragic that the ranks are filled with too many empty suits and the crazy Birthers who have not learned that the way our courts work is that you get a competent lawyer, verifiable facts and present them to a judge, if the facts are real and not half baked internet lies, then, and only then, do you proceed to trial. The Birthers seem to be having a problem with their so called “Internet facts”. Let’s face it no one will take the Birthers seriously until they win a case, but until then, you will continue to appear dumb, crazy or racist, or maybe all three. I heard that Orly Taitz now wants to investigate the “Republican 2009 Summer of Love” list: Assemblyman, Michael D. Duvall (CA), Senator John Ensign (NV), Senator Paul Stanley (TN), Governor Mark Stanford (SC), Board of Ed Chair, and Kristin Maguire AKA Bridget Keeney (SC), she wants to re-establish a family values party, that is like saying that the Catholic Church cares about the welling being of children in their care, too late for that. Yee Haw!
racist , racist , racist , you guys have nothing . THAT IS ALL YOU CRY . hanna montana did you turn into the good doctor . with this extra long post . you are such a hypocrit . tea party scares and intimidate people . look in the mirror . with your follow the law breakers crowd . running up n down the street . blocking traffic . going on tv yelling THEY ARE BREAKING UP FAMILIES .. = dont bring them here illegaly . its your fault . . bozo nobama and the press yelling they will pull you over at the ice cream store . WRONG , WRONG , WRONG , READ THE LAW… its your side yelling racial profile . that happens every where . its the law its been in place for years . the blowhards are keith o and rachel maddow , and msHATEBC .