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Most Americans Dont Mind Racial Profiling
Loading ...Sad news. According to McClatchy:
Sixty-one percent of Americans — and 64 percent of registered voters — said they favored the law in a survey of 1,016 adults conducted May 6-9.
Strikingly, nearly half of Democrats like the law, under which local law enforcement officers are tasked with verifying people’s immigration status if they suspect them of being in the country illegally. While the Democratic Party generally is regarded as more sympathetic to illegal immigrants’ plights, 46 percent of Democrats said they favored the law for Arizona and 49 percent said they’d favor the law’s passage in their own states.
More than 8 in 10 Republicans and 54 percent of independents favor the law.
In addition, about 69 percent of Americans said they wouldn’t mind if police officers stopped them to ask for proof of their citizenship or legal rights to be in the country; about 29 percent would mind, considering it a violation of their rights; and about 3 percent were unsure.
via McClatchy.
Its easy not to mind when you’re not the subgroup being profiled. Funny quickly the shoe changes feet. Discrimination through racial profiling occurred with every immigrant community that came to the United States–the Irish, German, and Russians were not exempt from harsh treatment. Now that they’ve fully assimilated into ‘American Culture’ (a ridiculous term, to say the least. A nation larger than the entire continent of Europe with a homogeneous culture? Localities, neighborhoods, states and–at best–regions, are bastions of culture, not the entire country), they are willing to inflict the same anti-immigrant sentiment onto future generations.
The general rebuff to this is ‘my ancestors did it the right way, the hard way.‘ Yeah, if your ancestors came over here between 1800 and 1900, the only thing hard about their immigration was the boat ride here. Outside of the Alien and Sedition Acts, legislation restricting immigration didn’t begin until the 1920′s (the Naturalization act of 1870 expanded citizenship to people of African descent).
Percentage of Foreign-Born to Native Born Americans
And its agreed that we live in a different time, where open borders are a threat to American lives. But the threat does not come from our Mexican immigrants. They contribute to a lower proportion of crime, and immigration is shrinking amid the severe recession we’re suffering.
But these facts will not get in the way of a mob mentality and anti-immigrant rhetoric, just like taxes being at a 50 year low will not stop people from feeling overtaxed.
The real question is this: how do we handle the immigration issue of our day–and how do we handle it wisely, holistically, effectively and–most importantly–constitutionally?
Representative Gutierrez of Illinois has submitted the following bill to handle a large part of the immigration issue. It is by no means perfect, but it is a step.
And Arizona? Well, check out the image here. As of 1910, a mere 100 years ago, a significant portion of the Arizona territory’s population was either foreign born or had a parent of foreign born heritage. And by 1920, after Arizona was added as a state, 23% of the population in Arizona was of foreign born white heritage.
Just something to think about.
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