If they are here legally, then what is the problem showing your green card and moving on. That's like someone being accused for triple homocide and the police telling you, "If you didn't commit these murders, take a polygraph test." Are you seriously going to say no?? If you didn't do anything wrong what would be the reason NOT to take the test?!
and ending with the following:
After 9/11, people should have no problem to heavier security regardless where it is at or how.
Hoping to spark further debate, I responded:
Prove that you are innocent.
Unfortunately, it looks like the debate was not taken.
__________
The founders of this country lived in a time when there were grave threats to security from bandits and highwaymen, pirates, and troubles with Indians living along the frontier.
They also saw how the abuses of their own government could create an oppressive atmosphere.
They preferred to deal with all manner of problems, be they security issues or economic problems, by preserving for themselves the maximum amount of liberty possible.
When you surrender your liberty to anyone, regardless of what is promised you, all you can count on receiving is oppression.
If your concern is economic security, you surrender an increasing amount of your pay to government bureaucrats, who themselves derive their income from the money you give them, with the hopes of getting some of it back should you need, after jumping through the appropriate bureaucratic hoops. You will never get it all back, since some of what you send to the government gets taken out to pay the expenses of administering the program, including the salaries of the bureaucrats deciding whether you get anything at all.
The situation is far worse with physical security.
Do an internet search about whether the police have a requirement to protect an individual, and see what you come up with.
In our country, our police are generally competent, brave and honest. There are, of course, exceptions.
However, there is no specific requirement to protect any one individual. Of course, take that with a grain of salt... President Obama gets great protection from law enforcement, and if you are important in the community, someone will make sure you get taken care of.
But what about the protection that the average member of society can expect from the police? There is a limit to what the police can do, no matter how hard they try and no matter what kind of resources they have available.
However, there is no limit to how police power can be abused, as the founders of this country found out the hard way.
The specific matter in question in the previous post was the surrendering of Constitutional rights for protection from illegal immigration, more specifically, police being required to actively seek out illegal immigrants. Of necessity, this mandates frequent contact with people, some of whom are citizens.
How does law enforcement determine who should be questioned regarding their immigrant status?
Along the Mexican border, do cops arbitrarily question Latinos? US citizens of Latino background will inevitably get caught up in the questioning. Or, to avoid cultural profiling and accusations of "racism", should law enforcement cast its net wider, and get people of European, Asian and African descent?
Either way, US citizens will be caught up in this net, and will be compelled to prove that they are innocent of any accusations made against them, in this case, the accusation that they are here illegally.
Here is the complete comment that was left:
I guess I should state that I am very much liberal. Probably a far right liberal. With that said....this law that was passed in Arizona about the immigrants...If they are here legally, then what is the problem showing your green card and moving on. That's like someone being accused for triple homocide and the police telling you, "If you didn't commit these murders, take a polygraph test." Are you seriously going to say no?? If you didn't do anything wrong what would be the reason NOT to take the test?!
But again, that's just me and I don't live in the state of Arizona where immigrants are over-flowing which, by the way, were the words of Senator McCain and has been a huge problem with no solutions.
After 9/11, people should have no problem to heavier security regardless where it is at or how.
Just to make sure I have beaten this dead horse (though it really is nowhere near dead), here is what I was going to write in response:
What if you're not an immigrant, and don't have a green card? Why do US citizens have to prove their right to be walking down the street in their own country?
This law opens the floodgate for police harassment. And let's not kid ourselves; though our police are probably among the very best in the world, we do have bad cops. There are criminals who get badges, and there are good people with badges who get corrupted. Power corrupts, and that includes police power.
The reason to not take the test is that, though I am innocent, they might find something else to accuse me of as a result of the test. What's to stop the police from accusing me of one crime, then using the investigation to fish for other things? This is a law enforcement interrogation technique. They accuse you of having your boyfriend murdered, so you admit you were angry with him and just meant to have him beat up. You have now confessed to conspiring to commit battery.
Ah, but is this really a problem, as long as the people accused are guilty of something? If you conspire to commit battery, don't you deserve to get caught, even if it is by false accusation of murder?
The problem is that with hundreds of thousands of pages of federal laws on the books - plus state and local laws - everybody is guilty of something. It's just a question of what. Do you really want law enforcement to decide to single you out and go fishing to see what sticks to you? And, why would they do this? Police power is easy to abuse; one person gets targeted because he can pay the cops to leave him along, another because she is pretty, and that too is of value.
No matter how heavy the security is, they cannot prevent terrorism. But, what they can do is make our country so oppressive that it is no longer worth living here. I will gladly take the risk of terrorism to live in a free country; had I lived in Nazi Germany, I would like to think I would have been a "terrorist" - a term which would have been loosely used by the Nazi propaganda machine to refer to anyone who did not support Hitler.
Do you not wonder why the government will not do its job to secure the national border - a legitimate job that it constitutionally has - but then uses the crisis it has allowed to develop as an excuse to attempt things which are not constitutional?
Furthermore, since 9/11 was used as a justification for surrendering our Constitutional rights, I reiterate my question from the previous post: Why has Osama bin Laden not been indicted for 9/11?
The freedoms bought by the founders of this country at such a high price, the freedoms renewed time and again by this nation's citizens - not just our military and those in government service, but by civil rights workers, journalists, and ordinary people - are now being sold, and sold cheaply, for a promise that cannot be kept: the promise of security.
The United States is descending into the organized chaos of an oppressive totalitarian society, and the pretexts used include illegal immigration, terrorism and economic security.
But, let it not be said that, as this was occurring, I had no comment.
Where is the freedom of this country? What does the statue of liberty represent? Good post!
ReplyDeleteWe still have freedom to speak out, but it is being taken away, because too many people don't inform themselves and don't care. Apathy will lead to tyrrany.
ReplyDeleteThanks, PV!