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Va. police can ask about immigration status
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Anonymous
Well, that is why, ultimately, I advocate "no one". People complain about all the money that immigrants cost our nation (they actually contribute more than they take, but obviously different communities and sectors are impacted differently) and the solution is to throw MORE money in such a way as to likely do very little to actually change anything. Personally, I think our LEOs and politicians have much bigger issues to worry about than illegal immigration. As for "random" searches, well, we've all seen just how random those are... |
Anonymous
| And more people will die with your no-one policy. The system is messed up. At every encounter with the 'system' illegal aliens who engage in criminal behavior get off the hook when they could be held and processed for deportation. Police don't inquire. If their status is known, they are released on their own recognizance etc. etc. We need to have a way to verify at every point of contact. Ask everyone. That would not use more police resources (5 more minutes). It would use more ICE resources as they would have to actually do their job. I have no problem with ICE actually doing its job. |
Anonymous
They are actually doing their job and then some. As someone posted elsewhere, Deportation Hearings are backlogged. So these people need to get held somewhere pending that, which does cost more time and money. As for the idea that "one death is too many", what if your policy results in increased deaths? Or tramples the rights of citizens in the pursuit of non-citizens? I am not saying that we can specifically put a price on a life, but I'd rather carried the infinitesimal increased risk than know that people's rights (both basic human rights and Constitutionally guaranteed) have been sacrificed. So, I'd still prefer comprehensive immigration reform to anything on the table now. If people do feel that illegal immigration must be curbed and citizenship-status should be more rigorously checked, then I advocate checking everyone, not "random" checks or "suspicion" checks. I'll just have to make sure I carry my passport with me when I go for a jog. Ahhh, the cost of freedom. |
Anonymous
If we went to a national credential check I am assuming with our sophisticated technology there would be 1,000's of ways to check status (looking up your number on a handheld computer for example) short of having to carry your unwieldy passport while jogging. Deportation backlog puts zero pressure on police. This is an ICE matter and they have long been due for an overhaul. If they need more resources to do their job properly, they should get them. |
Anonymous
|
With all the hue and cry about illegal immigrants, you'd think crime was at 50-year high levels ...
Oh, wait. It's not. |
Anonymous
The Real ID program is supposed to make drivers licenses that are secure in their issuance and resistant to forgery, But guess what? The same states that are complaining about immigration problems refuse to do them -- including Arizona. Too expensive, they say! Too hard to do! Even though the states allowed 18 of the 19 9/11 terrorists to get DL's which allow them to do things like rent cars or apartments or board planes. But let's go to the Internet way-back machine to see how the states felt about it a few years back: http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/24/2422.asp http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2008/03/23/Arizonas-Real-ID-plan-sputtering/UPI-42191206316577/ (love the quote at the end) http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,249142,00.html Under Real ID, you would instantly know who has valid residency. Even people on temporary visas can have them, but they MUST expire with the visa expiration date. They would rather just pull over brown people than have a system that makes sense. Oh, and the pundits who are crying about immigration problems were also calling Real ID a government conspiracy to track and monitor citizens. |
Anonymous
| I'm all for Real ID. And please stop throwing out statements like "they would just rather pull over the brown people". How you jump from their reasoning against Real ID -- there are valid arguments -- to "they would rather just pull over brown people" is beyond me. |
Anonymous
The point is that the logic is inconsistent. These people simultaneously argue that they don't want more government in their lives but they do what more government in other people's lives, namely the people they don't like, which, in this case, are brown folks. |
Anonymous
| If I were an illegal alien -- I would puke at being termed 'brown folks'. Please stop. Illegal aliens come in all shapes and hues including Irish European. Sounds like they would like better border and visa control in the first place. Since no one in the Federal government seems inclined to do this, I'll bet you they are reconsidering real id. In the meantime, having police who encounter someone in a criminal investigation inquire and refer (to ICE) makes a heck of a lot of sense. They are not pulling people over because they suspect they're illegal; they're inquiring into status once people have been pulled over for some other reason. |
Anonymous
Easy. 1. They can't argue about privacy concerns when their law requires people to carry proof of residency or risk getting detained. They crossed that bridge when they passed SB 1070. 2. They can't complain so vigorously about illegal immigration on one hand, and on the other say they can't come up with the budget to properly check people's residency before issuing drivers' licenses. How hard can it be? Certainly it's easier than some beat cop who has to look over photocopies of someone's birth certificate or haul someone in because they aren't carrying papers. Certainly it would be less expensive than all of the mistaken detentions that will need to occur to verify people who don't have sufficiently official looking proof of citizenship. 3. Given that checking identity during a stop is going to be costly to do, they can only do it so often. Either they will rarely check (which means that once again nothing is getting done), or they will have to have some criteria to decide where to spend their effort. If you believe that skin color is not going to be used, you are hopelessly naive. The last thing they are going to do is try to stop German exchange students who have overstayed their student visas at U of AZ. They are going to look for people who appear to be Mexican, who maybe speak English with an accent (which is not a citizenship requirement). Show me criteria that are highly targeted, will net a large number of illegal immigrants, and which do not use race or ethnicity. It's impossible. The only thing that works is proof of residency for everyone, so that as soon as you hand over your DL or ID someone can glance at it and trust the information on it. That's what we need, not just for this but to help prevent the next 9/11. It's pathetic that 18 of 19 attackers had a valid DL, and it's pathetic that the states profess that they can't issue a decent ID. |
Anonymous
But you are not so you can't know that. |
Anonymous
You are missing the point. Yes, illegal aliens come from a variety of nations. But the people pushing in support of such legislation only care about CERTAIN illegal aliens, namely the brown kind. Yes, we realize that people need to be stopped for some other reason before their status is checked... but the cops still need a reasonable suspicion that a person is here illegally. What constitutes "reasonable suspicion"? How does one act suspiciously illegal? The likely answer is that brown folks with Spanish accents will be investigated and no one else will be, no matter how strong their brogue is. The counter is that all they need to do is show papers and they're fine. But that imposes an additional requirement of having papers, which not everyone will have. What papers do a 16-year-old have? What if you are 30, were born and raised here, but don't drive? So now these people need to get non-driver or other government IDs. Fine. But how small-government and "conservative" is that? The hypocrisy is mind-blowing and demonstrates that this is more about skin color and fear than anything else. |
Anonymous
Oh, are you one of the 'brown folk'? Do they live by magical springs and guard pots of gold? |
Anonymous
You are completely misunderstanding how and why that term is used. Stop flouting your ignorance. |
Anonymous
O-kay-- speaking of ignorance-- how long have you been in your little cave --or you would know that you can get non-drivers ID ? I cannot even begin to imagine where you find the 'legs' for your assertion that people in support of such legislation only care about people from Central and South America of non-European, indigenous or African ancestry. Your grounds for that? Our illegal alien challenges are systemic and include "non-brown" folk who overstay their visas, rich Chinese coming to have 'tourist babies' in America among others (Washington Post last week(. Since you are speaking for me (I am for legislation that checks immigration status during a criminal encounter), then you are flouting your ignorance of my motive; I care about putting the check on illegal immigration of all hues of 'folk'. |