Show your papers – what does an American look like?

May 19, 2010 at 12:50 pm | Posted in civil liberties, News, political | 2 Comments
Tags: Arizona, Arizona Governor, illegal immigration, immigration, Jan Brewer, stupid laws

I live in southern Arizona, not far from the Mexican border.  Arizona is a pretty great place, geographically speaking, and there are quite a lot of interesting people living here.  But, every now and then we get some dumb ass, whack job politicians that make us look like a third world state, or a three ring circus.

In the 80’s we had Evan Mecham as Governor who had the honor of being the first U.S. governor to simultaneously face removal from office through impeachment, a scheduled recall election, and felony indictment.  He believed Attorney General Bob Corbin had microwaves trained on his ninth floor offices in a effort to overhear the governor’s conversations.  Mecham responded by having a radio near the window to block the eavesdropping that Corbin insisted never occurred.  He, like Jan Brewer, focused national attention on Arizona when he cancelled the Martin Luther King holiday.

We are now receiving world wide attention because our good Governor, Janet Napolitano abandoned left us for a secretarial position to become Secretary of Homeland Security.  Many of us hated to see her go because she was good for Arizona, Jan Brewer, not so much.

Worldwide attention is now focused on Brewer’s new immigration law that requires law enforcement officers to ask anyone who looks like an illegal immigrant…and by illegal immigrant she means Mexican…to prove they have legal status.  Several sheriffs, including the one in my county (yay), have publicly stated they will not, or cannot (due to lack of manpower and funding) comply.  Many of our law enforcement officers are Mexican.  I’m wondering if the new law would require them to show their papers to each other.

Look at the people on the left.  Can you tell the legal status of any of them?  Now look at the picture below and determine their status.  No one in the first picture is indigenous to our country.  Their ancestors landed here, screwed the native people, stole their lands and  relegated them to the crappiest lands, reservations, and kept all the good ones for themselves.  I guess the native people are supposed to be grateful we let them live..OK not all of them..in our country at all.

I think we should learn from the mistakes of the native American people.  If they’d had a comprehensive immigration policy in place perhaps we would not have the illegal immigration debacle unfolding before our eyes.

I’m trying to view this from another perspective, especially when I hear those in favor of the new Arizona law, speak so righteously about how they are the true Americans.

I have the same thoughts every time some racist, skin head, KKK member, or neo-nazi state all the non-whites should be sent back to where they belong because this is their country, as if they were here first.