Archive for the ‘Immigration’ Category

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Terrorist Babies

Thursday, August 12th, 2010

The new bugbear in the Republican culture of complaint is the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which confers citizenship on anyone born in the U.S.  Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), among others, has been arguing that this constitutes a terrorist threat.

Apparently, Gohmert thinks that terrorists plan to immigrate to the U.S. and have babies who, when they grow up, will attack Americans and “help destroy our way of life.” And he claims to have gotten this information from “a retired FBI agent“.

But Tom Fuentes a former FBI Assistant Director from 2004-2008 isn’t buying this latest bit of Republican crazy.

“The FBI has 75 offices overseas, including offices in Jordan, Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Pakistan,” explained Fuentes. “There was never a credible report — or any report, for that matter — coming across through all the various mechanisms of communication to indicate that there was such a plan for these terror babies to be born.

“Also, I’d like to add, there seems to be a lot of former FBI agents lurking in the halls of Congress and in the legislature in the state of Texas, so I’m kind of curious about that issue as well.”

“I think — in this case, I think the FBI has knocked this story down completely, officially or unofficially,” Fuentes also added. “I think at first they didn’t want to comment on it just because they didn’t want to lend any credence to the people spreading it, but realized that there has to be some comment or else the no comment, you know, means there might be some secret classified information out there, but — but there is no credible information about this particular aspect.”

As usual, Republicans are simply lying to the public in order gin up fear.

Haven’t we heard this sort of thing before? Something about weapons of mass destruction and mushroom clouds?

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What Does Illegal Look Like?

Thursday, June 10th, 2010

I have heard and seen countless commentaries in the media and the Internet (including comments on this blog) that claim that because the Arizona immigration law explicitly forbids racial profiling, it will not unfairly target Latino and latina citizens.

This argument is either disingenuous or just naive.

Here is Adam Serwer on the so-called “color-blindness” of Arizona’s law:

{…} This is basically an extension of colorblind racist philosophy into law — namely the text of the bill outlaws racial profiling, despite the fact that it is clearly aimed at the state’s Latino population. The reason you can pass a law that encourages racial profiling in spirit while prohibiting it in letter is that everyone has a concept in their head of what an “illegal immigrant” looks and sounds like. A police officer wouldn’t have to make a judgment based on race alone; as the civil-rights groups’ lawsuit points out, they could make such decisions based on racialized factors such as “language, accent, clothing, English-word selection” or “failure to communicate in English.”

“Driving while black” has always been probable cause for a traffic stop in this country. Arizona has now added driving while brown, speaking Spanish, or eating tacos.

 

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Where is the Crime Wave?

Thursday, June 3rd, 2010

One of the conservative justifications for Arizona’s new immigration law, which enables the police to roust undocumented immigrants just for being undocumented, is that Arizona is suffering under a crushing crime wave instigated by the influx from Mexico. Arizona Governor Jan Brewer (R) called these crimes “terrorist attacks.”

last week, the FBI released its preliminary Uniform Crime Report for 2009; it is hard to find evidence of such a crime wave. As reported in the Wall St. Journal:

Violent crime fell significantly last year in cities across the U.S., according to preliminary federal statistics, challenging the widely held belief that recessions drive up crime rates.

The incidence of violent crimes such as murder, rape and aggravated assault was down 5.5% from 2008, and 6.9% in big cities. It fell 2.4% in long-troubled Detroit and plunged 16.6% in Phoenix, despite a perception of rising crime that has fueled an immigration backlash.

The early figures, from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, indicate a third straight year of decreases, along with a sharply accelerating rate of decline.

And the report shows many other cities in the Southwest have seen similar reductions, including El Paso Texas which is just across the border from the drug war in Juarez.

Last week, The Arizona Department of Public Safety released its crime report as well. The trend toward decreasing crime rates includes 3 of the 4 counties that border Mexico. The trend holds even along the border: three of Arizona’s four border counties reported less violent crime in 2009 than they did in 2002, when crime statistics were first made available on the Internet.

One exception is Maricopa County where Joe Arpaio   “America’s Toughest Sheriff” resides. Arpaio is famous for making immigration enforcement a priority and using violence and intimidation to get results.

Some results. Via Dara Lind, although crime in Maricopa dropped from 2008 levels, since 2002 it has increased 58%!

One of the arguments against Arizona’s new immigration law is that making immigration enforcement a priority will actually increase crime because anyone who looks Latino (or Latina) will avoid cooperating with police. In fact, many police chiefs and sheriffs in Arizona were opposed to the law for that reason.

Sheriff Joe may be making their argument for them. And if crime goes up subsequent to the law being enforced, what conclusion should we draw?

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