Obviously, Arizona hasn’t grasped this concept when it comes to addressing illegal immigration.

I’ve been following this since Governor Jan Brewer signed into law the toughest immigration legislation in the country and thought I would post my thoughts on this subject.

My Stance

I am in full support of those that are living in this country and have been for years, to work towards being US citizens if they plan to stay here and make this country their permanent home. Especially if you are working here. Taxes are an important part of income generation for both states and the country as a whole. Roads get driven on daily. Parks gets played in often. Various social services like police, fire and health care are used. I’m all about being fair for all. If you take up residence and call a dwelling your home, you should be paying your fair share.

Those that come into this country and don’t contribute, you are doing legal residents a disservice. And I think something should be done to address this issue. Unfortunately, I don’t think Arizona’s knee-jerk law is going to do anything to help.

Elected officials have a problem and they want to solve it. That much most, if not all of us, can agree on. How they are going about it is where I disagree.

My friend in IT, Star Wars and Steely Dan shared this video on Twitter the other day. As I always try to keep an open mind about most things [Sorry Wayne, I will never switch back to Windows as my main computing platform], I clicked on the link and watched it.

Rep. Tom McClintock makes some valid points in this video, which is a response to a recent visit by Mexican President Felix Calderon. The first three and half minutes are spent explaining his stance, which I mostly agree with. It’s in the final 90 seconds is where Tom tends to be distracted and forgets to hear his own words.

Racial Enforcement

As Mr. Gascón has so very well stated in the following article, putting officers into the position of determining who is illegal and who isn’t without racial profiling is difficult. The entire creation of this legislation in Arizona came from the massive amount of people crossing the border from Mexico. This is not about a German citizen who lives in Arizona and hasn’t applied for citizenship yet. This is not about a Dutch resident who has lived in the state, working for the last several years. This law is squarely aimed at latinos and spanish-speaking individuals and trying to stop them from coming into the country illegally. And with this law, those are the people that will be stopped and asked for their papers the most. The only way Arizona can ensure there will be no racial profiling is if they stop each and every person and ask for their legal paperwork. Make no distinction between anyone. White, black, latino, asian, indian… you get stopped, you show your papers. That seems fair, doesn’t it? A lot of work, but with the way the law was worded and designed, it’s the only way for Gov. Brewer to keep her promise without sounding hypocritical.

Now I know some of you are saying, “What’s wrong with that? We need to defend our borders!” and others will say “They are taking their money from here and sending it home to Mexico” and “They don’t pay taxes and we are missing out on collecting that revenue” And I agree with those concerns and issues. As Rep. McClintock above said, we don’t want to close off immigrants from coming into this country, we just want them to become legal US citizens. I agree with that. What I don’t agree with is how this law is aimed at a specific race. Sure, it’s the biggest issue for Arizona, but there are better ways of enforcing and resolving this.

Hear Me Out

Back some years ago, The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) was concerned about increased music piracy. Instead of embracing a new way of gaining customers, it took them to court and fined them for each illegally-downloaded song. Arizona is doing a similar tactic. Instead of finding a way to help those that are here illegally become legal, they are willing to fine them and place them in jail.

A RIAA lawyer sees someone with an iPod and thinks “How many pirated songs are on that?”

Those legislators that voted for this law see a latino and think, “Is that person here illegally?”

Divided We Stand

Legal US citizens that look, talk and act like those that the Arizona law hopes to label as illegal, have no need to fear of being deported. They just need to make sure they carry some form of legal documentation that proves they are legal citizens. But, they do have need to be concerned. If for some reason, there are those who enforce this new law that don’t heed to the governor’s repeated anti-profiling promise, these legal citizens will become tired of being asked for their papers, regardless of their public actions. I certainly don’t wish for that to happen, but with a long history of race divide in this country, it’s inevitable.

How do we avoid this? Repeal the law, rewrite it so that it removes the language about “reasonable suspicion” and focus the efforts on helping add more US citizens. Do this before more states, like Utah, become copycats and continue making that dividing line that much larger. This is after all, the United States of America, not the Divided Properties of North America.
]]> http://www.banalleakage.com/2010/05/24/profiling/feed/ 10 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/ http://www.banalleakage.com/2008/08/08/obama-is-pregnant/ http://www.banalleakage.com/2008/08/08/obama-is-pregnant/#comments Fri, 08 Aug 2008 23:17:49 +0000 martymankins http://www.banalleakage.com/?p=59

[*Slanderous Propaganda]

Obviously the above is not true, but it might as well be. And I’m sure after posting that title above, there will be a hundred Obama haters that add new blog posts, skewing whatever “facts” they need to to claim it as being true. I say, as long as he’s covered by the same health plan that also covers illegal baby rats under the age of 3, it’s all good to me.

Enough Is Enough

My political posts out here are few and far between, but after this last week, I had to speak out. I’ve been barraged by tons of emails, some from the same person, that will stop at nothing to trash and find anything and everything to disparage Barack Obama. Now I don’t agree with everything Mr. Obama has to say and I take issue with some of his positions, and as a politician, he most likely has some black marks that follow him around. I’m all for checking out a candidate, their background and qualifications. But these emails that I’ve received have a slant which supports a certain position, and proves that there’s a lot of people out there that have way too much time on their hands.

EMAIL #1: Obama Not Eligible for President

Here is the text of the email:

• Dear Friends,

  The following is an article from the July 7, 2008, issue #27 from “The American Free Press” Newspaper, an article by Assistant editor, Pat Shannon.

  “It now appears that Barack Obama is consitutionally ineligible for the office of president. John McCain’s eligibility was established in 1964, when courts ruled Sen. Barry Goldwater was eligible although he was born in Arizona when it was a territory, not a state. McCain was born in the Panama Canal Zone when it was a U.S. territory.

  And, even as the controlled media continues to ignore the ineligibility of Obama, it will not go away. While few doubt that the Democrats will manage to pull off his nomination, all remain poised to view the legal performance.

  The first hurdle will be having Obama produce his birth certificate, which so far he has refused to do, and prove that he was born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961,as he has always claimed. There is speculation that his American mother may have brought him to Honolulu shortly after his birth in Kenya, but no proof of that has been shown.

  According to the law on the books at the time of Obama’s birth, the office of president requires that a candidate be a natural citizen if the child was not born to two U.S. citizen parents. Since he was not,should it be proven that Obama was not born in Hawaii, as claimed, he is ineligible without further debate. But assuring that he was born there, he has another problem.

  According to a legal researcher who has contacted the AFP, U.S. law very clearly states: “If only one parent is a U.S. citizen at the time of one’s birth, that parent must have resided in the United States for a minimum of 10 years, five of which must be after the age of 16.” And therein lies Obama’s new problem.

  Barack Obama’s father was never a U.S. citizen.

  Interestingly, there isn’t much paperwork on the marriage of Obama’s parents, and this has a few researchers speculating that it never took place at all. On page 27 of “Obama: From Promise to Power”, David Mendell writes: “Obama later confessed that he never searched for the government documents on the marriage, although Madelyn (Obama’s maternal grandmother) insisted they were legally married.” He also notes that Obama’s father apparently was not legally divorced from his first wife back in Kenya at the time, a point of contention that ultimately led to their separation. This also would suggest that there may never have been any legal marriage by Obama’s parents at all, but the Constitution does not ban an illegitimate child from the White House, as long as he was born inside the U.S.

  Obama’s mother was born in Kansas and was only 18 when Obama was born. This means even though she satisfied the citizen requirement for 10 years, she was not a citizen for at least five years prior to Obama’s birth. In essence, the mother alone is not old enough to qualify her son for automatic U.S. citizenship. At most, two years elapsed from his mother turning 16 to the time of Barack Obama’s birth when she was 18. His mother would have needed to have been 16 + 5 = 21 years old at the time of Barack Obama’s birth for him to be a natural-born citizen. Barack Obama was already three years old at the time his mother turned 21.

  Technically, Obama should have been naturalized as a citizen, but that, of course, would disqualify him from holding the office of president. If the allegations are accurate, America could install in January of 2009 a new president who is not even a U.S. citizen, neither born nor naturalized.

  It should be demanded that Obama produce his 1961 Hawaiian birth certificate.

  If he cannot satisfactorily do so, he should be deemed immediately ineligible to hold the office of president.”

Ok. First, here’s the link to the Snopes.com article: Is Barack Obama a natrual-born citizen?

I tend to check Snopes.com as they have done an incredible job of fact checking. Almost everything that I’ve checked out there, has been verified from fully-qualified sources that show the true facts.

Comparing the text in the email to the detailed response in the above Snopes.com link, it seems that Obama may actually be qualified to run for President. The perpetrated theories laid out in the email are debunked and explained, as the email author has labored the adding of ages, dates and “where his parents lived”, only to show that those specifics apply only to those BORN OUTSIDE THE U.S. Obama was born in Hawaii on August 4th, 1961, almost two years after Hawaii became the 50th US State.

Ok. I know many of you are just waiting to comment and tell me, “But what about the time of when he lived in Indonesia?” “But the 14-year rule, doesn’t that still apply to Obama?” Reach deep if you will, but the fact remains that Barack Obama IS qualified to run for President. Plus, do you really think that if he WASN’T qualified, someone would have caught this way before he started running for office? Seriously… think about it.

 
 
EMAIL #2: Obama Removes American Flag From Campaign Plane

Here is the text of the email:

• The plane that once had an American flag on its tail now sports the Obama “O.” “Change We Can Believe In” and the candidate’s website are splayed across both sides of the fuselage, making this 757 anything but inconspicuous.

  This means, of course, that the people of Afghanistan, Iraq, Jordan, Israel, Germany, and other countries will see a plane without an American flag — a plane on which the sole symbol is all about one man. Barack: Afghans and Iraqis won’t be voting for you in November. But they will notice that you failed to represent yourself as a proud American citizen while you are abroad. We’ve noticed too.

  As a patriotic American citizen, I am embarrassed that a presumptive presidential candidate would fail to display a core symbol of the United States of America.

  As a patriotic American citizen, I am deeply concerned that the Democratic party may nominate a candidate who is solely focused on displaying his OWN image and symbols rather than those of his party and his country.

  Not only is his plane’s symbolism unpatriotic, it is also narcissistic.

This one is mostly correct, but you must read the details at the following Snopes.com link: Barack Obama’s Campaign Plane.

As the Snopes.com article explains, the plane that Obama was using was chartered from North American Airlines. The flag on the tail of the plane is a company trademark. Obama (like his rival John McCain) customized his plane, adding his campaign logo.

I know some of you reading this and thinking this is just another “example” of how “unpatriotic” Obama is. And while the flag is a symbol of our country, agreeing that Obama should be held to a higher standard, removing it from a plane doesn’t undermine his patriotism or dedication to this country. The above email circulating around is just another red herring. Another avenue of finding fault with him. Anyone can hold up the flag and say they are patriotic, but it doesn’t always mean they are. How many cars do you see with a flag on it, tattered and weather-worn from traveling at 75 mph, ready to have another thread torn off of it? Is that respect? How many people never displayed a flag until after 9/11? Did they suddenly start caring about their country? Patriotism isn’t based on a piece of cloth. It’s what you can do to help this country and protect it. Enough said.

Oh, and there is still a flag there. The photo labeled “Modified Obama campaign version” in the Snopes.com article shows an American Flag on the airplane, as is placed on all American-based aircraft to identify what country it is from.

 
 
Stop The Slander

The distorting of facts to support one’s position against a candidate is not new. It’s been going on for decades. The internet just makes it easier for anyone with an email account or a blog to state their case as “the truth”. I’m not here to say Barack Obama is spotless. He plays the political game, like ANY OTHER POLITICIAN has done. But… these types of emails that go around making up shit and distorting the facts are JUST PLAIN WRONG! This is not creative. It simply shows that whoever creates this garbage is only interested in promoting slander. They are no more ethical than their exaggerated claims they make against the candidate they dislike. Do your part by checking the facts first before believing everything that’s sent to your inbox as the truth.

How do you feel about these kinds of emails? For them? Against them? Delete them and never read them? Do you see any against McCain? [I've yet to see one come into my inbox]. Let me know in the comments.