Governor Brewer admits that she doesn’t know what an illegal immigrant looks like.
Judge Andrew Napolitano explains why the AZ SB 1070 is not consitutional. He also explains immigration law. This is a huge surprise. Napolitano is very conservative.
45 Thoughts to “What Does an Illegal Immigrant Look like?”
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The Judge makes a very good point. The police can no more determine whether an individual is in the United States illegally just by looking at them than the Governor. The law is arbitrary, uncontititional and ripe for all kinds of abuse against anybody, not just illegals.
Even non-Hispanic Americans could be arrested and detained under this law simply for not carrying papers. We cannot allow Arizona or any part of our country to become a police state.
All he’s doing is repeating that police are going to stop people ‘based on the way they look’, otherwise known as profiling. He says it repeatedly. We’ve gone around and around on this, and even the Fed’s lawsuit doesn’t make that charge, because the written law specifically states that is not a basis for questioning. It’s just like the ACLU lawyers that keep referring to the law as the incorrect ‘anti-immigration’ law rather than the correct ‘anti-illegal immigration’ law. Of course many here refer to the PWC Resolution the same incorrect way.
Idiots at Fox make themselves look like idiots. It’s a trend. Look at this, for a funny example: http://luxuriouschoices.blogspot.com/2010/07/how-to-spot-and-illgal-alien.html
Thanks, Pinko, for the link!
I thought all illegal immigrants had brown skin and spoke with a “Mexican” accent. Now people are saying that is not the case!
I have repeatedly asked the question–how many white non-Hispanic people with an accent of any kind are going to be asked or have been asked to produce their “papers”? Go anywhere along the northern tier of states and see how many Canadians you run across and in the northeast see how many French Canadians you meet. Day before yesterday I met a retired Canadian Navy veteran in the Dale City Petco. Crap–I forgot to ask him for his papers! Do you suppose he was here illegally buying pet food that he can’t get in Canada?
I think I may write to the Rhode Island State Police to see if they can provide any stats on people they have stopped and asked about their immigration status.
@George S. Harris
George, several years ago, friends and I visited Montreal. On the way back, at the U.S. border, the only person asked for ID and a passport was my Columbian friend.
My friend had been adopted as a young child but her papers had been screwed up. She had to plead with the guard who wanted verification from us that she was indeed a U.S. citizen.
I think that answers your question.
I am one of those, SA. When did ‘they’ say that you got to name the resolution?
Just curious, does anyone know how does ICE determines who the illegal aliens are? Maybe AZ could just get their training manual and copy it.
@food for thought
Then they should just implement 287g and shut the hell up.
I’m on the oppisite side of the spectrum. Before I got married and was single I tended to ‘drive fast’ and got pulled over – a lot. Without fail I was listed as white and not hispanic.
I think on the whole police officers really don’t care what my skin color is or what race the Census department wants to attach to me. They only care if I’m law-abiding or not. Or, in the case of some officers – we’re all guilty they just need to find the evidence. 🙂
If I’m profiled for being hispanic.. Ok, I got profiled. Sure it’s a hassle but if my peoples committed less infractions maybe on the whole we wouldn’t be investigated as much.
I’m not against racial profiling as a valid police investigatory tactic.
Valid police investigatory tactic is one thing…..that is how investigations are handled. If you hear a reliable report that a white male is a rapist, you narrow the field to white men….
The profiling we are talking about is when Latinos are stopped because they are Latino….
Let’s face it, probable cause can mean anything from a hanging license plate to a crack in your tail light cover to what appears to be low air in the tire to going 3 miles over the speed limit…all women who drive around town where bars are located know that old trick.
@food for thought
Things like no driver’s license, no green card, no passport, no visa are a good start. Interestingly enough, a few years ago I was in a wreck in a parking lot–guy in a truck rear ended me. And even more interestingly, the PWC police claimed to not have any authority in the private parking lot. But he did ask the driver for license, registration and insurance card, none of which the driver had. Police drove off. Incidently, the driver was a Latino who barely spoke English. I still don’t know why the police didn’t stick around until he drove onto a public road and then stopped him–vagaries of the law I guess. Could also be “fruit of the poisoned tree” type of thing.
I think that kind of cop response is one thing that has pissed off people in this area so much. And I don’t know if things have changed and what would happen today if the same thing happened.
That is just wrong to let anyone off the hook like that. If *I* had hit you I probably would be in jail.
@marinm
Yes, but you’re “legal”.
@marinm
And apparently light skinned with no accent. Right?
@Posting as Pinko
Probably. Some stats sure would be interesting.
I guess my point is, everyone is worried about racial profiling as a result of this new law. This may or may not be a legitimate fear. But even absent the AZ law, there is a federal law that ICE is in charge of enforcing. I know they don’t really do a good job, but they do deport an illegal alien every now and again. How do they find this person if they don’t know what he/she looks like? Does ICE racially profile?
George, correct. I got the light skinned gene from my Costa Rican dad rather than the darker hue from my Salvadorian mom. And, with the prevailing thought on education at the time my teachers instructed my parents not to teach me spanish at home as it would confuse me so I can speak English fairly well. Spelling, not so much but thats why at the last job I hired a guy with a Masters in Physics…to do my spellchecking for me. 🙂
George, yah private property is a funny area. I once had a bad wreck at Pot Mills (destroyed my 2 month old 94 Mustang GT 5.0) and police refused to respond because it was private property – worked out for me as I wasn’t given a ticket!
George, to #13 I think that’s what a lot of the anti-illegal immigration are saying. If your legal regardless of skin tone, ability to speak the language or any other subtle marker that might make one assume yer not from around here – the law is the law.
I think it’s been pointed out a few times that a person that openly carries a firearm should be investigated by the police not withstanding that the person has a 2nd Amendment right to do so. So, if the police are able to profile that person and ask him a few questions it doesn’t then seem to be a stretch to say that they can ask anyone if they’re American citizens. Now, I’m of the opinion that you can tell a cop to pound sand when he asks you but some people don’t want to excercise constitutional rights in such a manner so may comply and implicate themselves. And, I’m ok with that.
I think what you see with a lot of people on the anti-illegal immigrant part of this debate – and as MH pointed out – is that they’re tired of the law being applied so differently to people. You are either legal or your not. They just want to see existing laws enforced to that point.
And, I support that. In my mind you are either an American or you’re not. And if you’re not and we catch you, let’s deport you as far away as we legally can after spending a few years in a Maricopa County like jail. 🙂
marin, in your mind, what about legal residents or foreign nationals living in the United States. They aren’t Americans. They seem to be a forgotten class of people in these kinds of discussions. i expect those folks would be the ones most inconvenienced by laws like 1070.
Wouldn’t everyone be inconvinienced at the same level if enforcement is equal?
Legal aliens already carry ID and are required by law to provide to a ICE agent. I think the same goes with foreign nationals visiting on tourist/educational/etc passports/visa’s.
Now, mind you I’m not advocating for a statist type system where we’ll have ICE checkpoints (like DUI ones..) but if a LEO has reason to investigate you for something else I don’t see the harm in asking to see if your a citizen or not. I think American’s will fall into two camps – provide a license or birth certificate (Virginia gives you little cards, I thought that was neat) or my camp where you tell him you ain’t gonna support his fasicst request and pound sand.
A non-citizen won’t know that and will either comply and provide the documents, comply and tell him that he’s illegal or lie and add another charge if the officer arrests him for the primary offense.
Maybe it’s an over-simplification but I see this like a seat belt violation. I don’t support it being a primary offense BUT in the course of the investigation of another offense he finds that you ain’t wearing your seat belt – you get stuck with that as well.
I actually agree with you MH on the Judge Dread approach (tail lights, etc.) that some officers take. To your point about cops waiting outside establishments that serve alcohol in Virginia.. it’s like shooting fish in a barrel. But, what I find interesting is not that the women are targetted or arrested but that the establishment isn’t reported to ABC for inforcement action if it’s that well known to a local LE orginization that a problem exists. Is it about ‘safety’ or working the numbers to show arrests and convictions are up. I have the same issue with red light cameras. 🙂
Women are stopped all the time. Easy quota. It doesn’t matter where you live. Women out past a certain time …statistics are probably on the side of ‘has been drinking.’ It has happened to too many people I know for me not to think there is something to it. If fact, it would be easier for me to count people I know it hasn’t happened to.
other than a passport (which only about 25% of the US population has), how do you prove citizenship? Does a LEO know if a document is legitimate? How many different license styles are there in the US? What about non drivers?
Under my idear – you don’t really need one. You’d be arrested for the primary offense (assuming enough cause and evidence) and prove identity in jail on the second offense. If your valid then the secondary charge gets dropped.
To your point Pat, in VA unless your driving you don’t need an ID. You can just state your name and address. DOB might help if you wish to provide that data but as I said above if your an American and know your rights you’ll tell the cop to pound sand and walk away.
DUH! You cannot have “probable cause” AND exclude racial profiling. It is a freakin’ civil offense people, it was NOT a criminal offense UNTIL Arizona decreed it was “criminal” be in the state out of status. THAT is the proper term ….OUT OF STATUS. I wish I could go to Arizona, have “contact” with a police officer and not have my “papers” on me. THAT would be classic. However, I guess I don’t look latino, at least not enough, to worry about being harrassed. Good lord, we aren’t talking about catching terrorists for G-d’s sake!!!!!!!!!!! In fact, what I would say is that ridiculous preoccupation with catching maids, gardners, and crop pickers, among many many other jobs is DISTRACTING us from the REAL DANGEROUS criminals.
ICE does not pick people up off the streets Food For Thought.
Pat.Herve, in Virginia and in most other states now, your driver’s license shows one of two things…either you are a legal resident of Virginia (or the state that issued your license), or you have a legal right to be in the country and demonstrated that in order to obtain your driver’s license. Most states, with the exception of two, I think, have enacted those regulations to obtain an OL under the Federal Real ID act.
In PWC, the training given to officers is if the person provides a Va. drivers license, they are accepted as a legal resident or citizen.
Marinm is correct if you are not driving and are arrested. You would be physically arrested (not released on summons) because you had no identification to facilitate the release. You would be taken before a magistrate for a bond hearing. Again, here you would have to demonstate who you were, where you lived, worked etc. If unable to do so, its off to the ADC where computers will check for your identification.
How exactly does that work? @Lucky Duck
How does the ADC check for your identity? Is it more that no one has ever heard of you?
You also can get an Identification card that is not an operator’s license but you must be able to prove legal presence.
The Real ID Act has changed the whole “pound sand” thing.
As I understand it, Lucky Duck is correct, whoever LD is. Marinm can tell them to pound sand, but should be prepared to be cuffed and hauled off to a magistrate who will once again ask you to identify yourself. At some point, you’re going to get the message.
Go here if you want to see what the Real ID Act requires of you and states. Twenty-five states have complied with the new law and others have applied for deadline extensions. You’re gonna be surprised.
http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2008/08-140.htm
My advice–produce the ID or face the consequences. Not worth one second in jail since you are actually breaking the law, the LEO is not.
The whole question is a joke. Illegal presence is not an appearance. Nobody could answer that question. It’s like asking what does music taste like. Anyone should be able to see the that this is a joke question and should refuse to answer, but instead point out that, in fact, there is such a thing as a stupid question.
Now, 27 people (regardless of what they look like), in the back of a van, none of which speak English, and none of which have any form of identification….well, maybe….just maybe, that’s a hint!
@marinm
I just wish we had some statistics. Whether folks want to call it profiling or not, I suspect anyone who looks “Latino”, whatever the hell that is, is just slightly suspect.
People with “Latino/Spanish/Caribbean” accents run the gamut of skin color and hair texture depending on things like melanin and various gene mixtures. Blondes and redheads, fair skins and freckles to dark skinned with tight curly hair, blue eyes, green eyes, brown eyes, black eyes–you name, they got it and eveything in between.
But as I said in the beginning of this–folks with intermediate brown skin and a pronounced Latino/Spanish accent are gonna get asked for ID more often than anyone else. Can anyone disprove my hypothesis? Or am I asking someone to prove a negative? Don’t think so.
So if you’re legal–you should have no issues, but if not, then regardless of whether you’ve married into a legal family, if you are here illegally and get found out, you should be prepared to pay the consequences–tough s–t. that person knew when they came in that this was a possibility so man up or woman up and pay the piper.
And Capt, if all the cases involved 30 non English speaking men in the back of a van, I doubt if we would be having this discussion. Unfortunately, not all cases are this cut and dry. How about the cases that aren’t in the playbook?
@Elena
Wow. A ‘red herring’ and a ‘straw man’ in one post!
@Captain Idiot-Face
Well Captain, the idea that “Illegal presence is not an appearance.” may not stand up under closer scrutiny. The general feeling, without any statistics, is that if you have light brown skin, dark hair and a Latino/Hispanic accent, the odds that you will be challenged as to your legal status are much higher than some fair skinned, freckle faced, blonde haired individual with a heavy “European” accent. That’s the issue, that despite what politicians and law enforcement people say, illegal presence does have a face.
My general feelings about this whole thing are in #30. I don’t believe we should go on a witch hunt, but if you are here illegally and you get caught, then tough. You get exported and your opportunity to return goes pretty far down the list–to the bottom.
Somewhere in an earlier thread I and others mentioned dealing with businesses who hire illegals. THAT should be done NOW. ALL businesses should be required to use the federal E-verify program. Violations should perhaps be included under the RICCO laws–first violation-heavy fine, second violation-loss of business license for X months, third violation-permanent loss of business license. Perhaps if the ALL business rule is not workable, consider doing what Rhode Island has done–all businesses doing business with state and local governments must use the federal E-verify system. It the demand for workers is such that only legal workers can be employed, I believe things would change.
@Elena
According to the U.S. census, there are now 48 million Hispanics living in the U.S. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, there are ~13 million illegal aliens in the U.S. of which 90% are Hispanic, which implies that 1 out of every 4 Hispanics in America has crossed the southern border illegally.
The Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment strikes down laws aimed at specific ethnic groups/nationalities. However, immigration limits were passed in the U.S. well before the southern border was an issue, so it cannot be reasonably claimed that border control unfairly targets Hispanics.
Given the statistics that show U.S. border violations are committed predominately by Hispanics, how does one resolve the requirements of the 14th Amendment with the fact that the vast majority of illegal immigrants are indeed Hispanic? Do laws aimed at the primary perpetrators amount to racism if the vast majority of the perpetrators are from specific ethnic group?
Part of the problem is that businesses are caught between a rock and a hard place. HR departments that see possible illegal aliens with a ss card and turn them away are told that they will be penalized under EEOC regulations. I’m simplifying it, but that is it in a nutshell. We do need immigration reform. It should not take ten years or longer for someone willing to work and become an American to immigrate. However, we also need to return to a “melting pot’ culture and get rid of multiculturalism. Immigrants need to adapt to this country. I think a few “Ellis Island” compounds on the southern border, tell those Mexicans, etc. that want to become American citizens, to come up and bring their families. And while that’s going on, secure the border even if we have to permanently place troops on it. And then watch as Mexico begins reforms or lose millions of citizens. If there is no money returning to Mexican families or families to receive it, the Mexican gov’t will freak. Remunerations are second only to oil.
How do you get rid of multiculturalism? We have multiculturalism throughout the United States with Americans. We have a population of 300 million people. We have people who still maintain elements of their culture after generations. I think that the melting pot concept if greatly romanticized. On the other hand, I don’t expect special treatment for anyone. No sacred cows.
Back to Multiculturalism…does that mean Indians wouldn’t have their special ceremonies in towns with heavy Indian populations? No little Italy in NYC, no Chinatown? No swedish festivals?
Just a note, according to Wikipedia, its possible that 8-10% of of the ENTIRE population of Mexico may be in the US. Now, if you realize that the majority of illegal aliens are men, then that means that a HUGE percentage of Mexico’s labor force is in the US.
What would the US look like if huge percentages, 10-30% of the men in the US were elsewhere?
The idea of multiculturalism is the idea that immigrants should not assimilate because their culture is just a valuable as the dominant culture. It creates enclaves of nationalities that do not assimilate. What makes the “Little (name your country)” areas work is that as a whole the immigrant of that area HAS assimilated, and portions of their culture “flavor” the local area. The melting pot idea is not a romantic idea. It forces great change on immigrants. But it forces them to assimilate to the dominant culture of America, forcing them to adopt the basic principles and ideas that the country is based upon. Language is a major part of that as language defines culture. English must become the primary language for long term success in the US. The immigrant should adopt this country and put aside the old country, just as they did in the past.
What you are describing is the melting pot. Local areas have the “flavor” of the the local immigrants. But overall, they adopt US cultural mannerisms, ideas, principles, etc. A perfect example of multiculturalism is the attempt by many Muslim organizations to promote sharia as a viable form of government in the US. MC would not see that as a problem. However, sharia is anathema to the western principles of freedom.
If all forms of culture are equal, then balkanization occurs. If, as a general rule, minority nationalities can demand that the larger culture of a country adapt to them, instead of vice versa, then that country will eventually splinter.
Oh, and the Judge is wrong. He is misstating the law. Again. The LEO cannot stop you for “looking illegal.” If they can, then so can the feds. The law is copied from federal law. And the local LEO is ASSISTING the feds in enforcing FEDERAL law, not supplanting it.
Illegal immigrants, on a whole, primarily, in most cases, are short, brown, dark hair, and speak with a Mexican, Guatemalan, El Salvadorian, or Honduran accent, if they can speak english at all. Other immigrants are black, white, tan, freckled, brown hair, blond hair, red hair, no hair. Tall, short, skinny, fat.
Some speak english. Others don’t. MOST of them have an foreign accent. Probably 99%. Canadians have an accent too. Then again, I think we need to check Minnesotans……they have an accent…..and somehow elected Al Franken…….
So, there. Does that answer your question? It just sucks for Americans that match those descriptions. Carry ID in border enforcement areas.
First generation immigrants generally do not learn English well. (Historically speaking that is.) I do think that immigration has been romanticized into something it really wasn’t. Most immigrants at the turn of the century lived in overcrowded, nasty tenements. The parents didn’t speak English and the kids were bi-lingual. They maintain traditions and become American.
Hispanic kids maintain traditions and become American. They eat turkey on Thanksgiving and go watch the fireworks. They still celebrate important holidays of their country of origin. I find them no different than other immigrants.
Chinatown, Little Italy, Little Poland etc really were not all that assimilated. It was simply an urban phenomena. People take a couple of generations to assimilate.
I don’t think we could get any more Balkanized in this country than we are now, and it has nothing to do with different cultures and nationalities.
Strange that Judge Napolitano and Sandra Day O’Connor seem to agree from a legal stand point. From a governor standpoint, Bill Richardson and Arnold Schwarzenegger seem to agree.
I don’t know. I am not really going to sit here and try to tell you all that I know more than Sandra Day O’Connor. I don’t think you would believe me.
Most immigrants from western and northern Europe did not live in tenements — sometimes in ethnic clusters but not in tenements per se. The Irish, the Italians, the East Europeans, and the Jews from Russia for some reason could almost never get past the tenement districts of New York and later Chicago and other larger cities. They never seemed to want to follow agricultural pursuits. At the turn of the century, Jews made up 25% of the population of New York and, as the Jerusalem Post noted in 1908, half the prison population — probably put there by the Irish, who often managed to make a career in the police their primary goal in life. In point of fact, when the Irish, Italians, and others started crowding into the Lower East Side of Manhattan, the German and English immigrants already there pulled up stakes and left for better places in New York City or elsewhere. Either that or they became the absentee landlords of tenement buildings.
How about the Irish? I think most people who lingered in cities got stuck in tenements. Now those who headed to Appalachia to do coal mining, probably not.
Indeed, I agree that all of us have tended to romanticize in one way or another the immigration of the 19th and early 20th centuries. I know I was long susceptible to that — until I got so heavily into genealogical and family history studies. Growing up as a kid among the immigrant and first generation Dutch, I knew that they were largely very religious and generally conservative in their politics and dedicated to hard work and personal success. To me as a kid the old country was tulips and windmills and pretty fields with cows peacefully grazing and Dutch burghers comfortably smoking their pipes. What they never told me and what I learned through later studies is that most of my forebears had been little better than “slaves” in the old country. My Dutch relatives in the old country were almost all farmhands in a time when small holdings were being consolidated into larger, more profitable farms. Most of them had very little. My widowed great-great-great-grandmother was so poor that she and her young brood lived in a farmer’s barn with the livestock, their privacy from the other laboring families in that barn ensured only by sheets on ropes. She had only four choices in the period in Europe known as the “Hungry Forties”: (1) live as she did and work on that farm for starvation wages; (2) find another husband; (3) ask the already overburdened Dutch Reformed church for alms; or (4) join the legions of beggars traipsing through the Dutch countryside. That old English nursery rhyme about “Hark, Hark, the Beggars are Coming to Town…” was very real all over Europe.
It was years before I realized that the old American joke about Dutchmen pinching their pennies was not really a joke. These people had long memories, and they were very careful with their money, even when America started to give them much more of it. Their determination was that they would never again allow themselves to be treated like chattel and they would never again be caught short. They were among those who refused to settle in the urban tenements and headed to the Midwest and West where land was available. They truly were unwilling to settle for anything less. Their determination was once emphasized by a novel written by a Dutch author about those Dutch settlers in Michigan: “Two Sofas in the Living Room” — so simply symbolic of the climb out of old country poverty.
In effect, I now have a better sense about my Dutch forebears than I had when I was actually living amongst them toward the end of their lives. I also focused on something else which I had long ignored. The first wave of Dutch settlers were sometimes slaveholders in New York and New Jersey. It is the last thing I ever thought that those Calvinists would do, especially since their own freedom was secured by a long and bloody religio-political battle against Spain. At the seige of Alkmaar in 1573, those Dutchmen were ready to save their freedom by opening the dikes and sluices and flooding out the beseiging army of the Duke of Alba, even though they knew this would also destroy their own crops and their own livestock. Yet, how many are aware that Sojourner Truth, for instance, began her life as a slave of Dutchmen in New York? You find the good and you find the warts.
And then there are the Irish. Don’t get me wrong about this. I love everything Irish. A good rendition of “Danny Boy” will bring a tear to my eye as fast as any Irishman. Ireland in the 19th century was a horror. They died like flies during the recurring potato famines. Families would line the roads begging travelers for food. The English in their misplaced attempts to stave off starvation brought in Indian corn from America which turned out to be virtually inedible. Landlords began to actually pay the freight for Irish emigration to America. And they came in droves, either through U.S. ports or through Canada. So many died enroute on those poorly maintained and poorly managed English emigrant vessels that they came to be called “coffin ships.”
And there is no doubt that the Irish met immediate discrimination in America. The “Irish Need Not Apply” signs were very real. Their Catholic religion did not help. Many of them wound up in the tenements, often treated like animals, until they found two principal ways out: politics and the police force. Talk about an immigrant group eventually finding their forte! The Irish in America — what a story in my personal book!
Whenever we get into a debate about modern day immigration, there will always be someone who steps in with the example of the poor initial treatment of their Irish immigrant ancestors. I cannot disagree, but I can point out some of the warts there as well. Much is made of the fact that the immigrant Irish were among the first to answer Lincoln’s call in 1861. But move it up a few years. You will also find that Irish working class men were among the ringleaders in the New York anti-draft riots which resulted in the lynching of free Blacks. Historians will tell you that there were two principal reasons for this: (1) the working men resented not having the cash to buy replacements when the draft came calling for them; and (2) the Irish seemed to view free Blacks as rivals for jobs. In fact, I have found a similar situation in the Deep South, where the so-called “shanty Irish” were often very pro-slavery and Irish brigades joined the Confederate military. Some historians believe that this was a reflection of the fact that the only thing which kept the poor Irish from being the absolute bottom of the social and economic barrel in the Deep South was the existence of Black slaves. And, finally, I just came across something which really struck hard at the issue of Irish immigrants and the terrible ways in which they were initially treated. In the 1870’s in California, when the issue of increasing numbers of Chinese immigrants came to the fore, the leading opponent of this immigration in San Francisco was apparently the “Workingmen’s Party” led by Denis Kearney, a recently naturalized Irish immigrant. He scattered his followers in search of hiding Chinese immigrants under the sobriquet of “Judge Lynch.” The so-called “Irish boys of the Second Ward” reportedly held anti-immigration parades in which they warned employers to get rid of their Chinese employees and they would find that there were fewer “hoodlums” around the town.
Again, I am not saying this to be critical of anyone or any group. I am just saying that I agree with the Moonhowler. The previous immigration period was so complex and had so many positive and negative cross currents that we would be better off not trying to make so many comparisons between then and now.