Friday, July 1, 2011

The South is the Cradle of Idiocy

Arizona, Georgia, and my inbred hick state Alabama have all jumped on the "ban Hispanics" immigration / Jim Crow Laws bandwagon. What none of these states considered outside of the illegality of racial profiling is the economic consequences of such unconstitutional and hypocritical laws.

Arizona, Georgia, Alabama immigration laws allow cops to ask suspected illegal aliens (what a terrible term) for identification. Since the most useful guide in the Land of Dixie as to who might be in the United States unlawfully is to start with anybody who looks Mexican, police will more often than not use ethnic identifiers as the basis of any profile. And, that, by the way, is the definition of racial profiling. Dixie's law attempts to cover that potentially unconstitutional base by requiring officers to have “due cause” to detain someone before asking for their papers. But I suspect Rihanna or J.Lo (and they're pretty stupid), could see through that one, we aren't talking about shoes or penis photos... if a cop wants to find an excuse to check you out, he has one of many to choose from, whether it be speeding or any of the thousands of misdemeanors on the books, such as spitting on the sidewalk or littering. Jan Brewer, Arizona’s governor, has said that “we need to trust our law enforcement.” But how can we trust them not to profile when the law’s very intent is to detain and deport a class of people defined by their ethnicities? The loopholes just seem big and obvious to me because it doesn’t really make any sense to pull over Caucasians or black people if you’re looking for Mexicans or Guatemalans, right? And please don’t give me that tired argument that they’re not just looking for people from Central America, they’re looking for all unlawful residents ...

The idea of simply asking every Mexican-looking person you come across to present papers is seductive because it assumes that people who are here legally will simply show their passports or green cards or birth certificates (driver’s licenses only prove identity, not citizenship) and go on about their business. People who are here illegally will be stopped, arrested, and possibly jailed or deported. Easy right? Wrong. Let me simply list the ways in which this kind of needle-in-a-haystack policing is dumb, dumb, dumb, and ineffective. (Did I mention dumb?)



Such policing is very, very expensive. As it is, in Dixieland, the TOP 10 in crime, we have a law we can NOT afford to enforce. We are pulling cops and troopers off of the street for real crimes and don't have enough personnel to staff the courthouses. Do you really believe we have enough people to chase down someone who "looks Hispanic"? What are the other costs? Tourism boycotts. Arizona suffered a comical boycott when Major League teams pulled all-star games from Phoenix and San Francisco and Boston had declined to do business with Arizona costing the state millions, even billions in dollars.

What does Alabama have? The Civil Rights Hall of Fame? The 16th Street Baptist Churh? Yeah, let's evoke images of a klansman bombing a church and killing 4 kids. Real positive message to project to the world. Vision Land? Horrible roads? The same work being done on I-65 that's been worked on since I was in college and that was in 98? How about a confederate flag being flown off that same freeway? Bad memories? If anyone is crazy enough to want to visit this god forsaken state we should be grateful they took the chance of risking harm to their brain cells by the air pollution or the overwhelming scent of stupid. What type of hit in tourism can Alabama afford? We already lost City Stages because the morons that funded it couldn't ever get band's people wanted to see and never paid the vendor's on time. To add insult to injury, the had it on the hottest weekend of the year and it always rained...Like I wanted to see Bootsey Collins in 100 degree weather, while some drunk guy named Floyd pees in ally and tell's me how he loves black people...please...

Legislators never think more than 5 minutes in front of their faces... and we don’t get to have it both ways here. Yes, undocumented workers are breaking the law, but our demand for cheap labor has made them an essential part of our economy. Many, if not most, of these people come here to perform the low-wage jobs that Americans don’t want and won’t do. Georgia had a mass exodus of their undocumented workers because of their draconian and half assed law and as a result there agriculture and farm production took a huge hit financially. Why? There undocumented labor pool dried up and they had no one to perform the cheap labor the state farmers had become accustomed to. South Carolina, observing the trend, drafted a similar Dixie Immigration Law, excluding agricultural workers, which is primarily what the function of undocumented workers are since the housing market has dried up. ONLY IN THE SOUTH! How can you talk out of both sides of your mouth and say "we hate illegals, go back where you came from, but please keep picking those bananas and shining my silver, glad my lawn is still under you." Hey fools remember, your scorched earth cut everything policy? You are cutting the teachers, the police? Who are going to check for the "immigration papers?" What the hell are immigration papers for that matter and why must I have them or if the person that is in my car doesn't have them they get arrested? Unless it's Vestavia, they only have 3 jail cells...It would be great for once, just once in my life that the south, one damn southern state wasn't on the top of the nation's laughing stock list, but with this b.s. rolling out with testicular fortitude and no logic, I have a better chance for Beyonce to rule world without her Lion King crusty wig.

This is a federal issue and this must be taken up by CONGRESS and no matter how badly we get upset about illegals using the system, it's not like they just came here yesterday. The government , the Federal government knew about the "Invasion" in the 80's. I remember reading in one of my books in high school that Hispanics would be the largest minority group in the 2000's and that was in 1990 something, so it's not like it's a surprise. All of this xenophobia is manifesting itself in a ridiculous stone stupid law in a ridiculous stone stupid part of the country. Instead of wasting money defending lawsuits, these states should invest in education (which we are sorely lacking), and jobs. Where are the jobs?

Good job Tea Party! This is what you get when you vote in an uneducated, vengeful, white, right wing, nativist, population mass cabal in The Land of Dixie

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