We would like to pose a question to you regarding what is referred to as “racial profiling” and ostensibly down the road – is this politically correct euphemism – bad for the country, or is America doing something with this for the sake of the world’s benefit? Actually we are concerned with what is referred to as section 287g of the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act. As noted we’ve written on this topic as well. However, since the time of that article and November 2009, the Secretary of Homeland Security, as well as the POTUS has attempted to undermine the program – literally changing the policy midstream which served to handicap our law enforcement agencies (click here to read).
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano reshaped the program earlier this year to focus it more sharply on targeting illegal immigrants who commit violent crimes or major drug offenses. Still, critics contend that the new guidelines lack teeth (click here to read more).
Rep. Lamar Smith R-TX claims that the program was supposed to focus only on ‘serious’ crimes are false. The program was created to let state and local law enforcement officials help enforce all immigration laws, not just a select few. One of the most effective things we can do to prevent illegal immigrant crimes in the first place is to deport illegal immigrants before they’ve committed one, whether they are identified in jails or by law enforcement task forces.
Just a real short narrative that many of us here at The Thinker experienced at one time in our lives – to illustrate how America has changed – nonetheless, as a matter of civility and compliance, it was nothing to be pulled over and rousted, as well as being in or at a any live music establishment, during the 1970-1980s it was standard protocol to be confronted by law enforcement officials (LE).
We’ll assume it was for respect, or their ‘position’ that basically no one with hair shoulder length or longer said anything about it. In fact, the less one stated the quicker and easier the entire process went. Growing up in that period of time it was strictly – “Yes sir or no sir” – and like it or not, one always needed to say, “Thank you sir.” Believe us when we espouse that we’d all been to school, were educated, and knew what our civil rights were with respect to search and seizure, and especially probable cause. Yet if (and there were a lot!) one decided to demand that their rights be respected, they were respected all right, while being detained in some police sub-station; subsequently, missing the show, the after-party, and hangin’ out.
The only issue about “racial profiling” that needs addressing is that it is factually racist propaganda. My 80-year old grandmother has been ‘profiled’ at the airport and rousted. Does she look like a terrorist? Illegal? No she doesn’t, she’s as pasty white as they come, old, gray and has wrinkles; does she say anything about it? Nope! That would be un-American, she says.
