Today I got the honor to present my illegal immigration report to my government class that I've been working on for more than a month. I was thrilled and scared to say the least. We started by identifying the problem of illegal immigration in MN. (This was a state project, we didn't bring a lot of federal information in). There are more than one million, illegal immigrants, did you know, in MN!! We did the research and there is a bill right now up by Pawlenty saying that he wants the local police to be a large part in deporting illegal immigrants back to their homelands. If that happens it would be during normal traffic stops or just during like any part of their job they would be allowed to ask your immigration status. This isn't very good because it leads to racial profiling. Racial profiling will create distrust and distance between all immigrants and the local police forces because they won't have as much trust in them. (even the citizen population because they see these things and hear them too). Well we came up with many alternative ways for Pawlenty and the state of MN to have ways of handling the illegal immigrant population without putting it directly into the hands of the local police.
The first way we came up with was have the state troopers work with them. When you have local police out checking ID and worring about deports they are going to be less focused on catching criminals and more focused on just seeing who's legal and who's not. This is half effective still though, because the state troopers don't have as much specialization in one city to really crack down, but it's a start.
Our next way was to have the feds do it. Have immigration control and NSA worry about this. It's what we hired them for right?
See, both really solid, alternative solutions. But we didn't know how to get a hold of Pawlenty, being teenagers. So we wrote to our senator. Ms. Amy Klobachar. She immediately wrote us back her feelsing about illegal immigrants and she said that she doesn't feel that they are a benefit but there should be a tough road, but one nonetheless, to citizenship for the ones that have proved to be beneficial to our country. I noted the very conservative viewpoint she expressed when she is liberal. (that's almost good, to see a senator willing to cross lines for what she believes)
We did end up sending in a letter to Pawlenty telling him how we feel. I think if this is a topic that hits home to you, write me back, we need people to stand strong on issues that are important to them. Do you know any illegal immigrants? You don't want to see them being interegated by local police and ripped from everything the know and love. Each day is a blessing, not that i believe in illegal immigration, i just believe that we can find ways other than forcing our local, not trained police, to enforce the laws of the land.
There are very few states that issue driver's licenses to illegals. Minnesota is not one of those states. That means that very few illegal aliens have valid drivers licenses.
When a person is stopped for a traffic violation and they are unable to produce a valid drivers licences I think it is absolutely incumbant on the police to establish their true identity. Anything less is totally negligent and a deriliction of duty and runs the risk of placing society in further danger. At this point, the investigation is not about whether they are illegal or legal but just WHO the heck they are?
One of the things that the police do when they stop you at a traffic stop and take your drivers license back to their car is process it through their crime databases to see if there are any outstanding arrests warrants. This happens at every traffic stop to people of every race so it has nothing to do with racial profiling. It is excellent police technique that is responsible for arresting a lot of criminals.
Criminals know perfectly well that their identity is going to be checked and they will likely to be arrested. If the police are barred from establishing their identity then criminals would have a strong motivation to simply claim that they did not have a license and accept the traffic ticket for that relatively minor crime rahter than being picked up on an outstanding warrant. It would be negligent for the police to allow this to occur. When they catch somebody breaking the law they have a duty to determine who that person is and if they don't have a valid drivers license then they should be required to detain them and dig deeper. The result of the investigation might be an illegal alien but it quite likely also possible that it is a home grown criminal. In either case, it is time well spent.
If in the course of establishing a traffic offenders identity the police determine that the offender is not a citizen or does not have a valid visa or is otherwise not lawfully present then they absolutely should detain that person as an illegal alien and turn them over to Federal immigration authorities who have the expertise to decide the appropriate next step in enforcing our immigration laws. The police are law enforcement officers and they should be expected to enforce the law.
The idea that the law is a Federal Law and therefore should not be enforced by local law enforcement is a bogus red-herring. Shooting a Bald Eagle is a Federal offense but if a local law enforcement officer witnesses that crime everybody would expect them to make an arrest. People breaking our Federal immigration laws are no different then people breaking our Federal eagle hunting laws. There is not and never has been a prohibition on local law enforcement making arrests for Federal crimes.
And the racial profiling argument is also bogus. The people are stopped for a traffic violation or some other offense. They are not stopped because they are Hispanic but rather because they broke the laws and therefore there is no profiling. And everybody of every race has their identity established. That is a procedure that is not limited to Hispanics so it has nothing to do with racial profiling.
Racial profiling would be if the police were only pulling over Hispanic drivers and that would be wrong. That is completely different then establishing the true identity of everybody who commits a crime which is totally appropriate.
I have a big problem with illegal immigrants, mainly because they're....illegal. The US has to have a way to decide who gets to enter its borders. There are millions of people worldwide that would like to come here, but the reality is that there is not enough room or resources to house them all. We have to pick a way to decide who gets in, and attaining legal status is just one of those ways.
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All these police officers and sheriffs like Joe Arpaio will be deporting tham and I'll be there lawyer so it only makes more work for me