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Sunday, May 9, 2010

Eric Holder Agrees The Arizona Immigration Law Is Not Racist

The reaction to the Arizona Immigration law has been outlandish. While there are legitimate civil liberties concerns, as there are with many laws, the use of terms such as racist and Nazi to describe the law went beyond the pale.

Eric Holder agrees that there is no racist motivation behind the law. In an interview with Jake Tapper, Holder described the law as follows:
Attorney General Eric Holder told me the controversial new Arizona immigration law is not racist, but he remains concerned the law could lead to racial profiling. In my “This Week” interview, Holder said, “I don't think it's racist in its motivation. But I think the concern I have is how it will be perceived and how it perhaps could be enacted, how it could be carried out. I think we could potentially get on a slippery slope where people will be picked on because of how they look as opposed to what they have done, and that is I think something that we have to try to avoid at all costs.”

This is a reasonable position for Holder to take. In fact, it is close to (but not precisely) my position.

The law is not racist. The law does raise the possibility of use of "characteristic appearance" beyond what is constitutionally permitted. The key is to make sure the law is not used to target people based on ethnicity or skin color or accent.

But these concerns do not justify junking the law, which substantively does little more than federal law now provides. The problem is that the federal government does not protect the border, leaving Arizona little choice but to act in the face of uncontrolled human and drug trafficking and gang violence.

I'm not happy that it has come to this, and I doubt many people in Arizona are happy either. But the failure to secure the border is the root cause.

Holder's interview was a voice of reason on the issue from the administration. Let's see how long it lasts.

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9 comments:

  1. Eric Holder for president !!! Betcha he would show us HIS birth certificate ;)

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  2. How long will it last? Now that Holder has spoken in public contrary to the established PC line, the better question is, 'how long will *he* last?' I expect the left's crescendo of calls for his resignation to reach fever pitch within 48 hours.

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  3. From time to time Holder demonstrates that he is not as far-gone as the One, Gibbs, and Napolitano (ugh). Maybe a few more months of being surrounded not by liberals, but by stark raving mad moonbattery, will continue to propel him towards rationality.

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  4. Holder is hip!

    And I keep sayin' - there are 3 separate issues:
    1. Border Security
    2. Revise Immigration Policy in GENERAL (with not one special group in mind)
    3. A special law to resolve how to handle illegals already in country.

    Ah, but to separate issues is against Democratic legislative policy.

    I can't wait for the libs to get down and dirty with what to do with resident illegals and find out that many of the more radicals don't care about a path to citizenship and that amnesty doesn't cut it. The lefty Mexicans led by people like that UCLA professor want the stolen land back and to see the demise of capitalism. How could Congress miss this?

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  5. It is Americans at the low end of the pay scale who are undercut by illegal labor. As long as blacks drop out of school in large numbers, they are disproportionately in entry level jobs and are hurt by government's turning a blind eye to companies employing illegals who work for less than minimum wage.

    On some level, Holder has to know that letting in large numbers of hispanic illegals disadvantages American blacks more than anyone else. Of course all taxpayers are picking up a big tab for the illegals.

    Bottom line, the people who benefit from illegal immigration are the illegals themselves who escape the narco state their culture has wrought, and their new employers who get to underpay for their labor. The people who lose are those whose jobs are taken and taxpayers.

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  6. Hardly the voice of reason. This is surely racial profiling. The illegal immigrants from the southern border are Hispanic, so Hispanics will be suspect, no one else. Racial profiling is a component to control of our southern border, but according to Holder "that is I think something that we have to try to avoid at all costs". It's nonsensical. Of course how a person looks will be a factor.

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  7. Where illegals come from goes hand in hand with location in the US. In Boston, for example, for many years the most common illegal alien were Irish who overstayed their visa.

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  8. Exactly what is wrong with racial profiling? I do it every day. If someone comes in with an anemia I don't run a sickle test if they are white or Asian or anything but black. The same for a varity of other ailments of the human condition that are associated with ones ethnic make up.

    Now, if the only people who are doing suicide attacks on planes are Muslim, why are we vigorously searching clearly non-Mulim individuals? Maybe the attorneys here can enlighten me on this concept as I thought the 4th amendment says no unreasonable search and seizure. I have heard that they skirt this by saying you don't have to use an airplane, but that is a false premise in our society. In fact, most Indians that I know expect to have closer supervision due to their appearence and have no problem with this.

    The same now goes to the Arizona border. I am sure that in the last 10 years at least one white or Asian tried to cross illegally. But it is very much obvious that 99.99% of illegals on that border are Hispanic. It only seems logical that it is necessary to look closer at Hispanics. No one is discriminating against them, it is simply that they fit the appearence of the criminals.

    We are no longer a rich society with untold resources that can be expended to assure equal supervision of all people. Plus, I don't feel that the Constitution supports such action. We need to begin to take logical steps to handle a problem rather than the stupidity that seems rampant when the majority of crime emanates from a select ethnic group. I am sorry for the bother that the innocent must face, but it is better than all of us losing our freedom. I am also sorry that the politicians might actually be expected to lead, but if you can't handle the job, don't take it.

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