An Immigrant Defends Arizona’s New Law

By Bob L.

I applaud Mr.de Silva for his honest comment to the truth about this Country, and how the laws of this Country are not enforced and how special interest protest any thing they can to run this Country to benefit them selves and not the people.
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By Ian de Silva
05/09/2010

Legal immigrants have no reason to fear the new law — but the illegal ones do.

In the hue and cry over Arizona’s tough new immigration law, there is a noticeable paucity of voices from people who are the exact opposite of illegal aliens. That is, legal immigrants—people who respected America’s laws in coming here. Therefore, as a legal immigrant and naturalized American, I must point out the fallacies promoted by opponents of the law.

Predictably, liberals charge that this law is racist and that it legalizes profiling. Yet the law says nothing of the sort. In fact, it clearly specifies that a law enforcement official “may not consider race, color or national origin.”

In today’s political discourse, you are not deemed qualified to speak about issues such as profiling unless you are a racial minority. Therefore, as much as it violates my conservative instinct for a colorblind argument, I reluctantly mention that I happen to be a brown-skinned immigrant with an accent. In other words, if profiling was a phenomenon that is as rabidly rampant in America as liberals allege, then I would be among those who are routinely profiled and regularly questioned by police.

I have lived in America for nearly 30 years and have driven in at least 25 states—and have never had a cop stop me for a frivolous reason. The few times that I have been stopped, I was at fault—mostly for (unwittingly) exceeding the speed limit.

Some years ago, I was questioned by a state trooper in Arizona. I was visiting Arizona and was on my way to Canyon de Chelly (a scenic canyon with none of the maddening crowds of the Grand Canyon). I had stopped on the side of the road to check the map, when the lights flashed behind me. I explained to the officer that I stopped to check my route. That was it. He didn’t even ask me for my license, which I would have gladly presented. I am sure the officer saw nothing in my demeanor that aroused any suspicions. I was polite to him but not afraid of him. I had no reason to be afraid—I knew I was a legal immigrant and there was nothing to fear. If you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to worry about.

On the other hand, if you are an illegal alien, then you should be worried when a cop stops you, because you do have something to hide—your illegal presence in this country. Illegal aliens are worried now precisely because they know that Arizona’s law will reveal them. In order to misdirect the public, illegal aliens and their ethnic supporters have concocted
the specter of racial profiling.

Illegal aliens and their supporters are trying to defend the indefensible, distracting attention from the basic issue at hand—which is that illegal aliens have no right to be here in the first place.

For over two centuries, millions of poor immigrants came here—and they came legally. I was also poor when I came here—and I came legally. I have no sympathy whatsoever for illegal aliens. Poverty is not an excuse to break the law. If we start excusing illegal aliens because of poverty, then we might as well excuse burglars, since most burglars, after all, are also poor.

To tolerate illegal aliens is to tolerate the same corruption of law that is endemic in many Latin American countries. The reason Mexico is so corrupt is that neither the people nor the police have respect for the law.

It does not help that today’s so-called civil rights leaders are opportunistic charlatans. The iconic civil rights movement of the 1960s has today devolved into a charade run by race-mongering rabble-rousers. Never mind that America has come so far that we now have a black president—but no, these rabble-rousers still think America is a place where every nonwhite is racially profiled everywhere he goes.

Although the Arizona immigration law clears forbids racial profiling, common sense tells us that—given the invasion of Arizona by illegal aliens and the total incompetence of our federal government at border control—profiling is a justifiable tool in Arizona. Arizona’s illegal alien problem is not caused by blue-eyed blond-haired whites from Scandinavia. So, to pretend that there are as many Scandinavian illegal aliens in Arizona as are Mexican illegal aliens is preposterous.

In support of the new law, I have decided I will visit Arizona again—to do my part as a tourist to help the state’s economy. (That is my response to the rabble-rousers who want a boycott of Arizona.) And this time, in addition to my license, I will also take my American passport. I will be glad to prove my American citizenship to a law enforcement officer if asked.