Comment #2

konane — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 21:59:01 GMT

Thanks JAP! Amazing results from passing a law with intent to enforce. Goes to show we've been doing it bassakwards since Clinton granted amnesty to the first batch of them.

Comment #1

JAP69 — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 21:37:11 GMT

I have been reading quite a few articles this week on the Arizona law. Now that it has been passed many of the illegal population have decided to pack up and move elsewhere. Eiher back to Mexico or other states. I also read that many of the illegal emplouers have cut back on the daily hiring.<br />Just passing the law and and being worried about its enforcement has worked just as well as picking them up and sending them back.

Original Blog Entry: "Rule of law is not for sale in America

konane — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 20:24:31 GMT

Rule of law is not for sale in America

By:Gregory Kane

Examiner Staff Writer

April 29, 2010

Source WashingtonExaminer.com

Legislators in the sovereign state of Arizona apparently missed the documentary Un Sueno Americano. And well they should have.

Earlier this month, Arizona passed a law giving police the power to question people about their immigration status. But not just any people. Those questioned must have been stopped by police for a perfectly legal reason first.

Terry stops -- what police call stop, question and frisk stops -- have been legal since 1968, so the Arizona law is perfectly constitutional. (Memo to President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder: Now might be a good time for the two of you to actually read the Constitution you've sworn to uphold. You might want to add the Supreme Court's 1968 opinion in Terry v. Ohio to your list.)

Arizona's law passing constitutional muster didn't stop the predicted outcry from America's repeal-all-immigration-laws-now crowd. No sooner was the law passed than charges of racism sprang up. I'm betting critics haven't even read Arizona's law, but they've probably watched repeated showings of Un Sueno Americano.

I caught the film on the Documentary Channel, which I stumbled across by cruising through my DirecTV program guide. I love documentaries, so finding a channel that airs them nearly 24 hours a day made me feel as if I'd died and gone to Chicago. (Yeah, I love Chicago too.)

When done right, documentaries can entertain and inform. Un Sueno Americano didn't entertain very much, but it sure as heck informed. And here's what I learned.

Did you know the rule of law is up for sale in America?

Un Sueno Americano -- Spanish for An American Dream -- is blatantly pro-illegal immigration. That is, pro-illegal immigration from one direction. That would be from south of the United States into the United States. I suspect the producers of Un Sueno Americano feel Mexico's immigration laws are perfectly fine.

The gist of the film is that those who enter the United States illegally are coming here to be part of the American dream, in hopes of getting a better life. At one point the film's scriptwriters mention that the poverty rate in Mexico is 40 percent. The implication is that those Mexican poor are somehow the responsibility of the United States, not Mexico.

But here is where that logic -- if indeed it can be called that -- breaks down. If America is obligated to take in Mexico's poor and educate them, and provide them with health care and jobs, then it has that obligation to the poor of every nation in the world.

How many people would that be, exactly? The numbers are staggering; we simply can't afford to do it.

The more practical solution is the one everybody ignores: Implore or compel the Mexican government to address the needs of its own poor so they don't have to sneak into the United States illegally. But suggest that and the charges of racism will fly anew.

At another point in Un Sueno Americano some guy is going on and on about is the billions of dollars illegal immigrants add to the American economy in pursuit of their dream. But the American dream is worthless without the rule of law. Or, to quote our president on the matter of immigration: We must remain a nation of immigrants and a nation of laws.

So the film's producers are saying, in essence, that because illegal immigrants bring us a ton of money, then somehow the rule of law is canceled in this country. Either that, or the rule of law is for sale in America.

That might be true in Mexico, but it sure as heck ain't the case here.

Examiner Columnist Gregory Kane is a Pulitzer-nominated news and opinion journalist who has covered people and politics from Baltimore to the Sudan.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/Rule-of-law-is-not-for-sale-in-America-92316274.html

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