Does anyone really know what racial profiling is? I understand the point of view that many immigrants are taking, ‘that the Arizona law will be unfair to them’. In their view when ever they are confronted by a police officer whether breaking the law or not they will be thinking that they will be deported. How could an officer of the law think of anything else when they confront someone of Latin descent, they might think?
Yet on the other hand there is another point of view. With such an increase in the amount of people deciding to move north to our great country and as often and is brought up in the media what else can anyone think when they see someone of Latin descent, right?
Here is my opinion and yes, you can take it as you may because I am no one important and no one really listens to me anyway so I won't affect much when it comes to really changing things in our country. But I digress and need to get back on point.
So, back to the children asking what is going on? I explained that because people in South America are struggling with not having money, nice cars, big homes, boats and etc. You know that they don't have the nice things that we have and take for granted. So in an effort to get those things they want to come here to the U.S. Now unfortunately it is very hard to come to the United States legally and so many of these struggling people in an effort to make a better life for them selves and their families, they come here illegally.
This has an affect on all of us. How? Well they use the same services that we all do. I mean Police, Fireman, hospitals, our roads etc., now unfortunately because they are here under the radar or illegally they don’t pay taxes. All of those services are paid for by our paying taxes. Taxes are the means by which our governments, schools, cities, states and even the United States pay for all of the wonderful services which we rely on and take for granted. This means that they get these services for free. Some people don’t like that and think that it is unfair. So people in our government in an effort to be fair create laws that try to balance things out.
This is the dilemma. How to fix the tide of people who want better lives from coming here illegally and making everyone else pay for things that they should be paying for too. How do we do that? Obviously no one has come up with a good idea.
So Arizona creates a law that makes it easier for that state to slow the flow of money and services to people who aren’t paying for it. I think that we all would love having things for free. I don’t think that the people coming across our border illegally know that they will be impacting these services, this is not their intent. “Let’s move to the United States and sink them financially by not paying taxes and using up all of their money and resources”. Yeah, sounds unlikely, right?
So now if a police officer pulls over someone for speeding, and finds that they are not in the U.S. legally he now can put them into jail and start the process for subjecting that individual to the consequences of their actions. The action being coming here illegally and the consequence being – they are sent back. I think that as parents we all teach our children that their actions are met by consequences whether good or bad, right?
Now here is the funny part. The Latin community says that this will make it easier for the authorities the pick them out from the rest of the community, a sort of easy way of identifying them, so to speak. Hence the phrase comes about of ‘Racial Profiling’.
Now what they are not saying is this. When the authorities see an individual from Sweden they will immediately think, hey this person crossed our borders and now lives here illegally. No, that is not right.
When the authorities see an individual from Africa they will immediately think, hey this person crossed our borders and now lives here illegally. No, that is not right either. Wait well how will they know when they have a person in front of them who might be here illegally? Oh, wait I know. A majority of the individuals that are coming here and living illegally are from south of our border. Well what countries are south of our border? Well you get where I am going.
There is Latin countries at our southern border. So it stands to reason that when the authorities see someone of Latin descent they might think, “Hey, this person might be here illegally”. Yes I guess this could be racial profiling, I mean it is mostly Latin people coming up from the south.
When we see a man with children, do we assume he is a father? Better not, might be some form of profiling. When we see a man breaking into a store by throwing a rock through the window, do we assume he is a criminal? Better not, might be some sort of profiling. Should we make the NBA reset all teams to have an equal number of black players to white players? Better not, might be some sort of profiling. No one has ever said that African Americans are better at sports.
I recently heard a well known comic making fun of people who watch NASCAR, he better be careful. That might be some sort of profiling. I mean it’s not mostly white men who watch that sport.
Unfortunately everything we do in life is some sort of profiling. When we decide to eat Latin food, we don’t assume it will be served in an Italian restaurant. When we want Chinese food we don’t drive to the local Latin restaurant. This is a form of profiling, Chinese people aren’t the only ones who make good Chinese food, are they?
So now you have heard me rant and rave. My opinion doesn’t count for much. But how funny it should sound that this law should not exist solely because the authorities might think that a person of Latin heritage might be here illegally, Latin countries are so far from our southern border! I can't get over the idea that this is just common sense. But then I am not a politician and therefore don't think in a politically correct manner.
