Quote:
Originally Posted by MMM
When you pull a car over, you don't know if the riders are legal or illegal. However if you put out a Hot Tips line giving rewards for identifying employers for undocumented workers then you have a better definition for the word "suspicion" that isn't making decisions based on skin color.
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Hmm... As I see it, those who feel very strongly about illegal immigrants are just as - most likely much more - likely to do "racial profiling" when it comes to reporting these sorts of things. With a hotline sort of arrangement, it would be easy to report places under suspicion... But what would put them under suspicion? I can almost guarantee it would be "a large number of workers who look Mexican". If the area already has a high population of legal immigrants, inevitably many of their workplaces would fall under suspicion. To check every report, to me, seems like a huge additional use of resources.
I have not read the bill itself, so can`t say whether my understanding of it is entirely correct... But I am under the impression that it allows for the confirmation of citizenship when someone has been stopped for some unrelated offense. Please do correct me if I am understanding it incorrectly, but I didn`t think that suspicion of being illegal
alone would be enough to stop someone.
This would seem to be fairly efficient and not require that many additional resources. Someone is stopped for something, and then asked for proof of citizenship if there is some reason to suspect that they may be illegal.
Yes, it would be incredibly unfair to just stop people on the street who happened to "look illegal", asking tons of legal citizens to produce proof... However, if they are already being stopped for something else, and are already in a situation where they have done something criminal or are under suspicion - I don`t think it`s all that horrible an idea.
Although I do suppose there is a fine line where the distinction has to be made for that "suspicion" - to prevent a mere "suspicion of being illegal"
alone from being good enough reason to detain someone.