Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> >   You are missing the point. If I have understood correctly, the vast
> > majority of illegal immigrants in the US tend to look like central Americans,
> > for obvious reasons.

> I don't know about that. I suppose in the south that's true. I would think 
> in a city like New York, you'd have a lot of european illegal immigrants, 
> more than mexican illegal immigrants.

  Do you have any hard statistics on that? I have hard time thinking why
and how Europeans would emigrate illegally to the US. (Surely there are
*some* people who have done so, but I have hard time believing that they
outnumber illegals from your southern neighbor.)

  Ok, maybe I know the how: Maybe they travel to Canada first, and then
they go to the US and never leave. Plausible.

> >   If a very significant percentage of illegal immigrants tend to be central
> > Americans, it makes only sense to scrutinize them more closely.

> The goal is to have nobody innocent hassled by the government here.

  Does that apply to all crimes, or only illegal immigration? Why?

> "Better 
> ten guilty men go free than one innocent man be imprisoned" and all that.

  How can you compare asking someone's ID to putting someone in prison?
Aren't you exaggerating a bit here?

  If I go to the grocery store and make a big purchase using my bank card,
they will ask for my ID. I'll show it to them *gladly*. I *want* ID's to
be checked when cards are used to make big purchases because it increases
security and decreases the probability of my card being misused if it gets
stolen.

  If I started complaining how the stores asking me for my ID is
discrimination, I would be a complete idiot.

  (I know how you will answer to that argument. Something like: "But imagine
if they were more likely to ask your ID based on your skin color. Wouldn't
that be discrimination and racism?" My answer: If it was significantly more
likely that white people commit credit card fraud than others, then it wouldn't
bother me at all. I would still gladly submit to this security check because
it also increases my own security.)

  Is this comparison far-fetched? Much less far-fetched than comparing
asking for someone's ID with putting someone in prison.

> >>>   I'm pretty sure that a significant percentage of illegal immigrants in
> >>> the US can be distinguished by their looks. 
> > 
> >> No. A lot of *legal* immigrants might be distinguished by their looks.
> > 
> >   What does that have to do with anything? 

> Because what you're doing is hassling all people of central american 
> descent, regardless of whether they've done anything wrong. That's by 
> definition racism. You're treating people differently based on their race, 
> not their behavior.

  And the police investigating males in rape cases is sexism, by the same
logic. Technically it might be true. However, I would count the *reasons*
for the profiling into defining whether it's an ism or not, not just the
raw act.

> > What matters is where the illegal
> > immigrants are coming from, not where the legal ones are.

> I think the legal immigrants and the mexican-looking citizens would disagree.

  I think legal immigrants should stop complaining. I'm pretty sure that
removing the illegals would be beneficial on the large scale to the legal
immigrants.

> >> Even so, given it's possible that someone is a legal citizen and also a 
> >> child of illegal immigrants, you can't distinguish someone by their looks.
> > 
> >   That sentence doesn't make any sense.

> I'm saying that if you're born here of illegal immigrants, you're going to 
> look like an immigrant even tho you're not. Thus, you can not distinguish 
> legal citizens from illegal immigrants.

  So what? Are you saying that nobody should be investigated because they
might be legal immigrants? Or what is it that you are trying to say? I don't
get it.

  Let's go again with the rape inverstigation: Should the police stop
investigating people because most of them did not commit the crime? After
all, you can't distinguish one male from another in this respect. Is that
what you are implying?

> >   Stopping crime sometimes means that innocent people are questioned. That's
> > something we have to live with.

> Yes, but we have rules about how it's done. And maybe your government is 
> much better than ours, but I can pretty much guarantee that when you tell a 
> racist policeman to round up all the illegal immigrants with certain racial 
> characteristics, it won't be a matter of the legal citizens getting 
> "questioned." It'll be a matter of descendents of mexicans going to jail for 
> a few days at a time because the cops now have an excuse to hassle them.

  I don't think the solution to the problem of corrupt police officers is
to make the laws more lenient. Why would it?

> >   Stop being naive and look at the harsh reality of the world: Criminals are
> > scumbags, and because of them innocent people have to sometimes endure some
> > scrutiny. 

> Scrutiny wouldn't be bad. I can just predict it's not going to stop at 
> scrutiny.

> Google for the term "DWB."

  Is the assumption that a black person is more likely to steal a car than
a white person based on pure prejudice, or statistics?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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