Stephen <mca### [at] aoldotcom> wrote:
> >    How about explaining it clearly rather than giving some odd hints that
> > one must keep guessing?
> >

> No because if I do you will just argue the point. I???m not into debating 
> but if, after thinking about it and you still cannot work out or guess 
> what I meant. I will spell it out.

  Well, if you are not going to explain yourself, I suppose it's impossible
to continue the conversation.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

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.

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

>>>   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.

> 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.

>> 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.

>   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.

>   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."

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
   open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.

Post a reply to this message

Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> > Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> >> Jim Henderson wrote:
> >>> I don't think that this is what Darren was saying, but rather that the 
> >>> Arizona law opens the potential for someone who *is* a legal citizen but 
> >>> isn't carrying their papers on them to be deported.
> > 
> >> No. I'm saying that some people want to pass a law to deport someone who 
> >> *is* a legal citizen and who *is* carrying their passport to be deported 
> >> because they were born of illegal immigrants.
> > 
> >   If someone commits a crime which is so serious to deserve tens of years
> > of prison, it might, in fact, be more practical if he was thrown out of
> > the country because that would become cheaper.

> I'm not following what your point is. The people they're talking about 
> throwing out haven't committed any crimes.

  My point is that if someone commits a serious crime, it could be quite
practical if it was possible to throw him out of the country to stop him
from wasting taxpayers' money. In other words, the plain idea of deporting
big criminals can have some sensible logic in it. This was an introductory
idea to what I wrote next (in other words, why this idea becomes an
impossibility when we are talking about citizens). I was not saying that
you were talking about criminals.

> >   A cynic could say "the government granted him citizenship, the government
> > is stuck with him, so it just has to suck it up".

> In this case, the government didn't "grant" him citizenship. He was born 
> here, making him a citizen automatically from birth.

  That's granting citizenship. There are explicit laws stating how one
gets citizenship, and that's one of them. In theory the law could be
different (ie. it doesn't automatically grant citizenship if neither
parent has).

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
>> We are talking about America here where everyone looks different from 
>> the natives.
> 
>   People really love to nitpick on my choice of words there, don't they?

We understand what you mean. Everybody looks different.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/Census-2000-Data-Top-US-Ancestries-by-County.svg

In places where they're worried about this law, Mexican *is* the majority race.

>   All I'm saying is that for practical reasons countries cannot open their
> borders. Immigration laws are a necessity. And illegal immigration is a big
> business. This illegal human trafficking business is not helped by the
> people who want to reward them for success.

Yes.

>   I would say that people who shout "racial profiling! racism!" when the
> police concentrate their resources on the most probably susptects are ill
> informed and stupid, who are doing more harm than good.

The trick is to make sure they're suspects before you hassle them. If 
someone said "you have to have a reason to think they might be illegal 
immigrants" before you would arrest them, then people wouldn't be 
complaining. But that's not how it's working.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
   open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.

Post a reply to this message

On 1-5-2010 20:50, Warp wrote:
> andrel <byt### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
>> On 1-5-2010 19:13, Warp wrote:
>>> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>>>> No, but the notion that you can pick someone up because they *look* like 
>>>> an illegal immigrant (which BTW violates the 4th amendment right to 
>>>> protection against unreasonable search/seizure) *is* patently racist.
>>>   Why does it have to be racism?
> 
>> Racism is here used as a general term of judging people by what cultural 
>> group they appear to belong to based on how they look.
> 
>   I understand "juding" in official terms to mean to convict someone of a
> crime. If people are convicted there solely because of how they look, then
> yes, that would be racism. Is that so?
> 
>   The colloqualism "to judge" which means to have a prejudiced opinion
> about someone is not necessarily the same thing as the profiling work that
> law enforcement needs to do by necessity in order to get better chances of
> catching criminals. It's simply applied statistics.

It was meant colloquial.

>> There is another way that even takes less time and is not illegal 
>> because of various international laws: don't question people unless you 
>> have a serious reason to believe that they are illegal (or you are 
>> questioning them anyway because of a non-related suspicion or check).
> 
>   And then watch illegal immigration raise. Right.

Wrong.

>   It's better to allow illegal immigration than to possibly offend someone.

It it not about offence, it is about human rights and/or the local law.

>   Do you advocate that mentality with all crimes? Or is this only related
> to illegal immigration?
> 
>> Frankly I find your reasoning that "I know there is an illegal immigrant 
>> in this country, so I have to check everybody that looks like he might 
>> be it" quite disturbing. But that is not unusual.
> 
>   If find your argument that "the police should not be looking for the
> illegal immigrant because doing so might offend someone" even more
> disturbing.

They have all the right to do so, just not based on looks alone.

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
>   Let me rephrase: If 90% of illegal immigrants are Mexicans, then 90% of
> illegal immigrants will look like Mexicans. Hence it only makes sense to
> devote 90% of the law enforcement resources to check Mexicans.

But if 90% of the local population *also* looks mexican, then there's no 
reason to favor checking mexicans over non-mexicans, is there?

The problem with this sort of profiling is that you have to look at the 
ratio of legal to illegal immigrants, not just the ratio of illegal immigrants.

If 10% of 10,000 mexicans are illegal immigrants, and 90% of 200 africans 
are illegal immigrants, it makes much more sense to ask random africans if 
they're citizens than random mexicans.

>   Why is it so only with immigration? If the suspect of a crime is a white
> male, is it racism to question only white males? Wouldn't it be less racist
> to question also black females? You know, for equality.

No, because there's already suspicion of a crime, a reason to believe that 
the person accused might have done it. Note that you don't get to question 
*all* white males when a crime is committed. You have to have *some* reason, 
known as "probable cause", to believe the person you're questioning was 
involved.

What *this* law does is it makes immigration a *special* status, saying you 
do *not* have to have any reason to believe the person was committing any 
sort of crime before you ask him to prove he isn't.

>   So what do you suggest? 

I suggest that before you question anyone, you be required to do enough 
police work to at least have a reason to question them.

>> Or to put it another way, jump back 180 years. Pass a law in the northern 
>> part of the USA saying everyone had to prove they aren't an escaped slave. 
>> Do you think there's any way that wouldn't be considered a racist law today? 
>> Do you think there's any chance you wouldn't wind up locking up a whole lot 
>> more innocent black people than innocent white people?
> 
>   You are comparing immigration laws with slavery laws. Same thing?

No, I'm comparing racism to racism.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
   open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.

Post a reply to this message

On 01/05/2010 9:38 PM, Warp wrote:
> Stephen<mca### [at] aoldotcom>  wrote:
>>>     How about explaining it clearly rather than giving some odd hints that
>>> one must keep guessing?
>>>
>
>> No because if I do you will just argue the point. I???m not into debating
>> but if, after thinking about it and you still cannot work out or guess
>> what I meant. I will spell it out.
>
>    Well, if you are not going to explain yourself, I suppose it's impossible
> to continue the conversation.
>

That is not what I wrote.


-- 

Best Regards,
	Stephen

Post a reply to this message

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

Post a reply to this message

On 1-5-2010 22:38, Warp wrote:
> Stephen <mca### [at] aoldotcom> wrote:
>>>    How about explaining it clearly rather than giving some odd hints that
>>> one must keep guessing?
>>>
> 
>> No because if I do you will just argue the point. I???m not into debating 
>> but if, after thinking about it and you still cannot work out or guess 
>> what I meant. I will spell it out.
> 
>   Well, if you are not going to explain yourself, I suppose it's impossible
> to continue the conversation.

I am not Stephen ;) but he might have meant something like:

What you are proposing
- is not effective
- is often not possible at all
- will violate rights of legal citizens
- will harm trust in the police and the juridical system
- will increase racial tension
- could become a factor in racial violence

For these and a number of other reasons legislators all over the world 
have decided it is not a good idea and made it illegal. Although it 
seems a good idea at first sight, if you think a little longer you will 
understand why it will destabilize the society more than it solves 
illegal immigration.

At least something like that would be my best guess.

Post a reply to this message

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

Yep. Or they come visit relatives on a valid visa and just let the visa 
expire and never go home.

>>>   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?

All crimes. Note that it's not "hassle" if you actually have reason to 
suspect someone of a crime. If you find a dead woman, you question the 
husband and boss and etc.  You don't go walking up and down the streets 
stopping everyone and questioning them.

>   How can you compare asking someone's ID to putting someone in prison?

Because that's what happens when you don't have ID. Note that it's not just 
"ID" but "proof of citizenship."  Hell, I'd be surprised if 75% of the 
people in Congress here had actual proof of citizenship where they could get 
to it within 24 hours.

> Aren't you exaggerating a bit here?

That's the problem. I'm probably not.

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

Great. Do you want the stores to ask you for ID when you're *not* buying 
something from them?  When you're just walking down the road, do you want 
every store you pass to ask for your ID?  Or to show them you have enough 
money to buy what they have in their store?

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

Lots of people here don't have ID. There's no reason to carry ID if you're 
just out walking around. This country has IDs for specific purposes: A 
driver's license to drive, a social security number to track social security 
tax payments, a passport to pass ports.

>> 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. 

Only if they investigated *all* males, instead of just the ones who might 
have been in the area, etc.   "Hi, a woman was raped three blocks from here. 
Please come with us until you can prove you didn't do it."

>   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.

I'm saying nobody should be investigated because of their facial features. 
They should be investigated if there's some reason to believe they committed 
a crime.

We don't let the cops randomly pull over drivers just to make sure they paid 
their insurance and license taxes, either. You actually have to do something 
wrong first.

>   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. 

But you can. Do you think it's reasonable if someone got raped in a 
neighborhood for the police to go door to door and demand every male in the 
house provide a DNA sample?

If so, then we just disagree. If not, why not?

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

No, the solution is to have laws that regulate the behavior of those police 
and punish them when they're corrupt.

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

It's not even a matter of "stealing cars."  You're a black person in a nice 
neighborhood, so you must be up to no good, so we're going to stop you, make 
you late for where you're going, and possibly arrest you if you give us any 
crap or ask us why we're stopping you.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
   open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.

Post a reply to this message