After signing a piece of evil legislation bill requiring Arizona police officers to determine whether people are in the country legally, the governor of Arizona said she’s requiring training for said police officers.

“This training will include what does and does not constitute reasonable suspicion that a person is not legally present in the United States…Racial profiling is illegal. It is illegal in America, and it’s certainly illegal in Arizona.”
-Arizona Governor Jan Brewer

Training? Training will stop racism racial profiling dead in its tracks?

Sigh.

If you’ve read my drivel for any lengthy period of time, you know how I feel about immigration. (hint: Me = Fan of Foreigners). In this spirit, I offer you some free Toothpaste:

I think that most people have one or two topics in their life which, when the subject comes up, they simply can’t keep their mouth shut or know when to quit, and they end up annoying everyone around them until ultimately no one will talk to them anymore about that subject. For me, that topic is immigration. I don’t really know the roots of those feelings, beyond a few books I read in college and occasional debates with folks on the playground. I just know that I’ve irritated nearly everyone I know at least once. I set out now to do it again. Read more…

…here is a nice post on MR from me to you.

Here is the link to the full list of cities, grouped by size and ranked by safety. Also note that Logan, UT (where I was born), Irvine, CA (where I live), as well as neighboring Mission Viejo–all with substantial and growing Latino populations–are in the top 10 overall. I’m so proud.

I haven’t written about immigration for a while, but long-time followers will likely recall how I feel about immigration: Open doors = Good.

Lots of Mormons vote for Republicans. As noted in an earlier post, this tendency has drawn criticism and consternation from supporters of the Democratic party. The purpose now is not to explain why most Mormons vote for Republicans, but simply to explain why I don’t vote for them with any kind of regularity.*

(I must warn you, though…this may not be a coherent piece of writing, because I’m kind of under the weather right now, I’m home by myself, it’s late, and I’m scared of the dark.) Read more…

Quite possibly the greatest pro-immigration argument I have ever seen, in cartoon/flowchart form from Reason magazine.

Can we all just stop with the “I don’t oppose immigration, I just think they should come through legally” garbage.

Thanks to JB for the tip.

A good friend of mine sent me this article on the debate about US immigration policy this morning. The article gives a review and comparison of two books, The New Case Against Immigration: Both Legal and Illegal, and Let Them In: The Case for Open Borders. Interestingly, (as the article point out) both of these books were written by self-proclaimed “conservatives” (gag. cough. ick.). Since I’ve never clarified my stance on this issue on this blog, I re-posted parts of an old post I did on this issue a long while back below.

Although the stance of Mark Krikorian (against) is IMO very lame, nasty, and worthy of mocking, I do give him credit for being consistency: He’s not just opposed to illegal immigrants–he’s opposed to all immigrants–rich, poor, white, latino, or whatever. While disagreeing with his policies, I appreciate people like Krikorian who advocate such a consistent principle: the door is open or it is shut. This has always been one of my problems with many other approaches to immigration policy–they too often call for treating different groups of people differently–either systematically or demographically. Because none of us has any say whatsoever in where we are born on this planet, such a stance strike me as horribly discriminatory/hypocritical.

On the other hand, is a person who advocates “consistently” discriminatory policies really any better than a person who advocates discriminatory policies in a discriminating fashion? Any way I look at it, I probably wouldn’t want my kids hanging around with their kids either way.

More to come on the other side of the question (my side)…

I recently had a couple of discussions about immigration laws–although I should know better than to talk about something on which my views are apparently so extreme.

What is frustrating to me about these discussions? I always come across as a cold-hearted fanatic who tries to convince others that I’m right. In reality, I’m just a fanatic who tries to convince others that I’m not cold-hearted. I’m rarely successful.

So, in a nutshell, after months of pondering my stance, I define it with a single sentence:

I do not believe in royalty.

To translate: I do not believe in giving some people special rights, privileges, or benefits based solely on what family they were raised in or what side of a line they were born on. I think many people agree with the first half of that sentence, but the fact that the relationship between royalty and the second half is strikingly similar seems to be lost on most people I talk to.