Oh Sarah Palin. What are we going to do with you? It seems that you cycle back and forth between conservative wet dream candidate for 2012 and higher office and complete buffoonery destined for a short-lived talk show on cable sometime in the next couple of years. And now, of course, like a moth to a flame or a vulture to a really juicy carcass, you've waded into this mess over the Arizona immigration law saying that you support it, blah, blah, blah, stop boycotting Arizona, blah, blah, blah, the media is getting it wrong, blah, blah, bla- wait, what did you say?
The media is getting it wrong? Let's go to actual news copy:
The former Alaska governor also blamed the news media for its coverage of the immigration issue in Arizona, saying what the measure does often is not reported accurately.
"The media is not doing its job on this," Palin said.
The scary part about this: she's actually half-right on that point. And believe me, it's not often I find myself agreeing with the things that come out of Sarah Palin's mouth. And some weeks thinking of her as President is irritating, but survivable, while other weeks, it's downright terrifying. So this is a development to say the least.
Because she is right. The media is getting it wrong on this story and more to the point, they're letting the federal government off the hook! They're the bastards we should be boycotting, in all fairness. I don't care where you stand on immigration- whether it be for total amnesty, a worker program, easier path to legalization or a wall between us and Mexico, we should all be able to come together around the idea that we have absolutely no coherent immigration policy on the Federal Level. Not even a smidgen of one- and the federal government is doing nothing to change that!
OF COURSE, crazy laws like Arizona's are going to get passed! There's a drug war going on in Northern Mexico, like a real actual war and its spilling across the extremely porous border bit by bit while the federal government does nothing at all about it. OF COURSE, they were going to do something like this. What realistic choice did they have?
Now, don't get me wrong: I have real concerns about this law. First of all, we'll leave aside the fact that if you are legal, you should be carrying a green card with ya at all times anyway- sort of like a Driver's License in that regard (another law that's never enforced, surprise, surprise.) But when you get right down to it there's this: what constitutes a legal stop is a very wide spectrum of things (if Arizona is anything like Iowa is)- so that, to me, leaves the door open to abuse. How easy it would be for cops to figure out what skin color the driver of any given car is at three in the morning is another thing entirely- but the flimsy term: 'in the course of a legal stop' covers all manner of things, to nebulous to be fully sure of protecting citizens from abuse and racial profiling.
Secondly, there's the skin test. I'm a legal immigrant, believe it or not. Are they going to be stopping people like me and asking for my papers? Nope. And therein lies another failure of the law. When they talk about the 'immigration problem' they're not talking about all illegals, they're talking about the ones with brown skin. Epic racist fail on that one Arizona. Sorry.
Finally, there's the law enforcement argument. I saw awhile back that a cop in Tucson sued the state already asking that local law enforcement be exempt from enforcing the immigration law. There's an argument to be made that if you're trying to tackle gangs, drugs and other crimes, fear of deportation is going to make it that much harder to get the cooperation needed to tackle these problems. Domestic violence will go unpunished, rapes will go unreported. The ripple effects from this law will for sure have an impact on law enforcement- but how much of an impact is still an open question- but I do think it's a valid concern to bring up.
But at the end of the day: The Feds need to DO SOMETHING! Wherever you stand on the issue, it's well past time for all of us to stand together with Arizona and demand that Washington D.C. gets off its ass and does its damn job for once. Otherwise, what are we paying them for?
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