Laws Are For The Little People

Proposal seeks banning immigrant raids in D.M.

A proposal to prohibit local law enforcement officials from conducting raids on illegal immigrants in Des Moines was presented to at least one City Council member recently.Councilwoman Christine Hensley said Sunday that she spoke about six weeks ago with representatives of two immigration-rights groups that presented a plan that would block local city departments - including the police - from conducting raids on immigrants or inquiring about a person's immigration status.
Aspects of the proposal, brought up Sunday at an immigration forum, are similar to a national trend of "sanctuary cities.""They're looking at ordinances that have been passed in other parts of the country that would address that ," Hensley said. "It's really important to emphasize it's in the very, very beginning stages of discussion."Hensley said the impetus for the ordinance is illegal immigrants who fear raids and do not come to work, incurring costs on their employers.
"What I suggested to them is there has to be a lot of discussion about it and whether or not there's really a problem," she said.Details on the plan and its chances of becoming an ordinance are unknown.Alex Orozco, executive director of the Iowa-based Network Against Human Trafficking who is one of the people who met with Hensley, said Sunday he is trying to set up a meeting with Des Moines Mayor Frank Cownie before the end of the year.Orozco would not name the other immigration-rights group involved in the proposal.
Orozco declined to elaborate on specifics of the proposal except to say that "the ordinance would make it harder to conduct raids" and "all the city departments would be involved."Hensley said she didn't have more details about the plan.Councilmen Tom Vlassis, Bob Mahaffey and Michael Kiernan each said they had not heard of the plan.Cownie, Councilmen Brian Meyer and Chris Coleman could not be reached for comment.Orozco said media coverage of the plan while it is still in the preliminary stages would hurt its chances of passage. "We don't want anybody with hard feelings about this issue to get mad when we haven't even finalized it," he said.
Orozco had made a reference to the proposal earlier Sunday at an immigration forum at Plymouth Congregational Church in Des Moines.Even without all the details, some aspects of the proposal appear to mimic a nationwide trend: so-called "sanctuary cities" that direct local police not to look for violations of immigration law.The term "sanctuary city" has come under scrutiny, said Tim Counts, a spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, adding that there is no legal definition.
Counts said that as far as he knew, any city ordinance would not interfere with federal agents conducting raids.Nearly 70 cities, counties, and states have enacted sanctuary policies, according to a preliminary count by the National Immigration Law Center, but the Congressional Research Service in 2006 put the number at 32 cities and counties, according to a Sept. 25 article in the Christian Science Monitor.A major raid in Iowa came last Dec. 12 when immigration agents swept through Swift & Co. meatpacking plants in Marshalltown and five other cities nationwide, arresting about 1,200 workers - one-tenth of Swift's work force - on immigration or identity-theft charges.
The raids prompted a September federal civil-rights lawsuit filed in Texas against both the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement by some of the workers detained.In August 2000, Des Moines police detained 49 illegal immigrants in a raid on a south-side bar that they said was the result of a six-week police investigation of drugs allegedly being sold at the establishment.



Des Moines Register.

Lovely. An alliance of open-borders leftists and bottom-line business men urging that the city cease enforcing the law for the reasons of:

A: "It's wrong to discriminate against someone because they're not a citizen"
B: "Hey, you're screwing with my cheap labor"

Controlled immigration is well and good. The uncontrolled influx of low/no skills workers isn't.

What really pisses me off here is that the municipal government, responsible for enforcing the laws, is being asked to simply disregard it. I guess that's what happens when you know the general population will be extremely pissed, and there's not a chance in hell you're going to get the law changed through the legislature.

In the same vein of disregarding the law, I hereby suggest the asshats pushing this be deported ASAP after being stripped of their citizenship without due process. I mean, it's just some unimportant little laws.

I'm A Bad Person

I've recently been subjected to a mandatory "cultural sensitivity" class. One of the highlights was a scale of "Diversity Appreciation" which caused a spike in my blood pressure. Spike one occurred when reading the highest rating: culturally enlightened. This was defined as being fluent in two languages, with deep respect and admiration for another culture. Spike two occurred on reading the lowest rating: culturally incompetent - not fluent in any other languages, suspicious of other cultures.

Man, that's subtle. I'd hate to be culturally incompetent, I mean, people might think I'm not nice or something.

Maybe that's why they gave us a paper to to fill in with our names and answers to the questions asked during the indoctrination presentation. Especially "Where do you fall on the scale?". It's amazing how hard it can be to read cursive after too much coffee. It looks a lot like a random scribble. Hell, I'm surrounded by doctors, it'll look normal in that environment.

I've been out in a couple of different cultures over the years. When I develop a deep respect and admiration for political repression, poverty, and corruption, I'll move. Until then, I'll stay a suspicious, nationalistic, gun-owning American.

Without Recourse To The Law

If true, this is sickening (h/t to Gates of Vienna). I'm inclined to believe it based on my experiences in a town I once worked in. We had a fair number of non-english speaking hispanic employees of the local egg production industry come through our health clinic for various problems (such as the first time I ever shot a chest x-ray that showed active tuberculosis). While my relation to these folks involved imaging for respiratory problems and on the job injuries (such as the man who complained about his arm aching after falling at work; I think it had more to do with with the very poorly healed fracture and deformed bullet lodged in the bone...Me to Translator: Has he ever been shot? Translator to Me: He says no, never) I ended up doing some firearms training for one of the female healthcare providers when she started receiving threats from a portion of that population. Apparently it had to do with her knowledge of several rapes and beatings of women at the plant who felt that reporting this to law enforcement wasn't an option for them. Not to mention that the above translator (employed by said egg production facility) was later arrested by the State Patrol after shooting his ex-girlfriend's current boyfriend, snatching his (traslator's) daughter by the woman at gunpoint, and running for Mexico down the Interstate.

While I'm not in favor of the currently lax efforts of the Federal government in enforcing our immigration laws, NO woman or child should be subjected to this. My gut feeling is that this would be an excellent training opportunity for scout-sniper teams to practice their observation skills reporting border crossings, and their shooting skills the moment some subhuman filth engages in assault and rape.