Minnesota Republicans offer Arizona-style immigration bill

[...] Oh My God [...]

Is this another Republican trying to grow our government?

So lets get this straight not a single word about increasing the punishment for hiring undocumented workers but a “show your papers” hassle for everyone in Minnesota. Do these fools know that we have about as many illegal Canadians as we have any other undocumented workers? So we get to all have papers no matter how they do it because profiling by race isn’t going to work.

Put the punishment for having hired undocumented works as confiscation of your home or business and the problem will stop because the jobs for them will dry up. Of course that makes too much sense… instead go after the workers to make sure the employers have a s;ave labor force that can be gotten rid off with a single phone call if they get uppity.

More Republican idiots making every citizens life harder while trying to solve a problem without going after the employers. Could anyone reading this, when stopped for a traffic violation, prove on the spot they were a citizen? Only certain documents can do this and a drivers license is not one of them in Minnesota and 5 other states. A passport plus a birth certificate or Social Security card plus another picture ID would do it. You want to carry those documents with you every day? What freak show the Minnesota GOP has become.

What happened to smaller, less intrusive government?

[...] I came across a report from RaceWire yesterday that Minnesota House Republicans introduced a copycat bill to Arizona’s controversial new immigration lockdown. MnIndy also reported on the introduction of HF 3830. [...]

I remember back about 20 years ago when Saint Paul was home to the purported largest illegal Irish community in the nation. The joke was that if you walked into Half Time Rec with a blue suit on you could empty the place in a few seconds.

We still have substantial populations of immigrants from Canada and Europe, some of whom are not, in fact here “legally”. More interestingly, many of them are about as pale as I am.

Does anyone know how to sort this out without me to carry an ID card and present it as proof of where I was born?

Thought not.

Thought not.

With a name like “Drazkowski”, he’s gotta be native! And thus, entitled to complain about immigration…

There are two really problematic things about statutes like this and SB 1070. First, by criminalizing the acts of even applying for gainful work in order to be a productive member of society and performing any work seeks to criminalize any action of the indiviual that had prior to passage had only commited one offens…e (illegal entry). This is a de facto entrapment. Even worse it shifts the burden of proof from the state to prove your criminality, to the individual to prove their innocence. This is a dangerous precedent to set as an expansion of government reach into the daily movements of a peaceful individual, citizen or not. ASK YOURSELF: WHERE ARE THE “TEA PARTIES” TO PROTEST THIS EXPANSION OF GOVERNMENT POWER???

If someone crosses our country’s border ILLEGALLY, they have already broken the law. The should be punished and deported back to where ever they come from If our Federal Government would enforce the laws, states would not have to pass laws like this.

[...] SB1070- “The Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act”. According to the Minnesota Independent, this bill [...]

[...] what’s happening in Arizona, because the contagion of fear has spread. Last week, according to a report on MinnesotaIndependent.com, state Rep. Steve Drazkowski, R-Mazeppa, introduced a bill “modeled after Arizona’s new [...]

Dear ‘Legal Citizen’,

What are you going to do if you get mugged and your papers stolen? I’d guess you’ll go to the nearest police officer and report it, right? And what if said police officer decides that there’s reasonable suspicion you might be in your hometown illegally? How are you going to prove it, if your papers (which you always carry with you, since you seem to think everyone should and not find it irksome at all) just got stolen?

I can almost hear you thinking, “But *I* don’t look like an immigrant at all! This could not happen to me! (or my partner, my kids, my siblings …)” Well, that’s exactly the point. If you think there’s a way to tell *by looking* that someone might be an immigrant, THAT’s just where the accusations of racism come from! Laws like this create a situation where some (both citizens and immigrants) have to live with the fear of situations like this, and some don’t. And, strangely enough, it so happens that white people are those that don’t, and brown people those who do.

Saying that “the law prevents racial profiling, it says so right there” means nothing. If really applied without profiling, these are laws that effectively say *everyone* must carry papers *at all times*. If there is a class of people who are, by force of custom, excempt from the requirement the only way they could be recognized is by looks. So, either these laws *require* racial profiling, even as their texts denies it, or they grant the government gigantic powers of control. But if the later was true, we should be seing all conservatives up in arms against them.

This is really one place where the Tea Parties could rise up to prove the left’s accusations are wrong and misguided. Time and time again they’ve said they’re not racist. Well, as I’ve said above, these laws are either racist or an insult to the very basic ideas of the Tea Parties. I’m awaiting eagerly for your principled stand.

This strikes me as interesting, i dont see how they can get away with this. Its just not right.

[...] The Arizona-style anti-immigration bill introduced yesterday by state Republicans isn’t winning over two constituencies: cops and churches. As City Pages reports, Minneapolis Police Chief Tim Dolan and St. Paul Police Chief John Harrington issued a joint statement flatly opposing the measure. “The culture of fear that this bill will instill in immigrant communities… will endanger all residents,” they wrote. And the nonprofit refugee-relief group Church World Service issued a statement calling the bill a “poorly conceived and ill-informed… unfunded mandate.” [...]

So…we want to model our state after Arizona? What kind of a nation is this turning into? Are we so eager to give away our freedoms? How much of a step is it from having a police officer ask for “your papers” to random stop and search laws being enacted? Republicans and Teaparty members are against government being involved in our daily lives, while they open the door to such actions. Shame on them….

Simple solution would be to stop all welfare payments and turn it over to the churches so they would quit sending hundreds of thousands of bibles to Muslim countries. I don’t see any problem with those who might be questioned to carry identification,