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It sounds like the crime of "grocery-shopping while brown" got a make-up and is now the crime of "grocery-shopping while speaking Spanish." Two Mexican-American US citizens who have been legally here for decades had an embarrassing moment when a border patrol officer detained them for 45 minutes in the parking lot of a gas station convenience store south of the US-Canada border, with passers by onlooking, for speaking Spanish while waiting in line to pay for eggs and milk.
Maybe this is the real witch hunt...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...ng-them-speak-spanish/?utm_term=.a8239740da8b
Unbeknownst to many, it is estimated that there are 41 million legal Hispanic people in the United States versus 9 million illegal ones (the other 2 million that round up the number of illegal aliens are not Hispanic). So it is more than 4 times more likely that someone is legal rather than illegal, when the person is overheard speaking Spanish. The knee-jerk reaction "Spanish Speaker = must be illegal alien" is therefore statistically misguided. The correct knee-jerk should be "Spanish Speaker = vast odds are that he/she is a legal immigrant or a citizen of the United States." Unfortunately for this population of hardworking, family oriented folks who contribute to the economy and pay taxes (and these two are bilingual and perfectly able to also speak English), that's not what people typically think when they see them.
I'm not for illegal immigration (much the opposite)... but are we evolving into a "show me your papers" police state? Shame...
More productive would be to strongly audit, fine, and throw in jail the bosses, CEOs, and entrepreneurs who offer jobs to illegal aliens. But of course nobody is interested in that (the lobbies wouldn't want it), so, instead, we witch-hunt and harass our legal Hispanic folks. By the way walls wouldn't help that much, either (a 20-foot wall is only good as long are there isn't a 21-foot ladder, small plane, boat, hot-air balloon, tunnel, and checkpoints - the latter are responsible for 50% of the illegal aliens here who come in with valid visas and overstay them; these won't be deterred by a wall; most likely the wall would just result in that percentage increasing). Not to forget that the Mexican drug cartels would make damaging the wall a matter of pride - I can imagine them renting bulldozers and damaging the wall in various remote points).
We should stop harassing people who are legally here and speak Spanish, and start focusing on the job offers. Stop offering jobs, they'll stop coming. Offer jobs, and they will come one way or the other, wall or not.
Maybe this is the real witch hunt...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...ng-them-speak-spanish/?utm_term=.a8239740da8b
Unbeknownst to many, it is estimated that there are 41 million legal Hispanic people in the United States versus 9 million illegal ones (the other 2 million that round up the number of illegal aliens are not Hispanic). So it is more than 4 times more likely that someone is legal rather than illegal, when the person is overheard speaking Spanish. The knee-jerk reaction "Spanish Speaker = must be illegal alien" is therefore statistically misguided. The correct knee-jerk should be "Spanish Speaker = vast odds are that he/she is a legal immigrant or a citizen of the United States." Unfortunately for this population of hardworking, family oriented folks who contribute to the economy and pay taxes (and these two are bilingual and perfectly able to also speak English), that's not what people typically think when they see them.
I'm not for illegal immigration (much the opposite)... but are we evolving into a "show me your papers" police state? Shame...
More productive would be to strongly audit, fine, and throw in jail the bosses, CEOs, and entrepreneurs who offer jobs to illegal aliens. But of course nobody is interested in that (the lobbies wouldn't want it), so, instead, we witch-hunt and harass our legal Hispanic folks. By the way walls wouldn't help that much, either (a 20-foot wall is only good as long are there isn't a 21-foot ladder, small plane, boat, hot-air balloon, tunnel, and checkpoints - the latter are responsible for 50% of the illegal aliens here who come in with valid visas and overstay them; these won't be deterred by a wall; most likely the wall would just result in that percentage increasing). Not to forget that the Mexican drug cartels would make damaging the wall a matter of pride - I can imagine them renting bulldozers and damaging the wall in various remote points).
We should stop harassing people who are legally here and speak Spanish, and start focusing on the job offers. Stop offering jobs, they'll stop coming. Offer jobs, and they will come one way or the other, wall or not.