... in response to How will immigration be affected?, posted by Larry in Dallas on Sep 13, 2001Hi Larry,
I think there will be pressure to deport people who are "out of status".This is the term the FBI is using to describe some of the people that are being "detained"by the INS without being arrested.They talk like this is normal proceedure but I doubt other people would be detained if they were not suspects.
Not only will it be hard to find all of these people but there are political ramifications,it goes against the spirit of what President Fox of Mexico wants us to do.
If I were a person who was here illegally I would be concerned.I doubt it will effect spousal and fiance visa's.
On the subject of profiling,of course they are doing that,as they should.They know the people they are looking for are all middle eastern,so of course thats who they are looking at.Its not fair to innocent people but effective and neccessary.I read that 50 or so Iraq christians were
stopped at the Mexican border.They are a group trying to
get away from persecution in Iraq.Of course they were profiled.We need to get away from the notion that profiling is always bad.It can be usefull and neccesary when there is a good reason to do it.We can't tie our hands over such a point.
I am a libertarian at heart and agree with the ACLU on lots of things,but they are way off base on this one.Not to be able to single out the ethnic group you know you are dealing with is rediculous.Hopefully they can quickly let innocent people proceed and not get into mass detaining of people.Innocent people of middle eastern decent will be inconvenienced.I hope they understand why and join us in condeming the actions of some of their people.
I have thought about the security issues before and my biggest fear is that we let terrorists turn us in to a police state,but we may be headed somewhat in that direction.
Pete