Sinister Intentions Indeed!

SPLC and Pew Hispanic Center Misrepresent the Truth

 

According to the Pew Hispanic Center, “Latinos, who are 13% of the U.S. adult population, accounted for 40% of all sentenced federal offenders in 2007—up from 24% in 1991.” They went on to say that the majority are NOT citizens, and while Hispanics are more likely to receive prison time, the prejudice, if any leans toward them receiving less time that blacks or whites.                         http://pewhispanic.org/topics/?TopicID=16

 

THE TRUTH: Hispanic illegal aliens are given special treatment by virtue of shorter prison sentences for the crimes they commit than do blacks or whites. If there is a prejudice here, Hispanics are NOT the victims of discrimination in U.S. courts. Other ethnicities are.

 

In December, 2005, Pew interviewed just under 5,000 mostly illegal alien migrants. The vast majority claimed to have had jobs before leaving their home country, and a failure to find work in their home country was NOT the primary reason for coming to the United States. What was? This report was based on a survey of mostly illegal aliens who were applying for “identity cards issued by Mexican consulates.”

 http://pewhispanic.org/reports/report.php?ReportID=58

 

According to a December, 2002 Pew Report, it is estimated that in 2005 immigrants, legal and illegal sent an average of $50 million every day back to their home countries.

http://pewhispanic.org/reports/report.php?ReportID=13

 

THE TRUTH: Illegal alien Hispanics are not coming here because they can’t find jobs in their own country. They come here illegally, take jobs from legal immigrants and citizens, and commit crimes at a rate 3 times higher than non-Hispanics,

So, not only are they taking jobs away from our citizens, they aren’t even spending the money here. Also, the identity cards Pew refers to are mostly the Mexican Matricula Consular card, a form of ID that the Mexican government does not accept in Mexico. These Matricula Consular cards are ONLY needed by illegal aliens. Unscrupulous American businesses accept it to allow illegal aliens to open bank accounts, gain home mortgages and credit cards, etc… According to the FBI, sanctuary cities and businesses’ acceptance of the Matricula Consular ID card encourages illegal immigration.

 

A June, 2005 Pew Report states, “Contrary to the stereotype of undocumented migrants as single males with very little education who perform manual labor in agriculture or construction, a new Pew Hispanic Center report shows that most of the unauthorized population lives in families, a quarter has at least some college education and that illegal workers can be found in many sectors of the US economy.”

 http://pewhispanic.org/reports/report.php?ReportID=46

 

 

THE TRUTH: Illegal aliens are not just stealing farm labor jobs, but also from many other sectors of the job market. They’re not just here to pick lettuce, or perform other farm labor, but are taking skilled labor jobs from Americans.

 

The Sept. 2008 Pew Hispanic Center Report, 2008 National Survey of Latinos: Hispanics See Their Situation in U.S. Deteriorating; Oppose Key Immigration Enforcement Measures states, “Half (50%) of all Latinos say the situation of Latinos in this country is worse than it was a year ago.” It goes on to state, “More than four-in-five Hispanics (81%) say that immigration enforcement should be left mainly to the federal authorities rather than the local police; 76% disapprove of workplace raids; 73% disapprove of the criminal prosecution of undocumented immigrants who are working without authorization; and 70% disapprove of the criminal prosecution of employers who hire undocumented immigrants. A narrow majority (53%) disapproves of a requirement that employers check a federal database to verify the legal immigration status of all prospective hires.”                         http://pewhispanic.org/reports/report.php?ReportID=93

 

THE TRUTH: Hispanics, by and large, according to Pew, don’t like enforcement of our immigration laws. What Pew doesn’t tell you is how many in this survey are here illegally. For Pew to suggest that the vast majority of Hispanics don’t want our immigration laws enforced is misleading. By their own admission, half the Hispanics interviewed are probably illegal aliens.

 

Pew also makes no comparison to non-Hispanics concerning how they feel about their situation in the U.S. I would imagine that most legal immigrants and U.S. citizens would say they feel their situation is deteriorating, duh. Pew is encouraging Hispanics to feel like “victims,” when the data does not support that they are any more disadvantaged than any other ethnic group.

 

If 53% in Pew’s survey oppose employers being required to verify prospective hires are here “legally,” then common sense begs the question “Why?” I would suggest the only reason to oppose employers making sure you are legal is because you probably aren’t!

 

 Is the Southern Poverty Law Center spreading “hate?” Are they guilty of playing the “victim” card and misrepresenting patriotic Americans, many of them veterans? In their 2009 “Intelligence Report,” the SPLC has labeled the FIRE Coalition and our partners as “nativist extremists.”            http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?sid=443

 

Is the SPLC engaged in disinformation and a smear campaign against the FIRE Coalition and other patriotic Americans? If so, why? In their ridiculous article, “Sinister Intentions,” the SPLC states,

“Many other growing nativist extremist groups — most notably the Federal Immigration Reform and Enforcement Coalition, or FIRE, which increased from two chapters in 2007 to 14 last year — largely steered clear of the border in favor of confronting immigrants with aggressive protests at day labor sites, which are safer, closer to home, and don't require spending hot days or cold nights in the desert.”

http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?pid=1696

 

THE TRUTH: Really? The SPLC has not contacted the FIRE Coalition leadership, and its information is erroneous, to say the least. The FIRE Coalition had approximately 75 FIRE Teams in 2007. Last year that number surpassed 100, and is currently over 125 teams, with an additional 200+ individuals on a waiting list who desire to start FIRE Teams in their communities.

 

The FIRE Coalition is a non-partisan, non-profit 501(c)3 that works with Members of Congress, the nation’s largest group of state legislators fighting for enforcement of our laws (State Legislators for Legal Immigration), the largest veterans group (The American Legion), the largest women’s group, (Concerned Women for America), 60 other organizations as official partners, and tens of thousands of American citizens of all ethnicities. Are we to assume that the SPLC thinks these 3.5 million Americans are “nativist extremists” as well? The “sleeping giants” are patriotic Americans, not extremists.

 

In a 2005 article by Dustin Inman Society’s D.A. King,

What is the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)? Judging from pictures of their expansion, below, they are very well off, indeed. From the article Lump of Coal:

... human nature being what it is, there always seems to be a lump of coal lurking among the sugarplums. We were reminded of this unpleasant fact again by a Journal reader in Arlington who considered making a contribution to the Southern Poverty Law Center, listed as No. 0454 in the Combined Federal Campaign...

In fact, unknown to most CFC donors, the tax-exempt SPLC flunked an audit by the Arlington-based Better Business Bureau's Wise Giving Alliance, which requires that "a reasonable percentage, at least 50 percent of total income from all sources, should be applied to programs and activities directly related to the purposes for which the organization exists."

...SPLC...spent 89 percent of its total income on fund-raising and administrative costs...

Granted, administrative costs tend to run high when executive salaries are in the six-figure range. For example,... Morris Dees, SPLC's chief trial lawyer, pulls down a cool $280,699...

 ... give your hard-earned dollars to a real charity, not a bunch of slick, parasitic hucksters who live high on the hog by raising money on behalf of needy people who never see a dime of it.

http://www.thedustininmansociety.org/thousand_words/pics_splc_expands.html

 

Are the SPLC and Pew Hispanic Center spreading disinformation and outright lies? NO ONE at the FIRE Coalition draws a salary from the tax-deductible donations given to it. The SPLC and Pew can’t say that. We aren’t lining our pockets with six figure salaries for the cause we believe in, and by design, our national leadership and state directors are 100% volunteers.

 

The FIRE Coalition and its partners support the Constitution and the constitutional laws written from it. We do this openly. The SPLC calling us “extremists” for doing so is simply their being dramatic, trying to instill fear in the minds of the public. A query to the SPLC as to what criteria they used to compile the list has gone unanswered.

 

While many of our partners do actively seek out illegal alien hot spots, and rally in direct opposition to them, by and large the FIRE Coalition very rarely protests illegal aliens. Our leadership believes we only have two audiences: “We the People, and the people we elect.”

 

Illegal aliens are not part of the solution. They are a symptom of the problem. Our elected officials are failing to keep their oaths, and are failing to enforce our laws. We the People are guilty of allowing them to do so.

 

Like many unscrupulous politicians, groups such as the SPLC, Pew Hispanic Center, ACLU, National Council of “The Race,” are providing aid and comfort to illegal aliens, which is a felony. Homeland Security and the Justice Department should investigate them for acts of sedition, hate crimes, and conspiracy to aid and abet the largest invasion in world history. If these organizations are receiving any taxpayer monies, that should end ASAP! The 14^th Amendment of the Constitution, Section 4 states plainly that the United States cannot pay the debts of those that conspire to undermine our sovereignty and the Constitution.

 

The fact that the SPLC sought out Jim Gilchrist is laughable. Jim does not speak for the cause. Most patriotic Americans feel Jim has lost his way. Media whores eager for attention should show some restraint and stop pandering to foreign and domestic enemies of the Constitution and our laws. A little common sense goes a long ways.  

 

Jeff Lewis

National Director

FIRE Coalition

Jeff@firecoalition.com

"And then there's this..."

 In Providence, immigrants begin national rally for family unity

Saturday, February 28, 2009

By Karen Lee Ziner

Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE — Close to a thousand people packed a Providence church last night to launch a national “family unity” campaign designed to draw attention to the disruptive effects of the country’s immigration policies. Organizers said their goal is President Obama’s signature on comprehensive immigration reform.

The 17-city “listening tour” is being led by Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. Conducted through faith-based organizations, the tour will gather “the human stories of the impact of immigration policies” on “mixed-status” families, including U.S. citizens, and bring them to Washington, D.C., in April.

“We have five million citizen children wondering whether their parents will be there when they get home from school” each day, Gutierrez told an overflow crowd at Trinity Methodist Church on Broad Street.

The congressman and other speakers said mass raids and deportations are tearing apart families whose members include a mix of citizens or legal residents, and undocumented immigrants. Gutierrez asked, “Which half [of the mixed family] are we going to deport? Which half isn’t really our concern? I think both are our responsibility.”

“We want President Obama to keep his promise … to bring people out of the shadows,” he said.

Eight-year-old Jeidi Par — one of three U.S. citizen children affected by parent deportations who spoke to the crowd last night — recounted how immigration agents “seized my father when he was taking out the trash” last September.

Her father, who had applied for asylum years ago but was rejected, has now been deported. The girl said she worries that her mother — who is also in the country illegally — could be deported.

“I beg that you ask President Obama to stop deportation of my mom, and bring my dad back,” Jeidi Par said.

Melissa Arias, 9, also spoke. Her father is facing orders to leave the country by June 12, after entering the country illegally years ago.

In a letter to Mr. Obama, Arias said, “We were a really happy family … why do they take him away if he is not a criminal? I am afraid immigration will go to his work and take him away. The only thing I wish is not to get separated from him.”

Gutierrez said he started the campaign in Rhode Island “because I kept getting told about the city’s large, faith-based immigrant community.”

The congressman said immigration reform should put people on a path to legality.

“That means if you are working hard and paying taxes, and have committed no crimes and you’ve never had any criminal contact with the law — other than your immigration status, we’re going to give you the opportunity to earn your legalization,” he said.

“We want people to take English classes, take civics lessons, get a good Social Security number and pay taxes. And after seven or eight years, if you do it right, then we will say, ‘Welcome.’ ”

The “family unity” campaign got under way amid national developments on the immigration front.

This week, Rep. Lucille Royball-Allard, D-Calif., introduced legislation to adopt “humane and legally enforceable standards” for immigration detention facilities. The American Civil Liberties Union cited the death of Hiu Lui Ng, a former immigration detainee at the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls, as one of three recent detainee deaths underscoring urgency for the bill

Gutierrez told the audience he spoke with new U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano after a raid in Bellingham, Wash., this week.

“She was a breath of fresh air,” Gutierrez said of Napolitano. “And you know what? She told me that raid was done with out her knowledge, and she was deeply disturbed because of that action. She’s going to take a complete review.” He said her response marked “a new time, and a new day.”

After last night’s program, volunteers took further “testimony” from families who may be at risk of deportation, and people signed a petition calling for comprehensive immigration reform.

“We are going to take these testimonies, and when they reach Washington, this is going to move a mountain,” said the Rev. Eliseo Nogueras, president of the Hispanic Ministerial Alliance of Rhode Island.

kziner@projo.com

http://www.projo.com/news/content/IMMIGRATION_CAMPAIGN_02-28-09_TBDG198_v14.378892c.html

 

PatriotWatchdog response:

This article and the conspiratory actions of Rep. Gutierrez to further undermine the Constitution of the United States are perfect examples of "give an inch, lose a mile."

The 14th Amendment never intended for the simple birthing of a child on American soil to garner automatic citizenship. Regretabbly, over the course of time the men and women entrusted with upholding the letter and spirit of the Constitution have failed to give due diligence to the requirements of the job they were hired to do. According to the Founding Fathers, the Constitution and the Amendments to it are supposed to be interpretted in the context of the dialog in which they were written and lawfully ratified.

The drafters of the 14th Amendment never intended to give citizenship to children born of illegal aliens. If the Ambassador of Spain has a child here, according to the Constitution, that child is a citizen of Spain, not the United States. If We the People didn't want to give that Ambassador's child U.S. Citizenship, do you think We the People would give citizenship to the child born of illegal alien foreign nationals?

The Ambassador is a guest in our country and we don't automatically give his child U.S. Citizenship.

Who in their right mind thinks we should give citizenship to the child of someone who is NOT a guest in our country?

Rep. Gutierrez would have you believe that the child of illegal alien invaders is special, privileged. He is not. Rep. Gutierrez is wrong.

American citizens whose state legislators voted to ratify an amendment that prohibited the Ambassodor's son from being a citizen, also prohibited the child of illegal aliens from being born a U.S. citizen.

There are a few lessons to be learned here. Because We the People have failed to enforce the 14th Amendment in the context in which is was ratified, people like Rep. Gutierrez have siezed the inch, and now want us to not only give the children born of illegal alien foreign nationals citizenship, but also the foreign national parents, whether they are here legally or not.

The problem with that is the child of a foreign national falls under the "jurisdiction" of his/her home country. Their "equal protection" is served by the Ambassador and the consulate of his home country. That is true whether he or she is here legally or not. The reason the consulate is a good idea is so that the laws of both countries can be respected and upheld with due diligence to the humanitarian rights of individuals, and to protect the separate, but not always equal sovereign rights of their respective citizens.

This arrangement makes for good neighbors on the global scale. If all the countries of the world had the same laws, there would be no foreigners, anywhere you went.

Our elected officials' failure to honor the letter and intent of the 14th Amendment is wrong. Two wrongs don't make a right.

It is probably true that Rep. Gutierrez knows that already. If we won't let a murderer profit from his crime by not allowing him to reap the rewards of writing and selling a book about the murder, why should we give the illegal alien the reward of being allowed to stay in our country simply because they've mastered the art of timely breeding?!

It is absurd. Since, in my humble opinion Rep. Gutierrez is a very smart and shrewd man, I'm going to give him credit that he knows damned well what the Constitution says, and what it means, but that he is choosing to water down the facts and fertilize the fiction of "anchor-baby" citizenship.

By doing so, he knowingly is violating Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. Luis Gutierrez is knowingly engaging in insurrection and rebellion against the Constitution, and is giving aid and comfort to the enemies of the Constitution, and is by definition a traitor. If his colleagues on the Hill had a spine, he would be impeached, and rendered inelligible to ever hold public office again. That is what the Constitution says.

14th Amendment, Section 3 states:

  "No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a two-thirds vote of each House remove such disability."

 Why is this man still in office, one might ask?

The families he is SWORN to protect are U.S. Citizens, not foreign nationals. If he wants to help foreign nationals become citizens, there are legal and lawful ways in which he might try to do that. He could have chosen to lobby for amending the Constitution, or he could choose to lobby for amnesty for the entire planet, so that anyone could live here regardless of where they were born, merely because they like it here.

He could have done many things within the restrictions and guidelines of HIS employee handbook, namely, that pesky U.S. Constitution. Instead, Rep. Gutierrez, and many others have chosen to ignore the handbook, distort its meaning,  or plea to our humanitarian natures hoping we too will ignore the handbook,

If neither the employer (We the People) nor the employee (Rep. Gutierrez) are going to pay any attention to the employee handbook (the Constitution), then it isn't worth the paper its written on, and we'd just as well wipe our proverbial butts with it one last time before we flush it down the toilet.

Enforcing our laws only when they are convenient, or to satisfy special interests or agendas are how civilized nations become chaotic bastians of anarchy.

This sticky birthright citizenship issue keeps getting stickier by the minute the moment you buy into Rep. Gutierrez's misguided proclamation that the children born of parents illegally in our country are natural born citizens. No matter how many times he makes that claim, it will remain untrue.

If consenting adults whose citizenship is not of the same country have a child, how do they decide where the child lives? Should the child live in country A, or country B? The children born of illegal alien parents are not slaves. They are free to return to the sovereign country from which their parents came. Parents deported are free to take their children with them. In fact, they should.

If at some point in time, the citizens of the United States decide to alter the 14th Amendment to first allow children born of foreign nationals on our soil illegally to be automatic citzens, and to further allow their parents to stay here, then that would become the obligatory law of the land.

Currently, that is not the case.

If the only thing Melissa Arias wishes is, "...to not get separated from" her father, then the question she should be asking isn't can her dad stay, but "can she go with him?" Rep. Gutierrez is using this child, as is the church in the most shameful of ways in an attempt to usurp the law of the land, and the Constitution from which that law was derived.

Since President Obama is in such a budget-cutting mood that he's chosen to reduce or remove the tax-deductability of many charitable donations, then perhaps he should also remove the tax-exempt status of churches and other non-profits such as that of the Hispanic Ministerial Alliance of Rhode Island. They, along with Rep. Gutierrez have conspired to undermine and subvert the Constitution. Any monies that Rep. Gutierrez, (or anyone else for that matter) "earmarked" in legislation to support the Ministerial Alliance of Rhode Island, or groups like them, is a direct violation of the 14th Amendment's Section 4. You can not pick and choose which parts of the 14th Amendment you are going to enforce.

14th Amendment, Section 4 states:

The United States can not pay the bills for the usurpers and conspirators who seek to undermine the validity of the Constitution or the sovereignty of the United States. It says so in plain English. I didn't write it, but I READ IT.

According to the Founding Fathers, the Constitution, and the laws written from it are supposed to be written in a fashion such that the common man can understand it, and that we shouldn't need Constitutional lawyers to interpret it for us. All the Founding Fathers wanted us to need to have was common sense.

Does Rep. Gutierrez have any common sense at all? I think he does. I think he knows exactly what he is doing, as does the good Reverand Nogueres, president of Rep. Gutierrez's co-conspirator special interest group.

When the legal parents of a legal child find themselves unable to live with one another in this day and time, the child usually goes to one or the other parent, or they share joint custody. If they can't decide that amongst themselves, then, and only then, in the best interest of the child, the state steps in and ajudicates that decision.

If the parents happen to be citizens of different countries, then they, and they alone set themselves up for a problem about where the child might rest its head should the parents ever fall out of favor with one another. When those parents find themselves in a squabble over who gets custody of the child, and one or the other parents is illegally in the country in which they find themselves squabbling, or if the illegal parent is repatriated to the country he or she is actually a citizen of, then just as before, the parents, and the parents alone put themselves in that situation.

Why would any parent abandon his or her child and not take it with them when they left a country they have no right to be in?

If you went to France on vacation, and broke their laws while you were there, and they arrested you, and kicked you out, wouldn't you take your kids back home with you?  Would not France make sure your kid was safe and delivered to the airport, sea port, or border crossing where they repatriated the parent being deported?

Of course they would. And so does the United States of America. All this pandering sympathy by Rep. Gutierrez is a ruse, and a lie. He wants us all to believe We the People are the bad guys because we want our laws enforced, and our rights protected. He is spitting on the Constitution and his oath of office.

Luis would have you cry a river for a parent who would threaten abandoning their child in a foreign country rather than take it back home with them. Perhaps they should just hold their breath until they turn blue, like a spoiled kid wanting another piece of candy, or dessert before he finished his vegetables.

I have a message for Rep. Gutierrez. He should stop, read the Constitution he swore to God and Country he would uphold and defend, and then do his job. His job is not to subvert, undermine, or conspire to cause "insurrection or rebellion" against that document. He should not "give aid or comfort" to those that do.

That is his job. That is the oath he took. If Rep. Gutierrez wants to start a "family unity" campaign under the restrictions of the office to which he is sworn, in the context of reuniting families, he might consider going to the hardware store and buying 9,000 shovels.

It would take roughly 9,000 shovels to "reunite" all the American families with their loved ones who are dead and buried because he failed to protect the citizens of Illinois and the United States against invasion. The United States does not deport immigrants! Rep. Gutierrez should stop calling illegal alien foreign insurgents immigrants. That too is a lie. The blood is on his hands.

The Constitution guarantees us protection against invasion.

 Article IV, Section 4 states:

Had Rep. Gutierrez simply focused his energies on upholding that part of the Constitution, we might not have found ourselves in the 14th Amendment arena at all.

Surely anyone with two brain cells swirling around in their head can see the slippery slope we encourage when we ignore one part of the Constitution, and then another, and then another. We end up with chaos, anarchy, and loss of life, liberty, and any hope of happiness.

Benjamin Franklin said, "A great empire, like a great cake, is most easily diminished at the edges."

While the Illinois Legislature is in an "impeaching" mood, they should consider sending Rep. Gutierrez packing like they did former Governor Blago.

There is no difference between these two men. They both usurped the offices they were entrusted with by the lawful citizenry of Illinois.

Oh, and let's not forget Rep. "Lucille Ball" Allard from the article above. Lucy has introduced legislation after conspiring with the ACLU because three illegal alien foreign national insurgents died while in custody. While the deaths are sad, Rep. Allard has got to be joking.

Three? She's whining and introducing legislation because of three deaths of illegal alien criminals in custody simply because they are illegal aliens and happened to die in custody? Wow! I wonder how much legislation she'll introduce to stop the horrific loss of 65,000 Americans killed by illegal aliens since 9/11/2001 when she finds out about them?

In all fairness, if those three deaths were a result of mistreatment, or violations of those individuals "human" rights, then those responsible should be brought to justice.Where is Rep. Allard's and the ACLU's outrage over the tens of thousands of Americans who died at the hands of the same demographic she is introducing legislation to protect?

I would suggest she too should be impeached.

The President and Members of the United States Congress do NOT have the authority to grant special protection to illegal aliens. They DO have the privilege of granting special protection to their employer, We the People. Since reading is apparently dificult for them, I would suggest strongly that Reps. Allard and Gutierrez visit http://operationbodycount.com and http://voiac.org, and look in the faces of the American citizens who paid for the that betrayal with their lives!       

You can trust me on this one. They'll find more than three deaths they should be alarmed about. I know it says near the end of the oath of office "to the best of their ability," but if this is the best they can do, we should take the advice of North Carolina's favorite son.

Governor Zeb Vance stated in 1876,

 "When you find you have scoundrels and scalawags in office, you need to turn them out, and keep turning them out until you send honorable men to Washington."

We must have elected officials who unwaveringly put AMERICA FIRST!

On January 19th, 2005, I watched a program on CNN entitled, "Defending America".  The program aired during the Anderson Cooper 360 show.  In it, CNN’s Drew Griffin interviewed Michael Touhey the American Airlines ticket agent who sold tickets to Mohammed Atta and his henchman.

 

The most compelling part of the show, to me, was that the first thing Mr. Touhey thought when Atta approached his counter was, "if these two don't look like terrorists, I don't know who does" (paraphrased).  Yet, despite his "gut feeling", he issued tickets to both.  In fact, he said that his second thought was of shame for judging based on his "gut feeling" and their appearance.

 

Thus, he faced a “catch-22” situation that has been imposed by our country's incessant quest for political correctness and tolerance.  If he questions their motives, he is likely to face a reprimand for "racially profiling."  If he issues tickets, he runs the risk of letting two individuals who may be terrorists, on board the plane.  Unfortunately for hundreds of people that day, he erred on the side of political correctness.

 

Of course Mr. Touhey would take it all back were he given the chance today.  So this brings us to the question, if hindsight is 20-20 would he be correct in calling the authorities to check out the two men?  Of course, the rational among us emphatically scream, "YES!"  However, if this is the case, why do we still not allow our law enforcement officers to do the same?

 

The answer is because the "deafening minority" is louder than the "silent majority".  Anytime there is the appearance of a law enforcement officer singling out a minority, this relatively small minority of people (or groups like National Council of the Race, ACLU, or MALDEF) cry foul.

 

Is it safe to assume then, that those opposed to allowing law enforcement officers to use their experience (aka “gut feelings”) and profiling techniques to question individuals would still want Mr. Touhey to issue the tickets?  Doing otherwise would be to "racially profile" according to these same people.

 

Which way do we want it? We cannot have it both ways.  Do we continue to cower in the face of the "deafening minority," or use "common sense" profiling to thwart crimes in our nation?

 

I liken the situation to the inland immigration enforcement operations (aka "sweeps") that occurred in June of 2004 in southern California.  When, once again, the "deafening minority" cried foul to theUndersecretary of DHS, Asa Hutchinson ,and the sweeps were stopped, a human rights commission was convened in Riverside, CA to discuss the appropriate methods for our law enforcement officers to use when identifying potential illegal aliens (or other criminals for that matter).  At that meeting, I was present at that commission and reasoned with the commission that the techniques used by immigration officials should be similar to those of vice officers when picking up prostitutes.

 

If the law enforcement officers see a group of scantily-clad women (a subjective assessment) at night approaching cars that stop by the side of the road, in an area known for prostitution, their reasonable conclusion is that these women are prostitutes, and they act accordingly.  Likewise, if immigration officers see a bunch of men in work clothes (another subjective assessment) on the side of the road approaching pick-up trucks as they come by and leaving in those trucks, their reasonable conclusion is that these men are illegal aliens and should be able to act as such.

 

It is entirely possible for the women to be tourists asking for directions, just like it is possible for the men to be American citizens looking for work.  With the presumption that there can always be doubt about these conclusions, why can vice make these judgment calls and immigration and local law enforcement officials not be allowed to do so?

 

We need our public officials to reassure the law enforcement community that they will be defended by their federal, state and local governments, should a group like "The Race", ACLU, or MALDEF bring suit against them for using "common sense" profiling.  We need to begin standing up for each other when we see someone wrongly labeled as a “racist” with the not-so-hidden-agenda of silencing them.  We cannot continue to let the “deafening minority” dictate the security—or lack thereof--of our country and usurp our laws to suit their purpose.