Police, the President, and the Law

While in the process of researching the topic of the immigration debate, a window popped up on my screen. It offered you the chance to win a green card to the United States just by filling out a few simple pieces of information, as long as the task was completed with the 5 minute time-frame. I found this to be ironic, especially with all the controversy about who should be allowed into our country.

I looked mainly at three different articles. One, entitled "Houston Police Department Revises Immigration Policy after Officer’s Death," (http://www.blogger.com/(http://www.officer.com/article.jsp?siteSection=1&id=32866) discusses how the death of a police officer, at the hands of an immigrant who had already been deported once due to having previously entered illegally. This event rekindled the flames of a heated debate on tightening immigration checks and consequences for "illegals" on a local level.

There have been several revisions to their procedural methods since this event. Fingerprinting and background checks will be used as a way of determining citizenship, as well as "detention of illegal immigrants who returned to the country after deportation for criminal convictions and detention of people who have previous deportation orders." Like the seatbelt regulations however, being an "illegal" is a secondary offense, and police do not in most cases have the authority to detain someone simply on suspicions of these grounds.
Secondly, an article called simply "Faulty Discourse on ‘illegal immigrants’,"(http://www.today.ucla.edu/2006/060509voice_immigrants.html) is similar to those which we have already looked at. It merely shows the many ways in which immigrants are depicted by completely negative and degrading images such as "overgrown weeds and invading soldiers." It also touches on the use of "illegal immigrant" vs "undocumented immigrant," and how those who stand up for these people are often less respected, such as President Bush when he said, "Immigrants are hard-working, decent human beings."

The third is an unbiased, purely informative piece, called "The Immigration Debate: How This Issue Could Affect Your Household." (http://www.blogger.com/(http://research.lawyers.com/The-Immigration-Debate.html?SPC-CNN). It deal largely with immigration law and how it is applied, especially in regard to home-employed immigrants.

Overall, these three pieces present three different, though not completely opposing views on immigration: pro-immigrant right, toughened regulations, and the law. Together, these can be used to gather a more complete picture of how immigration is affecting our nation.