The CLEAR Act of 2003
The “Clear Law Enforcement for Criminal Alien Removal Act of 2003″:http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c108:H.R.2671:, sponsored by Rep. Charlie Norwood (R-GA), would encourage local and state police departments to “investigate, apprehend, detain, or remove aliens” discovered in the course of their normal law enforcement duties. This encouragement would come in the form of the witholding of funds that would otherwise be allocated to the state or locality under other laws.
Most of the opposition to this legislation has come from immigration advocacy groups; other groups have focused on the unfunded mandate requiring the use of state and local officials to enforce federal law.
However, a much overlooked aspect of the legislation is the unprecedented step toward a police state in the United States. Under this legislation, every police officer would have the right — indeed, the responsibility — to ask anyone they stop in the routine performance of their duties for proof of their legal status. Presumably the police would use their judgement as to whether any individual was likely to be an illegal immigrant; I’ll give you one guess as to which racial group is _least_ likely to be asked for their passport or green card.
The United States has never required that its citizens carry proof of their citizenship, and to give local police the ability to demand “your papers, please” is a dangerous step on the slippery slope towards a police state.
December 5th, 2003 at 5:10 pm
I think that giving police the push to act against illegal immigrants is great. Our constitution has a clause which directs our government to protect us against invasion. Just because the majority of those illegally entering and illegally remaining in our country are not of the white race doesn’t give them the right to hide behind the country’s hatred of racism. If someone comes into my kitchen uninvited and is helping themself to my food I don’t care what color their skin is. I want them out. I have no problem producing legal identification. I have nothing to hide.
December 19th, 2003 at 6:02 pm
Too many cops and others in such authority may use their badge to express their contempt for people of color. As an olive skinned Latino whose family dates before Columbus, I resent having to even think of having my right to be here questioned. It is demeaning and dehumanizing. White people do not have to even be concerned about it as they have no basis in the dehumanizing experiences people of color deal with as a matter of routine.
January 5th, 2004 at 7:53 pm
If latinos are singled out for suspicion, it is their own fault. Most of the illegal aliens in this country are from Spanish-speaking countries. Instead of whining about it, legal latino citizens should be helping to rid the USA of illegal aliens. They live in the same communities with them and know who they are. The real racists are the latinos who put being latino ahead of being American. Leave it up to people like you to turn criminals into “victims.”
January 9th, 2004 at 12:40 pm
Racist indeed! Giving the police the right to detain and deport illegal aliens is horrible. Not only would it be creating a police state and fueling racial profiling but unless there was some sort of shield act, when any sort of crime happened, some people just wouldnt call the police. Witnesses would run or lie about what they saw. People would be too afraid to do the good because any good could just have bad consequences. I am white woman with a mexican boyfriend and I have seen first hand the racism that can go down. There is no question, some people are just racist. You give them this power and no good will come of it.
January 9th, 2004 at 10:16 pm
Someone who breaks Federal Law by illegally entering the U.S. can not go unpunished, despite your differences what ever they may be. If you allow unlawful behavior that gives way for more unlawful behavior.
January 10th, 2004 at 7:15 pm
My sister was killed by an illegal immigrant one year ago. I am all for proof of citizenship. If this immigrant was found to be illegal at any given time or deported, she would still be here. In my research of this immigrant, he used five different aliases and was found to have commited many different crimes. Furthermore, this has indeed increased criminal justice and social service cost to the American taypayer.
January 10th, 2004 at 7:35 pm
I am sorry about your sister, but she could have just as well been killed by an american with five different aliases. Some people are crazy, no matter what culture they come from. These immigrants are many times good people who take jobs that us americans wont, pay taxes and contribute to their communities. If every illegal immigrant went on strike for just one day the economy would lose over a million dollars. Theres no question… this nation was built by immigrants and will very likely continued to be maintained by immigrants.
January 10th, 2004 at 7:36 pm
I am sorry about your sister, but she could have just as well been killed by an american with five different aliases. Some people are crazy, no matter what culture they come from. These immigrants are many times good people who take jobs that us americans wont, pay taxes and contribute to their communities. If every illegal immigrant went on strike for just one day the economy would lose over a million dollars. Theres no question… this nation was built by immigrants and will very likely continued to be maintained by immigrants.
January 12th, 2004 at 12:30 am
im a hispanic 18yr old who thinks that the act is just another racist look towards mexicans. but i ask myself why would u want to get rid of immigrants? arent they the ones (only ones) who are willing to work for 5 dollars an hour to work in the fields under the damn hot sun??? just like miss or mrs barrenger said immigrants are the ones who are there doing those jobs for us. i mean would u do it??? i wouldnt do it. so getting to my point….. i just think that the act should be banished and that people start seeing others with the respect and eqauliness….cause remember in GOD’S eyes we are all equal.
January 19th, 2004 at 10:03 am
To Dave, and others. One of the greatest myths around immigration is that most of the people who are here illegally are latinos who crossed the border without authorization. That is FALSE.
I have practicied immigration law for 8 years. Every bit of research that has any credibility will disclose that the greatest number of undocumented immigrants is from visa overstays. (ie, given a studen or visitor visa and then never left). The vast majority of people who get temporary visas are not from low income latino countires, but places like Europe, Canada, and other non-”stereotypical” immigrant countries.
April 5th, 2004 at 3:42 pm
I am a mixed race american and I also experience dehumanizing profiling. This however is a problem in america illegal alien or not. The fact is that people can’t just come and stay here if they feel like it. America is a nation of immigrants yes, but you all know that America is just about built out and developed as it should be, any more and quality of life and environmental issues will start to exhibit negative effects. We can’t deport, because I believe that is immoral, we did let them in and stay here, we could have locked everyone out if we wanted to, trust me. We need to approach this with attrition, slowly force them out by enforcing employer sanctions and tightening the border as well as denying benefits other than emergency healthcare and education for minors and we should not allow children of illegals to be automatic citizens, just these actions we take care of the lions share of the problem without forcefull or indecent action. They can then try to come back in legally like everyone else. The only place we need a guest worker plan is agriculture, the rest of the work we can get by with our own labor force. With the processing fees of this plan we could put it into modernizing agriculture processing to further lessen the need in the future for these workers. Legal immigration is another debate, it should be done with sense and massive chain migration doesn’t make sense.
September 8th, 2005 at 7:02 pm
We no longer have a government, by the people, for the people, but a government of the rich and powerful for the rich and the powerful!
Hurricane Katrina exposed our countries lack of preparedness to respond to a major terrorist attack! But perhaps equally important it exposed the deep structure flaws in our society. When we have Americans citizens looting, torching, raping and killing innocent people in times of a national tragic, then we have deep problems in our society! While the easy and knee jerk reaction is to blame poverty we have seen deeper poverty in other nations around the world that did not engaged in the terrible acts that the whole world witness on TV in New Orleans.
You would think it would be obvious that an long range plan needs to be developed and probably trillions of dollars necessary to begin addressing these problems. Maybe it is time that our politicians of both parties at all levels are ask hard questions about why they chose to spend our limited resources in the amount of 10,s of billions of dollars on people in this country illegally! It should be obvious to both politic parties and all our citizens that those billions could best serve the needs of American citizens and help address the very real problems exposed in our society by the hurricane!
It is both Ethically and Morally wrong to spend billions of tax payers dollars on people here illegally at the expense of poor American citizens! The Democrat party is as guilty as the Republican party in the looting of tax dollars to serve the special interest with cheap labor at the expense of American citizens!
The president is doing great harm to our country and risking thousand of American lives in an attempt to gain Latino votes and more importantly the money donated from grateful business that his policies provide with a unending supply of nearly slave labor subsidized by taxpayers! To this end he is putting his quest for money and votes above the law, the constitution and his oath to preserve and protect the American people. There was no excuse for our policy on illegal aliens prior to 9/11 but after 9/11 his policies that allow 100’s of thousands of illegal aliens to pour across our open borders makes a lie out of his often professed concern with terrorism and protecting the American public. To me and I hope many other concerned Americans he should be impeached for dereliction of duty! If we have innocent men, women, and children killed by terrorist that crossed our open borders their blood will be on his hands and other like minded politicians. The next time they can’t plead they didn’t know and wasn’t warned! They can’t deny and put their spin Doctors on TV to lie their way out of their responsibility for the mutation and the tragic lost of life. So I hope he and they will be held accountable for their crimes then and forever in history
The politicians of both parties and the administration are once again proving their polices are designed to help the rich and powerful and the politicians at the expense of the middle class and poor American citizens of this country. In August it was reported another 1.1 millions of Americans slipped into poverty. Company after company is cutting or eliminating health benefits. State after State is cutting back on Medicaid and the federal government is cutting Medicare, this combination is condemning more millions of Americans citizens to premature death and untold suffering!
The policy on Illegal Aliens in this country is diverting billions of dollars from tax paying, law bidding, Americans who fought our wars and built this country. Just taking the very low end & vastly understated both in cost per and number here. Ten million here illegally at an cost of 7800.00 for each one equals 78,000,000,000. While this number is vastly understated it would still by rights and just plain human compassion should be spent on our own poor citizens.
Illegal aliens have no allegiance to this country and the only gratitude they have is political corruption in this country benefits them, unlike corruption in Latin American. Most are more knowledgeable and more dedicated to getting benefits from the American Government at all levels than American citizens.
Most of our public officials at all levels seem to have forgotten they were elected by American people to serve the American people and enforce our laws. They were not elected in Latin American to serve illegal aliens in this country. We have 45 million American without any health insurance and increasing daily. We cannot afford decent, timely medical care for our veterans and million of our old people cannot afford their required medicine and food and are forced live on animal food and/or go hungry. We have millions of American children living in poverty without a chance at the American dream. We have hundreds of billions of dollars in deficit spending. In short, we have millions of American citizens in dire need of the necessities of life. When those needs are taken care then & only then will our devious, self serving, corrupt, politicians pretending to be acting out of compassion, have extremely weak justification for spending billions of tax dollars on citizens from other counties here illegally! They have no possible justification when so many millions of Americans citizens have so little and need so much!
The real problem is politicians spending our tax money on poor American citizens does not result in big donations from the special interest that are profiteering from subsidized illegal labor.
The argument used by business and the politicians serving them that we need millions of illegal aliens and a vast guest worker program to work at jobs that American won’t take is greatly overstated! If Americans were paid a livable wage there would be law bidding, taxpaying, Americans citizens to fill most of those jobs. Most businesses could pay a livable wage, but as we have seem numerous times, many if not most, business and company officials have unlimited greed and using nearly slave labor, wherever possible, subsidized by the taxpayers means more profits and bigger salaries to serve their greed. It also means more money available to donate to political parties and candidates. A good example of this is the construction business. Tens of thousands of American that were lower middle class have lost their jobs and/or slipped into poverty because they cannot compete with illegal aliens or must accept illegal aliens wages.
Has anyone noticed the price of homes declining? For the businesses that must rely on illegal aliens, subsidized by taxpayers, to make a profit, should they really be in business? If so, then the South may really raise again on the backs of Latino slave labor subsidized by taxpayers!
While Americans are a compassion, generous people rewarding illegal behavior with billons of taxpayers dollars only results in providing incentive for more illegal aliens to take advantage of our political corruption and misplaced compassion. Thereby creating a vicious circle with more illegal aliens here, more money required for them, more crime, more lowing of our living standards, and less money and less concern by politicians to service the very real needs of our own American citizens.
Recently the Democrat Governor of New Mexico was on national news explaining why he released funds to help parole New Mexico borders because they were being over run with illegal aliens and crime. But on the same show he explained how compassioned he was to illegal aliens, providing driver license, tuition and medical benefits etc. Can anyone, be so oblivious to the obvious, that they do not realize rewarding illegal behavior begets more illegal behavior? If so, they must have been enrolled in the same school as our President to teach them remedial breathing! I am sure New Mexico has many Americans citizens sick and living in poverty that need help! The Governor could have used tax money to help citizens of his State to show what a fine compassion man he is instead of foreigners here illegally! But he, like most politicians, have in fact, chosen to ignore the law, and the despair and needs of the people that elected him. Rewarding, illegal aliens, for breaking our laws, assure them of an unlimited supply for now and the future. Thereby serving the needs of the special interest with illegal labor and letting politicians pick up fat checks donated from grateful businesses, and letting the taxpayers pick up the billions of dollars in cost for their benefits.
In just one place around Nogales, Ariz. more than 490,000 people were caught last year trying to entering the United States illegally. Only a small percentage crossing our borders are caught but of the 490,000 caught 7 out of every 50 or 14% had criminal records and that is only the ones caught in crimes before and with incomplete records! No doubt with complete records and the larger percentage of ones that have committed crimes but never caught the percentage would be much, much higher. The sheer number of illegal aliens here and using the understated 14% crime rate makes the cost to our country and the pain and suffering of their victims mind boggling!
Many law enforcements officials state enforcing our laws and reporting illegal aliens will lessen cooperation from the illegal aliens community and making catching criminals harder. But the most vicious gangs that we have ever experience and that are spreading like wildfire across our States and our cities are comprised primarily of illegal aliens. Millions of American citizens living in our inner cities including Latino Americans live in fear and imprison their selves in their homes because they are afraid to go out! Without millions of illegal aliens in this country there would be much less crime to worry about and enforcement thereby saving billions of dollars in law enforcement cost alone!
Mexico has always been and remains a poor, weak, corrupt, hostile government on our borders! Both the Government and most of the Mexican citizens have an intense dislike for the USA and our people. If anyone would like to verify this then they should visit the interior of Mexico, not Cancun and similar places where they are paid to pretend to like us. I think most would find they would be treated very badly by both officials of the Mexican government and the Mexican people. In fact, if you escape with your life you will be lucky, if you escape with both your life and your money you are blessed!
Mexico’s main exports are drugs, illegal aliens & corruption! The number one source of income for Mexico is money send back by illegal workers in the USA. They have a unstated government policy to export their poverty to the USA thereby lessen the pressure to clean up the government corruption so they could provide a decent standard of living for their people.
Our governments failure to control our borders or take action to export illegal aliens already here has resulted in millions of illegal aliens in this county and is risking thousands if not millions of American lives to terrorism, corrupting our politicians even more, increasing poverty, convinced many citizens that we are not an nation of laws, costing tax payers billions of dollars, and robbing our own citizens of needed benefits, and will in time turn this country into a third world county like Latin American.
We have millions of Latino American citizens and our government policy on illegal aliens and billions of dollars spend on benefits for illegal aliens are hurting them the same as all Americans. Additionally, we have thousands of Latino Americans citizens serving this country in Iraq and around the world putting their lives on the line each and every day for this country and our people and our way of life. Each and every one of those Latino Americans citizens are better Americans than most and worth much more then the self serving elected officials in this country that are subservience to the special interest of the rich and powerful!
The one politician, John McCain, that many thought and hoped was different and put duty, honor, country, and the rule of law above, politics, party, and the special interests, has now apparently given up and sold out to the special interest as well! It is especially difficult to acknowledge what happened to John McCain after his prior service to this country in Vietnam. But he has finally realized the First Rule of every successful politician in the USA. They must never put either their Country or American citizens interest above or before their own interest and their political future. Of course, as expressed by the politicians, there is not enough money for everything and they that must make the tough choices, that is what they were elected to do. Very true, and what Mr. McCain and other politicians have chosen to do is put their political interest, and the interest of millions of illegal aliens here above our laws and above the interest and welfare of the greater number of poor American citizens that desperately need the billions of dollars in benefits that is currently provided to citizens of other countries here illegally!
I would urge all American citizens to immediately take one of the two following actions:
1. For all those citizens who think our illegal aliens policy is a fine, fair, just, compassion policy, then contact your State and other elected officials and demand the same laws be passed for American citizens. For American citizens that attempt to cross a State border and caught, then they should be treated humanly, served refreshments and transported back to their home State at government expense. For the ones that successfully make it 20 miles across a State border than they should be meet by local officials, congratulated, and gave a yearly bonus by the government of at least 7800.00 dollars. Furthermore, no State shall be allowed to provide more than 25% of the resources required to monitor and control their borders.
2. For the American citizens who think our illegal alien policy is totally insane and supported by corrupt, self serving politicians subservience to the special interest, then contact your State officials and demand that we immediately close our borders to illegal aliens and terrorist. In addition, demand there be no rewards of tax money or benefits be spend on illegal aliens breaking our laws. Give the millions of Illegal Aliens in this country 180 days to leave with their processions. Ones remaining here after the allotted time will be rounded up and forfeit there processions to offset the expense of apprehending them and cost of sending them back to their home counties.