Liberals routinely complain that immigration laws such as the recently enacted Arizona Senate Bill 1070 are 'discriminatory.' This is nonsense, of course, but it is important to understand why.
1. Let's start with the very notion of discrimination. Discrimination as such is neither good nor bad. In this respect it is like change. Change as such is neither good nor bad: there is change for the good and change for the bad. Change for the good is improvement, but not all change is improvement. (Obama take note.) Similarly, there is justifiable discrimination and unjustifiable discrimination. As a matter of fact we all discriminate all the time. When you refuse to eat rotten food and insist on fresh, you are discriminating. When you forbid your children from associating with crackheads, you are discriminating. When you sort arguments into the valid and the invalid, you are discriminating. When you accept the true and reject the false, you are discriminating. Such discriminations are obviously justifiable. But that is to understate the point. Anyone who fails to discriminate between people with whom it would be dangerous for his children to associate and those with whom it would not be dangerous is guilty of dereliction of parental duty. Discrimination is not only in a vast range of cases permissible; it is obligatory.
2. The same goes for laws. Every law discriminates against those who either do or fail to do the actions either proscribed or prescribed by the law. A law that proscribes the operation of a motor vehicle while intoxicated discriminates against drunk drivers. Is that a problem? Of course not. Discrimination in cases like these is obviously justifiable.
3. So there is a clear sense in which SB 1070 is discriminatory: it discriminates against those who are in the country illegally. Now I hope our liberal pals are not opposed to 1070 for its being discriminatory in this sense. Presumably, what they will say is that it 'targets' Hispanics and discriminates against them unjustifiably. But this is a false and scurrilous allegation. It does not 'target' Hispanics, it targets illegal aliens. Of course, the vast majority of illegal aliens in the Southwest are Hispanics. But that is irrelevant. The objection to them is not that they are Hispanic, but that they are illegal.
It takes a little subtlety of mind to understand this, but not that much. Suppose someone said that drunk driving laws are unjust because they disproportionately affect those of Irish extraction. You would of course respond that if they are the ones who are doing most of the drunk driving, then it only right that they should be the ones who disproportionately suffer the penalty. You would point out that, even if it is true that most drunk drivers are Irish, the objection to them is not that they are Irish, but that they are drunk drivers.
4. 1070 does not unfairly 'target' Hispanics despite the barrage of lies emanating from the Left. So what are liberals/leftists really opposed to? They are opposed to the very notion of national sovereignty and national borders. They simply do not want border control. But being mendacious, they will not come out and clearly state that. So they use weasel phrases like 'comprehensive immigration reform' which either mean nothing or are code for amnesty and open borders.
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