Opinion Forum

Arizona Law and Human Rights

May 18th, 2010

The Obama Administration’s tendency to apologize for the United States in the international arena is getting ridiculous. According to an ABC News report, in talks with China about human rights U.S. representatives used the Arizona law on illegal immigration as an example of a human rights problem:

During two days of talks about human rights with China last week, the US raised examples of problems on its own soil and cited Arizona’s controversial new immigration law as an example of “racial discrimination.”

“We brought it up early and often. It was mentioned in the first session and as a troubling trend in our society, and an indication that we have to deal with issues of discrimination or potential discrimination. And these are issues very much being debated in our own society,” Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy Human Rights and Labor Michael Posner, who led the US delegation to the talks, told reporters on Friday.

And then this:

“We’re talking about issues that are uncomfortable, quite frankly, but it is a sign of maturity that we can talk about specific cases,” Huntsman said.

This is, to put it mildly, outrageous. It’s one thing for a Democratic administration to disapprove of a state law that Republicans (and many others) agree with. It’s another thing entirely to bring it up in talks with one of the world’s major human rights violators as an example of an American human rights problem.

Can the President and his people be so obtuse as to think that this is a valid comparison? It’s one more example of the kind of political thinking that is causing many people who once wished the President well, including me, to look forward to firing him in 2012.

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: Arizona, China, human rights, illegal immigration, U.S.
Categories: Law, News, Politics | Comments (5) | Home

5 Responses to “Arizona Law and Human Rights”

d | May 18th, 2010 at 5:44 am

I tend to agree on that one,Tom. I just hope the alternative is worth hiring and not worse.

Brianna | May 18th, 2010 at 3:40 pm

The Chinese have a system called “hukou” which separates urban dwellers from rural dwellers. It was initially done in the sixties to keep people from mass migrating to the cities, but what it essentially did was turn rural citizens into second-class people. Your hukou determines which schools you go to, health care access, and all sorts of things like that. Move to the city when you have a rural hukou, and if you get sick, you have to go home to get care; if you have kids, they have rural hukou and cannot go to school in the city; there’s other stuff, I can’t remember it all.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hukou_system

d | May 19th, 2010 at 6:18 am

How does that apply to illegal,operative word,illegal, imigrants from getting all our health care and benefits,we worked for?
Check out what other countries do to illegals,if they even have any. Arizona is mild,in comparison to all of them. Illegal,not rural or urban,illegal.

Tom | May 20th, 2010 at 3:24 am

I’ve been traveling for the past five days, and it’s been hard to keep up with the goings-on here. But I have to say, five days in Rome was pretty neat. It was the second time I’ve been there, and I was as impressed by the city as ever, especially the Vatican. It may seem like a big deal, but travel in Europe is pretty easy. An hour-and-a-half flight; kind of like visiting New Orleans when you live in Atlanta.

Doris is right about immigration law in other countries. Having lived in quite a few, I know first-hand that it’s pretty serious business. I’ve never seen a country so apparently willing to tolerate illegals as the U.S. I have to be very careful to ensure that my status is always legal and correct; the consequences of breaking immigration law aren’t pleasant. And I always have to have a passport with me that shows my current legal status.

It’s also interesting that the U.S. has, in effect, two immigration regimes. One is the legal kind, in which there are lots of hoops to go through to be legal, restrictions on the number and kinds of people who can enter and stay legally, etc. The other is the southern border regime, where anyone (mostly Mexicans) can sneak across, then get jobs and social benefits, have kids who automatically become citizens, etc. Pretty strange.