Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Norm, did Katie put you up to this?

Here's your Catch-22 of the morning: Report being assaulted, and you risk being deported. According to NOW, that's how things may turn out for illegal immigrant women if one particular amendment winds up attached to the immigration bill just revived in the Senate. That would be the Coleman-Domenici amendment (S. Amdt. 1158; text not yet available on Thomas), offered by Sens. Coleman, R-Minn., and Domenici, R-N.M., and packaged as a way to "facilitate information sharing between federal and local law enforcement officials related to an individual's immigration status." What it would actually do: Discard state and local policies (including provisions in the Violence Against Women Act) that keep immigration status confidential when someone reports domestic or sexual violence to police. (Key language: "No person, agency, or Federal, State, or local government entity may prohibit a law enforcement officer from acquiring information regarding the immigration status of any individual if the officer seeking such information has probable cause to believe that the individual is not lawfully present in the United States.")

[at Salon's blog Broadsheet]

Some of you, boys and girls, will recall Katie's plaintive wail about the Minneapolis separation ordinance designed to keep the Minneapolis cops from becoming junior G men on immigration. In a recent morals raid by Rachel's boys and girls on undocumented alien prostitutes who had been brought into the state for that purpose, Katie was all bent out of shape because she didn't think that the Minneapolis cops were helpful enough. And she pointed to the ordinance.

Katie, the cops probably weren't more involved because they were busy busting panhandlers at your behest!

Now, by golly, thinks Katie, we'll take the issue out of the hands of the local police! I'll write that Norman Coleman fellow! He'll do something!

It doesn't occur to Katie that fear of deportation—even if you're a prostitute—would be a impediment to the reporting of crime, even serious crime, even by victims. Katie is missing the empathy gene. She has no ability to walk in the shoes of a undocumented alien, or a homeless panhandler for even an instant. She only knows the world of "decent people" or "ordinary folks" who are perhaps not unexpectedly exactly like Katie.

Eroticism to Katie is being able to look down on other people. Status porn.

No comments: