Thread: Immigrants and the rule of law

Immigrants and the rule of law

August 4, 2006

Suppose that more than 100 people gathered in each of several back yards in your quiet residential neighborhood for volleyball games that run well into the night.

That the back yards' owners sell beer at 50 cents a can and beef at $5 a plate.

That they erect 20-foot nets over the fences to keep the ball in the yard and bury extension cords to power klieg lights.

That players and spectators park their cars on the neighbors' lawns.

Because Danbury, Conn., residents didn't like this turn of events, their local officials started enforcing local codes on noise, height and light restrictions, on selling alcohol without a license, on turning a home into a fast-food restaurant, on cramming several families into dwellings zoned single-family.

Because the property owners were Ecuadoran immigrants, Danbury was summarily pounded as nativist.

Santa Ana resident Tim Rush has been calling the code cops on neighbors who “sell cars, refrigerators and corn on the cob, plus people playing ranchera music at all hours of the day.”

He has called authorities about inoperable cars parked in yards, unpermitted garage conversions and driveways.

Most of his neighbors, mostly Latino, don't like him.

“He bought a house here,” one told the Los Angeles Times. “That doesn't give him the right to boss people around and tell them how to live.”

Costa Mesa is training its police (as federal law allows) to help the feds find illegal immigrant felons, as opposed to Maywood. That Los Angeles County city dissolved its traffic police unit because it arrested too many Latinos driving without a license, the penalty for which is impounding their cars.

Then there's Vista, roundly criticized as racist for enforcing a longtime law that prohibits setting up a mobile restaurant in a public street, then moving against the illegal employment and exploitation of illegal immigrants by making employers of day laborers register themselves, the work and the pay. If scores of clerks mobbed a mall looking for work, they'd be dispersed, but not day laborers congregating at (private) service stations.

And there's McGonigle Canyon, where mostly illegal immigrants still live in a squalor that wouldn't be tolerated if located in La Jolla or inhabited by runaway teens.

In these examples and more lies a worry not limited to Anglo-Americans: that the rule of law – civil and criminal, ordinance and statute – to which Americans generally are viscerally attached may collapse under a multicultural punch: A punch from immigrants whose native culture doesn't recognize private property, noise/zoning/health ordinances, and cops who go by the rule-of-law book; a punch that considers such law enforcement racist.

Every immigrant group has brought with it traditions that don't jibe with Americans'. Killing a daughter or sister who takes up dating or ritually slaughtering goats in the yard or fighting cocks in the basement are clear examples. Others may be harder calls.

But there is a distinctly American ethic that most immigrant groups have accepted: In general, U.S. law is not something immigrants can selectively ignore, never mind label as racist, because they aren't used to it and don't want to be.

One man's right to play music ends at another's ears. One man's property line ends at another's. One man's home car sales lead to another selling beer leads to a residential area becoming commercial and ending the quiet enjoyment of one's property.

Living arrangements are a public health concern, as are licenses for businesses that sell booze and tamales.

Many, maybe most Americans don't want any laws ignored.

Offering amnesty or anything approaching it to people who came illegally or stayed illegally, for whatever reason, is exempting them from federal law, even rewarding them for ignoring it and encouraging others to do likewise.

Most congressional proposals would seriously penalize employers of illegal aliens, but with only minor inconveniences to the illegal aliens themselves. Most potential workers whose visas expire must go home, however far, and return legally. But not, so far, workers here without visas.

If the federal government will not penalize legal and illegal immigrants for acts illegal under federal law on a scale big enough to stop them, then towns and cities will enforce the town and city laws they can. It sets an example for the feds, and the immigrants.

The rule of law must start somewhere.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib ... arber.html

I read this article this morning and was surprised the UT published it. There is hope yet.

I would say if the Latino special interest groups wanted to do something constructive.........they would start by teaching these people that they aren't in their homeland anymore and things are different here. If everybody did what they darned felt like with no consideration of others this place would be worse than a jungle!

But it's getting sickning having our citizens obey the laws while they let this blatent disregard for them go unchecked.

If everybody did what they darned felt like with no consideration of others this place would be worse than a jungle!

Ever been to Mexico, crazybird?

That's the place you're describing.

Ever been to Mexico, crazybird?

No......never wanted to go to begin with. Only place I've been out of the states is Jamacia and Canada. Not a big traveler.