NOW EVERYONE WANTS TO SEE YOUR PAPERS

(Banksy on AZ.)

As the oil clogs the Gulf and a sea of troubles yet to be defined will, without doubt follow, plus all the other all too familiar problems still remain, a scramble is underway to the time-honored last resort of every authoritarian asshole probably since the Roman Empire. That’s right. Get hysterical all over the poor fucking immigrants.

“Arizona's new get-tough immigration law has emboldened other state capitols to follow suit. Legislators in at least 10 states -- Utah, Oklahoma, Colorado, Ohio, Missouri, Georgia, South Carolina, Mississippi, Texas, and Maryland -- have called for laws that would mirror Arizona's Senate Bill 1070, according to the Progressive States Network and reporting by New America Media. First out of the gate to actually introduce a bill was South Carolina. Along with 20 co-sponsors, Rep. Eric Bedingfield, a Republican, introduced a bill April 29 that, like Arizona's, requires law enforcement officials to check individuals' immigration status. Some of the language in the South Carolina bill, which was posted on the legislature's website, is virtually identical to the most controversial portion of the Arizona measure signed into law by Gov. Jan Brewer on April 23. The South Carolina bill reads: "When reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States, a reasonable attempt must be made, when practicable, to determine the immigration status of the person." (Click here for more)

While, not to be outdone, the Democrats want a US national ID card.

“A plan by Senate Democratic leaders to reform the nation's immigration laws ran into strong opposition from civil liberties defenders before lawmakers even unveiled it Thursday. Democratic leaders have proposed requiring every worker in the nation to carry a national identification card with biometric information, such as a fingerprint, within the next six years, according to a draft of the measure. The proposal is one of the biggest differences between the newest immigration reform proposal and legislation crafted by late Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). The national ID program would be titled the Believe System, an acronym for Biometric Enrollment, Locally stored Information and Electronic Verification of Employment. It would require all workers across the nation to carry a card with a digital encryption key that would have to match work authorization databases. "The cardholder's identity will be verified by matching the biometric identifier stored within the microprocessing chip on the card to the identifier provided by the cardholder that shall be read by the scanner used by the employer," states the Democratic legislative proposal. The American Civil Liberties Union, a civil liberties defender often aligned with the Democratic Party, wasted no time in blasting the plan. "Creating a biometric national ID will not only be astronomically expensive, it will usher government into the very center of our lives. Every worker in America will need a government permission slip in order to work.” (Click here for more)

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The secret word is Scapegoating