Saturday, December 03, 2011

Show me your papers!

" People are trying to use this to make the law look bad"
said the mayor of Leeds, Alabama, responding to the arrests of a Mercedes Benz director and a Honda manager for having only international drivers licenses rather than their German or Japanese cards in their pockets.


Well people won't have to try very hard, because Alabama looks bad enough without any help. The demand that anyone looking or sounding 'foreign' carry proof of citizenship at all times looks to me too much like those "racial origin" cards the Third Reich made people carry, but even if you disagree or think I'm being hyperbolic, it still looks paranoid, it looks stupid, it stinks of a very ugly past and it surely isn't going to help the state of Alabama attract the kind of foreign investment and employment opportunities it needs.

"We are the Show Me State, not the Show Me Your Papers State," writes the St. Louis Post Dispatch.
"You've got two choices. Either ask your executives to carry their immigration papers at all times, or move to a state that understands gemütlichkeit."

" We’re going to enforce the laws of state of Alabama”
says the mayor of Leeds, like a character from a Victor Hugo novel. Well you go ahead Javert. Crops are already rotting in the fields of Alabama because if you're of a racial or ethnic minority, it just ain't worth it and the construction industry is falling apart too. Other states would be happy to have those billions of dollars and thousands of jobs pack up and move elsewhere in Free America.

2 comments:

Leslie Parsley said...

Three seconds of conversing with my AL kin can prompt me to run from the room while pulling my hair out by the roots and screaming at the top of my lungs. They are so blessed ignorant it just boggles the mind. There's a reason AL is one of the poorest states, has one of the highest rates of teen births and one of the lowest rates of HS grads - but it is the second most religious state (behind MS) by God.

Why would any business be attracted to this state? Why would anyone of sound mind want to relocate there? Why don't they just secede?

Capt. Fogg said...

Alabamans have told me that the only reason Mississippi exists is to give them some state they can look down on.

Well, they did try to secede, you know and in their hearts they really already have.