In mid-March, I spent three days in Toronto. I had no idea what that trip would teach me about the latest furor over Arizona’s controversial SB 1070.
We’ve been inundated with news — and a plethora of opinions — about Arizona’s new law for the past three weeks. It allows the state’s law enforcement officers who make legal stops to question those they suspect of being in the country illegally about their immigration status.
The more hysterical commentators — and yes, I’d have to include the nation’s chief executive among that lot, based on his comments — have claimed the law allows police to randomly and arbitrarily stop anyone and, as happened in Nazi Germany, “ask them for their papers.” (Do you get the feeling these people have watched one World War II film too many?)
I went to Toronto to do a series of interviews and a story for the Institute for Advanced Journalism Studies, which is located on the campus of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical University in Greensboro. I was supposed to learn about the educational achievement gap among various racial and ethnic groups in Toronto, but I really learned what America’s current furor over illegal immigration is all about.
Respect. Or, as Aretha Franklin might put it: R-E-S-P-E-C-T.
When those Americans who hysterically claimed that SB 1070 would lead to cops harassing innocent citizens and asking to “see their papers” — without so much as reading the law, I might add — I remembered one thing: I carried “my papers” with me every day I was in Toronto. That would be my passport, which I always carry in my right front pants pocket along with my wallet no matter what country I’m in. (I’m right-handed, and the advice about the wallet came from an old friend schooled in the ways of pickpockets.)
The March trip to Canada wasn’t my first trip abroad on behalf of the IFAJS. In 2003, two other reporters and I traveled to Grenada to do a series of stories about the 20th anniversary of the American intervention that ousted a group of murderous, Marxist thugs from power. The consensus from a number of Grenadians is that then-President Reagan was absolutely right to send in American troops. There is still graffiti on some walls paying homage to Reagan.
In 2004, I went to Brazil and Panama. I’ve been to Cuba a couple of times. My travels not related to IFAJS have taken me to Kenya, Jordan, Great Britain and France.
In all those places I carried “my papers” whenever I walked the streets. I realized I wasn’t in my own country; I was in somebody else’s country. I had to respect their customs, their traditions and, most importantly, their laws. So I kept “my papers” with me. If any law enforcement official in any of those countries had stopped me, I would have gladly shown him or her “my papers,” and I wouldn’t have whined about racial profiling or a violation of my rights either.
Nor would I have participated in demonstrations protesting the immigration laws in any of those countries either, or expressed outrage about that country’s immigration policies. Why?
Because it was about respect. I respect the immigration laws and policies of other countries, and I insist that those who come into this country had better darned right respect ours.
There have been news reports these past few weeks about the outrage those opposed to Arizona’s SB 1070 feel about the law. Those who are outraged should be advised that they haven’t cornered the market on anger. Americans who are equally as outraged about the lack of respect will be at the polls in November, too.
Examiner Columnist Gregory Kane is a Pulitzer-nominated news and opinion journalist who has covered people and politics from Baltimore to the Sudan.
