Will the Maryland Legislature pass the Proof of Lawful Presence Act of 2009, or will the Free State’s legislators chump out?
My money is on them chumping out. Even though Baltimore County Sen. Norman Stone, a Democrat, sponsored Senate Bill 369, which requires immigrants to be in our country legally before they can get a driver’s license, I still expect his fellow Dems to chump out.
All someone opposed to the bill has to do is dredge up the dreaded “r” word and most Democrats in the House of Delegates and the Senate will go weak in the knees and vote against the Proof of Lawful Presence Act (PLPA).
That “r” word would, of course, be “racist.” Remember when that word actually meant something? Remember when the definition was one who felt his race was superior to others, or who hated or was intolerant of other races?
Well, those days are gone. Today, a racist is, more often than not, someone from a racial or ethnic group you don’t particularly care for who utters uncomfortable truths about an ethnic or racial group you happen to like. The term racist is now akin to how Ambrose Bierce defined bigot in his delightful “The Devil’s Dictionary.”
“One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain.”
As sure as you’re reading this, you can bet somebody – either a member of the Maryland Legislature or an advocate for immigrants no matter what their legal status — will call the PLPA racist. For the past few years, those of us who dare suggest that our country’s immigration laws be enforced have been dismissed as racists. Why would our support of PLPA be any different?
I got a dose of this a few years ago, after thousands of immigrants – illegal and legal – demonstrated across the country. In a column, I took to task those who protested our immigration laws while waving Mexican flags. I suggested that illegal immigrants who entered this country from Mexico would have better served their cause by flying the American, not the Mexican, flag.
No sooner had the paper in which the column appeared hit the streets than I got the expected e-mail from a Latino American who suggested that I was not only anti-Latino, but also, as a black American, skittish because Latinos are now the country’s largest minority.
I shot back a message saying that if advocating enforcement of my country’s immigration laws – far more liberal than Mexico’s, according to some observers – makes me a racist, then it’s a label I’ll wear proudly. I also suggested he might want to point the accusatory racism finger at a couple of Spanish-speaking countries.
Cuba and the Dominican Republic come immediately to mind. When I was in Cuba two years ago with a group of black American journalists, an Afro-Cuban named Leonides Terrero who spoke perfect English introduced himself to us by using what I call the “Oedipal expletive.” During one of many conversations we had with him, he mentioned that his government does not welcome illegal immigrants from black nations in the Caribbean. (And well it shouldn’t.)
I learned the story of how some people in the Dominican Republic treat black Haitian immigrants – legal and illegal – from Sonia Pierre, a black Dominican descended from Haitian parents who has won awards for her work in fighting for Haitian immigrants and their descendants in the Dominican Republic.
You’d think some of that dudgeon about racism directed toward illegal immigrants would be directed at some people in either Cuba, the Dominican Republic or both. But that’s not how the Left typically operates in this country. Insist that people obey our laws – regardless of whether they were born here or slipped across the border – and the Lefties will all but drape Ku Klux Klan hoods over your head.
But in the matter of the PLPA, it’s really quite simple: 46 states and the District of Columbia already have similar laws, which comport with the federal Real ID Act. Passage of the act would put Marylanders in compliance with federal law.
Those Maryland legislators who oppose it need to explain how, as lawmakers, they get to advocate breaking laws they don’t like.
Examiner columnist Gregory Kane is an award-winning journalist who lives in Baltimore.
