Brown people, papers please.
Friday, November 30th, 2007The Republican candidates for President debated last night on CNN. I watched the whole thing (torturous), and have now read plenty of coverage on the web since the debate, and for the most part what’s been covered is CNN’s behaviour as hosts.
I’m not going to weigh in one way or the other regarding CNN. Rather, I want to point out something that Mitt Romney asked of Rudy Giuliani. This was during the immigration debate that anchored the first 20 minutes.
First, Romney said this (all quotes are taken from the official CNN transcript):
ROMNEY: It [New York] called itself a sanctuary city. And as a matter of fact, when the welfare reform act that President Clinton brought forward said that they were going to end the sanctuary policy of New York City, the mayor actually brought a suit to maintain its sanctuary city status.
Giuliani doesn’t actually refute Romney’s claim that he supported New York being a sanctuary city, mostly because Romney is right (here’s a YouTube clip from 1996 of Guiliani stating his support). Instead, Giuliani says, essentially, “I know you are but what am I?”
GIULIANI: …in [Romney's] case, there were six sanctuary cities. He did nothing about them. There was even a sanctuary mansion. At his own home, illegal immigrants were being employed not being turned into anybody or by anyone.
Here’s the Boston Globe story that ran on the illegal immigrants that “were being employed” at Romney’s mansion. (Note, they weren’t being employed by Romney, because that would be noteworthy. It’s what I like to call guilt by near-ssociation. In a nutshell, Romney hired a company that employed illegal immigrants. In theory, end of story. (I honestly doubt there is a single person who has not in some way employed an illegal immigrant, be it by staying at a hotel, eating a piece of fruit grown in the United States, etc.).
But Giuliani says something very scary. He says that these illegal immigrants were “not being turned into anybody or by anyone.” That’s some batshit crazy talk. And, wonder of wonders, Mitt realizes it.
ROMNEY: Are you suggesting, Mr. Mayor… if you are a homeowner and you hire a company to come provide a service at your home — paint the home, put on the roof. If you hear someone that is working out there, not that you have employed, but that the company has. If you hear someone with a funny accent, you, as a homeowner, are supposed to go out there and say, “I want to see your papers.”
From there, the two of them cross-bicker without Giuliani ever answering the question, until a moment later DILF Anderson Cooper says, “We got to move on.” And on they move.
Best as I can tell, what Romney lays out is what Giuliani believes, that we should ask for papers if confronted with a brown person (or “someone with a funny accent”). (A Wikipedia search for “Papers Please” links directly to the page on ”Civilian checkpoints.”) And I suspect that most of the Republican candidates on that stage last night believe the same, that if you encounter somebody who has the outward appearance of a stereotypical illegal immigrant, you have the right to question their citizenship, essentially to ask, “papers please.” (Here’s the Wikipedia page on “Identity documents in the United States.”)
But I believe it is because Mitt Romney essentially agrees with what Rudy Guiliani was suggesting (and contrary to what Romney portrayed to be true as he pearl-clutchingly admonished Giuliani for his racially insensitive faux pas) that has prevented the Romney campaign for addressing this loose end.
Romney believes that a national ID card should be issued to any non-citizen. The question is, how do we know who is or isn’t supposed to be carrying said card? I guess we can just start with the brown people and see how far that takes us.
Should you desire a laugh or a cry, here’s a link to a YouTube clip of this part of last night’s debate. (Pregnant women should not watch this as it may cause birth defects.)