Citizenship and Suspicion
I recently returned from a two-week roadtrip through Texas with my wife and then 14-month-old son. A lot of firsts: first road trip with a child (lots of unplanned stops), first time seeing a large body of water for him, first visits with various relatives, first tour of the Alamo. And, while driving from the (Rio Grande) Valley to Austin, I experienced my first interior immigrant checkpoint.
I don't know how many of y'all out there know that these things exist. I know I didn't, not before I met my wife. This is one of several actual checkpoints, like those that one might find at the border, with federal border patrol agents and dogs, located on major north-south arteries from California to Texas. Drivers are obliged to stop and demonstrate in some way that they are American citizens. In my family's case, that consisted of answering in the affirmative to the question: "Americans?"
That's nowhere near as ominous or intrusive as the stern trenchcoated man -- or the armed policeman -- menacingly demanding "Bumagy, pozhuals't'" (papers, please), as I encountered a few times in the former Soviet Union. In saying so, however, I must point out that less "American"-looking folks might have been stopped for longer, subjected to greater and more invasive scrutiny, and inconvenienced quite a bit more than we were. Leaving aside for now the question of the effectiveness of such checkpoints, or the issue of immigration, legal or otherwise, I would assert that no American citizen should ever be obliged to prove his or her citizenship except when accessing those privileges exclusive to citizens.
That last clause opens a can of worms, which I'll toss aside by noting that the only such privilege should be voting. No level of government should be providing services on the basis of citizenship, because each level of government is responsible for protecting the rights of all individuals in its jurisdiction -- and little else besides. The emergency room doctor shouldn't waste time looking for a bleeding patient's green card or visa before offering service (and without going too far out, the unconscious or critically-injured patient shouldn't have to provide evidence of ability to pay before receiving treatment, which is why there shall have to always be some public provision of emergency care); the police officer shouldn't have to ask the pocket-picked person for a passport prior to pursuing the perpetrator; the SAC pilot shouldn't have to get a statistical breakdown of citizens and non-citizens in an area before intercepting an unidentified aircraft bound for that area; the ranger at the gate of a national park shouldn't have to check your ID before accepting your payment of the entry fee. Schools? Okay, I think there shall always have to be public provision of some level of education, which discussion I'll have in another post. But again, the teacher shouldn't have to check the citizenship of each of his students: if the student's not on the list, the student must resolve that situation outside the classroom, and such resolution would involve proof of residency or appropriate school-related registration. So, again, the only time the individual should be obliged to carry state-sanctioned identification is when he walks up to the polling place.
Note that I distinguish here between citizenship and identity, as I can see the need for establishing identity in a lot of situations. Still, the need should be based on the individual's attempt to access a service, or in investigation of a specific crime that has been committed -- not just at random, even to detect a criminal activity. The police should legitimately be stopping individuals and/or vehicles only if they match descriptions or circumstances (such as passing a given point in a specific timeframe) related to an investigation of a reported or observed crime. In such cases, establishment of identity is less important than, say, an alibi, so it is not necessary to provide identification even then. If the individual becomes a suspect, the police should detain the individual, pursuant to existing law and bail procedures; if a material witness, the police should get contact information; if neither, there's no need for identification at all. If only authorized persons are allowed in a given location, it doesn't matter whether the unauthorized (or authorized, I guess) is a citizen or not. If a person is acting in a disruptive or suspicious way in a public place, again, citizenship has no real relevance to the behavior, and at any rate intercepting and searching this individual can fall under the heading of justifiable police activity referred to above. Similarly, certain materials may be so dangerous to the lives or property of individuals that acquisition and possession of said materials might and should be monitored by the state; bonding or some other registration might be required to buy or sell said materials, and transactions might be recorded and evaluated. This falls under the authorized personnel rubric; applying for the authorization would fall under the government service rubric, and unusual purchases might meet the suspected crime criterion. Note that I specify the danger to other individuals or property, so pharmaceuticals, porn magazines, or how-to books on making bombs wouldn't qualify. Additionally, none of the above scenarios requires proof of citizenship (authorizations might be granted irrespective of citizenship), and in all cases, identification is required only upon request of service or suspicion of a committed crime or witness to same.
The reason I'm so down on proof of citizenship or a national ID card is simple, and it actually comes from something my poli econ prof at college said (in reference to South Africa at the time): if the state issues an ID that one must carry, and that can be demanded by any agent of the state, it is possible for any agent of the state to take that ID from you and effectively prevent you from leaving your house, on threat of arrest for walking the streets without identification. My experiences with the former Soviet Union reinforced this: lacking "bumagy" could result at least in inconvenience, the payment of a fine, or detention.
Some of you out there are rolling their eyes at the paranoia inferrable from the above paragraph, and feel free. But never assume that any individual in power, as I discussed in my essay on Law, is immune to error or malice, and that any of you is secure against intentional or unintentional abuse of power on these bases. At any rate, if we don't need the ID, why risk the potential abuse of power? Further, documents can be counterfeited, and in creating the false sense of security that such empty gestures generate, authorization documents actually shelter the very individuals we are trying to filter out. A national ID, internal passport, or other such thing is more trouble than it's worth.
Some of you are also saying, "but we're at war". First, that's a load of crap. Congress hasn't declared such a war. A war on terror is pointless, a war on terrorism is pointless, and a war on terrorists is pointless. We go to war against states, not emotions, ideologies, or associations. If necessary, we should go to (properly authorized) war against specific states that perform or shelter and/or aid those who perform violent acts against Americans. In other cases, we collaborate with internal security agencies of specific states involuntarily hosting terrorists. At home, meanwhile, law enforcement and responsible individuals monitor activity of other individuals, and law enforcement can monitor those materials that are sufficiently dangerous to justify it. That's not war, and does not provide justification for suspending anybody's liberties or granting additional authorities to the state.
More importantly, there is nothing a foreign terrorist can do that an American criminal can't do. The simple presence of Osama bin Laden in my neighborhood does not of itself endanger me: it is his potential actions, just as those of any American walking down the street, that present the threat. The 9/11 hijackers were not dangerous because they were foreigners, or that they had violated the terms of their visas, but because they brought potential weapons onto an airplane -- something nobody is allowed to do, regardless of citizenship. Further, the attacks were made possible not because of a failure of intelligence, or of the INS, or, ultimately, of the airlines, but rather of a flawed assumption about the nature of hijackings. The attacks having eliminated this assumption as a factor, no change to airline security, from nationalization of bag checks to guns in the cockpit, was necessary to prevent a repeat of that kind of attack. Preventing other kinds of attacks involves monitoring production, sale, and formal or informal importation of explosives, dangerous chemicals, dangerous pathogens, and toxic (including radioactive) material on a national scale, and observing individual behavior at facilities that are at risk.
As for immigrants, again, I don't want to get into it. Suffice it to say that I am not harmed when a foreigner takes a job for a wage I won't accept, nor when one lives in a apartment and pays rent that I would reject. If we confine government to those activities necessary to protect all the individuals within its jurisdiction, the fact that such an individual is a non-citizen has no financial impact on me either.
So why do we need internal checkpoints or a national ID?
I don't know how many of y'all out there know that these things exist. I know I didn't, not before I met my wife. This is one of several actual checkpoints, like those that one might find at the border, with federal border patrol agents and dogs, located on major north-south arteries from California to Texas. Drivers are obliged to stop and demonstrate in some way that they are American citizens. In my family's case, that consisted of answering in the affirmative to the question: "Americans?"
That's nowhere near as ominous or intrusive as the stern trenchcoated man -- or the armed policeman -- menacingly demanding "Bumagy, pozhuals't'" (papers, please), as I encountered a few times in the former Soviet Union. In saying so, however, I must point out that less "American"-looking folks might have been stopped for longer, subjected to greater and more invasive scrutiny, and inconvenienced quite a bit more than we were. Leaving aside for now the question of the effectiveness of such checkpoints, or the issue of immigration, legal or otherwise, I would assert that no American citizen should ever be obliged to prove his or her citizenship except when accessing those privileges exclusive to citizens.
That last clause opens a can of worms, which I'll toss aside by noting that the only such privilege should be voting. No level of government should be providing services on the basis of citizenship, because each level of government is responsible for protecting the rights of all individuals in its jurisdiction -- and little else besides. The emergency room doctor shouldn't waste time looking for a bleeding patient's green card or visa before offering service (and without going too far out, the unconscious or critically-injured patient shouldn't have to provide evidence of ability to pay before receiving treatment, which is why there shall have to always be some public provision of emergency care); the police officer shouldn't have to ask the pocket-picked person for a passport prior to pursuing the perpetrator; the SAC pilot shouldn't have to get a statistical breakdown of citizens and non-citizens in an area before intercepting an unidentified aircraft bound for that area; the ranger at the gate of a national park shouldn't have to check your ID before accepting your payment of the entry fee. Schools? Okay, I think there shall always have to be public provision of some level of education, which discussion I'll have in another post. But again, the teacher shouldn't have to check the citizenship of each of his students: if the student's not on the list, the student must resolve that situation outside the classroom, and such resolution would involve proof of residency or appropriate school-related registration. So, again, the only time the individual should be obliged to carry state-sanctioned identification is when he walks up to the polling place.
Note that I distinguish here between citizenship and identity, as I can see the need for establishing identity in a lot of situations. Still, the need should be based on the individual's attempt to access a service, or in investigation of a specific crime that has been committed -- not just at random, even to detect a criminal activity. The police should legitimately be stopping individuals and/or vehicles only if they match descriptions or circumstances (such as passing a given point in a specific timeframe) related to an investigation of a reported or observed crime. In such cases, establishment of identity is less important than, say, an alibi, so it is not necessary to provide identification even then. If the individual becomes a suspect, the police should detain the individual, pursuant to existing law and bail procedures; if a material witness, the police should get contact information; if neither, there's no need for identification at all. If only authorized persons are allowed in a given location, it doesn't matter whether the unauthorized (or authorized, I guess) is a citizen or not. If a person is acting in a disruptive or suspicious way in a public place, again, citizenship has no real relevance to the behavior, and at any rate intercepting and searching this individual can fall under the heading of justifiable police activity referred to above. Similarly, certain materials may be so dangerous to the lives or property of individuals that acquisition and possession of said materials might and should be monitored by the state; bonding or some other registration might be required to buy or sell said materials, and transactions might be recorded and evaluated. This falls under the authorized personnel rubric; applying for the authorization would fall under the government service rubric, and unusual purchases might meet the suspected crime criterion. Note that I specify the danger to other individuals or property, so pharmaceuticals, porn magazines, or how-to books on making bombs wouldn't qualify. Additionally, none of the above scenarios requires proof of citizenship (authorizations might be granted irrespective of citizenship), and in all cases, identification is required only upon request of service or suspicion of a committed crime or witness to same.
The reason I'm so down on proof of citizenship or a national ID card is simple, and it actually comes from something my poli econ prof at college said (in reference to South Africa at the time): if the state issues an ID that one must carry, and that can be demanded by any agent of the state, it is possible for any agent of the state to take that ID from you and effectively prevent you from leaving your house, on threat of arrest for walking the streets without identification. My experiences with the former Soviet Union reinforced this: lacking "bumagy" could result at least in inconvenience, the payment of a fine, or detention.
Some of you out there are rolling their eyes at the paranoia inferrable from the above paragraph, and feel free. But never assume that any individual in power, as I discussed in my essay on Law, is immune to error or malice, and that any of you is secure against intentional or unintentional abuse of power on these bases. At any rate, if we don't need the ID, why risk the potential abuse of power? Further, documents can be counterfeited, and in creating the false sense of security that such empty gestures generate, authorization documents actually shelter the very individuals we are trying to filter out. A national ID, internal passport, or other such thing is more trouble than it's worth.
Some of you are also saying, "but we're at war". First, that's a load of crap. Congress hasn't declared such a war. A war on terror is pointless, a war on terrorism is pointless, and a war on terrorists is pointless. We go to war against states, not emotions, ideologies, or associations. If necessary, we should go to (properly authorized) war against specific states that perform or shelter and/or aid those who perform violent acts against Americans. In other cases, we collaborate with internal security agencies of specific states involuntarily hosting terrorists. At home, meanwhile, law enforcement and responsible individuals monitor activity of other individuals, and law enforcement can monitor those materials that are sufficiently dangerous to justify it. That's not war, and does not provide justification for suspending anybody's liberties or granting additional authorities to the state.
More importantly, there is nothing a foreign terrorist can do that an American criminal can't do. The simple presence of Osama bin Laden in my neighborhood does not of itself endanger me: it is his potential actions, just as those of any American walking down the street, that present the threat. The 9/11 hijackers were not dangerous because they were foreigners, or that they had violated the terms of their visas, but because they brought potential weapons onto an airplane -- something nobody is allowed to do, regardless of citizenship. Further, the attacks were made possible not because of a failure of intelligence, or of the INS, or, ultimately, of the airlines, but rather of a flawed assumption about the nature of hijackings. The attacks having eliminated this assumption as a factor, no change to airline security, from nationalization of bag checks to guns in the cockpit, was necessary to prevent a repeat of that kind of attack. Preventing other kinds of attacks involves monitoring production, sale, and formal or informal importation of explosives, dangerous chemicals, dangerous pathogens, and toxic (including radioactive) material on a national scale, and observing individual behavior at facilities that are at risk.
As for immigrants, again, I don't want to get into it. Suffice it to say that I am not harmed when a foreigner takes a job for a wage I won't accept, nor when one lives in a apartment and pays rent that I would reject. If we confine government to those activities necessary to protect all the individuals within its jurisdiction, the fact that such an individual is a non-citizen has no financial impact on me either.
So why do we need internal checkpoints or a national ID?
posted by heavynettle at 23:05
2 Comments:
This post raises a lot of issues. Suffice to say, it must really suck to be in La Migra (border patrol), but maybe not demonstrably more so than any other branch of the government where there is no actual consensus on how you are supposed to do your job, what the law is or should be or how it can be circumvented by rich political donors, etc. Think about working for the EPA in the current administration, for example.
But working in La Migra must really suck, mainly because it involves tracking down and finding people (largely on the basis of an increasingly obsolete set of criteria for racial profiling) upon whom large segments of the American economy are entirely dependent. Agriculture is only the most obvious example. I highly recommend the circa 1980 Jack Nicholson/Harvey Kittel (however it's spelled) movie, The Border, which is a rare American movie in which the central character is a place.
But regardless of your views on immigration's complex impact of the economy, e.g. Is the presumed lowering of the potential wages of unskilled native-born workers offset by the increased productivity across the economy as a whole?, one thing that everyone ought to understand is that we should avoid policies that turn any population, immigrant or otherwise, into a permanent underclass. For this reason, access to public education should be available for all students. In the parts of Oregon where migrant farm laborers are prevalent, there are publically funded Spanish-language Head Start and other programs, such as providing free immunization (very prudent).
The question about equity is "Who pays?" As it is in the case of hospital emergency rooms in the border areas that are overwhelmed with people (largely illegal aliens) unable to pay for services but who cannot be legally or morally turned away, local municipalities or even state governments (if you believe California's pleas for federal help) in areas of high immigration bear a disproportionate burden to keep public services going. Yes, immigrants buy local services and pay local taxes (where they exist), but the proportion of taxes paid by them may not be proportional to the services they use.
So who pays to keep the schools functioning? I would say those who benefit the most: the businesses who employ illegal aliens or "guest workers" or whatever you want to call it. As usual, race/nationality distorts these issues, which are actually about class/wealth. I heard recently that on average 10% of the people on Medicaid in any given state are fulltime Walmart employees who still qualify for public benefits even though they work 40 hours or more for America's Super Saver. Many, but probably not the majority, of Walmart's impoverished employee's are illegal aliens, but what is at issue in the case of Walmart, big agri-business, the construction industry, etc., is corporations lowering their own cost at the public expense.
Corporations, starting with the Union Pacific railroad at least, have always been smart enough to exploit (and promote) ethnic animosity to prevent effective collective bargaining for wages. The current times are no exception. Currently, they are doing it to our political process instead of our flacid labor unions. "Who pays?" should be easy for local and state governments to figure out: whoever created the economic incentive to bring people into a local jurisdiction should be the same institution or business that is responsible for paying for or providing independently the same level of essential public services--school, sanitation, immunizations, ERs--that the established community was providing for itself. This should apply to a business that brings in unskilled migrants, but also to a business, such as Walmart, that creates a permanent underclass whose needs can be served only by public welfare.
In short, love you neighbor and send the bill to Cargill.
Yeah, this is why I didn't want to get into illegal immigration. I do recognize that, arguing as I did against ever allowing the state to demand proof of citizenship of anyone, there is no real way to identify those in our country illegally. My real concern is liberty, restricted only when absolutely necessary to preserve liberty equally.
Public education should be a matter for the locality, and that is the basis on which I presume the requirement of proof of residence within the district. The homeless? Aye, there's the rub. If you feel strongly enough about educating children of the homeless, support shelters and charities that provide subsidized housing. Whatever, though: when I feel like talking about immigration or the homeless, I'll do it in a separate post.
Thanks, Sage Thrasher, for raising the questions you did.
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