"Where are your papers? Oh, you're OK." Florida immigration law excludes white, Asian immigrants

[ck4829]

Florida wants to be the next Arizona, based on a law proposed by Attorney General Bill McCollum, Republican Rep. William Snyder (pictured) and supported by tea party gubernatorial candidate Rick Scott. But there is at least one item in the law that makes it worse than the Arizona immigration law. (h/t Think Progress)

What few observers seem to have noticed, though, is a bizarre clause Snyder included on page 3. Even if an officer has “reasonable suspicions” over a person’s immigration status, the bill says, a person will be “presumed to be legally in the United States” if he or she provides “a Canadian passport” or a passport from any “visa waiver country.”

What are the visa waiver countries? Other than four Asian nations, all 32 other countries are in Western Europe, from France to Germany to Luxembourg.

In other words, Snyder’s bill tells police to drop their “reasonable suspicions” of anyone hailing from dozens of countries full of white people. How is that not racial profiling?

http://www.alan.com/2010/10/20/proposed-florida-immigration-law-would-target-only-latinos/