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Florida Copies Arizona’s SB 1070, Adds Provision Exempting Lots of White People

Posted October 20, 2010 by Patrick Young, Esq.
Categories: National

A new piece of draft legislation targeting immigrants in Florida is challenging Arizona’s SB 1070 for most overtly racist bill this year. While mandating that non-citizens carry papers, the bill exempts some foreign-born people from its provisions. Namely, the white ones.

The draft bill says that proof of legal presence in the US includes proof of Canadian citizenship or a European passport, neither of which is, in itself, proof of legal presence in the United States.
According to The Washington Independent:

The bill includes a provision allowing Canadians and Western Europeans to be “presumed to be legally in the United States,” even though other non-citizens must carry papers. Florida’s bill, which was drafted by Rep. William Snyder (R), has support from Rick Scott, the Republican candidate for governor. Although proponents of the legislation argue it would not lead to racial profiling, the provision on Canadians and Western Europeans—most of whom are white non-Latinos—brings up new concerns for Latino groups.

Latino and immigrant rights groups have fervently opposed the bill, which would mimic Arizona’s SB 1070 by requiring police to check legal status on anyone they “reasonable suspicions” of being in the country illegally if the police have already stopped them. The provision would allow them to assume legal status if the person had a Canadian passport or a “passport from any ‘visa waiver country’”—which are primarily located in Western Europe. “That language makes it clear that police are targeting only a specific minority,” Susana Barciela, policy director at the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, told the Miami New Times.
Snyder said the language was meant to avoid deterring tourism from Canada. “What we’re doing there is trying to be sensitive to Canadians,” he said in a radio interview. “We have an enormous amount of … Canadians wintering here in Florida. … That language is comfort language.”

The problem is that even though many Western Europeans and Canadians are allowed into the US without a visa (unlike people from non-white majority countries) many of these individuals overstay their allotted time or violate the terms of their entry. Those people accordingly become “visa overstays,” the polite term for white “illegal aliens.”

Since Florida’s law is ostensibly designed to secure full enforcement of federal immigration laws in every part of the state, it makes no sense to exempt a specific group of foreigners, unless the motive to do so is racial.

Tags : arizona, florida, rick scott, sb 1070, william snyder

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