Just a guess, but could this hick Sherlock be up for re-election?
A sheriff in suburban New Orleans has asked federal authorities to investigate reports that illegal immigrants are working on the Gulf oil spill cleanup effort. […]
Stephens says he wants to protect the community from “criminal elements” and not “people who want to earn an honest buck.”
Right, because the “criminal elements” always gravitate towards dirty, difficult, manual labor.
stuckinred
And meanwhile, here in Georgia
Comrade Javamanphil
Because what this country really lacks is a good scapegoat.
Linda Featheringill
I saw that news item about the Sheriff in the greater NO area.
What the hell does he care? It is hard and crappy work and they need it done anyway. There is going to be plenty of cleanup work to do. And BP is paying for it.
Again, why does he care?
New Orleans has ALWAYS produced its share and more of lawbreakers and troublemakers. From Day One. I cannot believe that he is worried about an influx of crime into his perfect little territory.
And if you want to be really honest about it, you’ll have to admit that NO has always had a significant portion of illegal aliens among its residents.
There is no real logic to his stance. Even racism doesn’t explain it very well.
Perhaps he is frightened about impending changes and needs to pick on somebody to make him feel better.
Edit: I agree with Comment #2.
Glen Tomkins
Poverty is a crime
We should just make it so formally. That would save a lot of time and effort all around, as prosecutors now have to go to the trouble of coercing false testimony from some plea deal when they want to put a poor person in jail.
Alex S.
I bet the amount of this guy’s voters among those who clean up this mess is approximately 0.
c u n d gulag
We can’t have us payin’ no greasy wetbacks for helpin’ to clean up our oily wetlands, now can we?
EconWatcher
The strain of pure meanness in this country can still take you by surprise sometimes–although somebody mentioned in a thread yesterday that the jerk objecting to the school mural in Arizona was fired from his radio job and is facing a recall in his elected job. So there’s hope.
JD Rhoades
It’s like abortion. It’s such an emotional, wedge issue that opportunistic politicians try to shoe-horn it into every other issue and every policy debate.
bkny
‘dirty, difficult, manual labor’ … that is going to leave them in severe health crisis in the years to come — with no chance in hell of obtaining adequate healthcare.
El Cid
Well, they can always get a few cops to shoot ’em in the back on a bridge.
The Grand Panjandrum
I hear Lloyd Blankfein got his hands dirty the last time he had to pick up a golf ball. Has anyone ever asked for his birth certificate?
arguingwithsignposts
@JD Rhoades:
what JD said.
SpotWeld
The article is a little brief. It sort of depends which criminal elements.
Focusing on illegal immigrants seems to be a risk to divert effort away from the clean up effort.
However, a sub-contractor hiring illegals (while billing the state/country for full wage employees) would be a indicator that any number of corners are being cut on the job.
So either he’s getting hyper-focused on illegal immigrants, he’s doing some due-dilligence keeping the contractors honest, or it’s somewhere in the middle
Mumphrey
@EconWatcher:
It still kind of shocks me, too, sometimes. I could be wrong, but I don’t recall this much meanness in the U.S. before Bush took over. There was a lot of nuttiness and dumbness in the Clinton years, but I never really picked up on the meanness the way you can’t help but do today.
I think a lot of it had to do with Bush himself, and Cheney. I always saw Bush as a bully, a mean guy. Cheney, too. They got in office and began pushing people around, and then there were the terrorist attacks, which freaked all of us out, and got us all angry, rightly so, but it also gave scope and an excuse for the real assholes to begin bullying people.
Now we have a Kenyan soçialist nazi atheist Muslim holding the presidency, and these nasty, brutish dickheads who’ve had a good time demonizing everybody who doesn’t hold up to their standards of what an American is, well, they’re just beside themselves. They can’t lash out directly at Obama, so they’ll take it out on whatever filthy darkies they can reach.
RSR
funny; the only people I know in my family who have hired day-laborers of questionable immigration status are two staunch repubs
I mean, these two know what corners in which towns to go find them. I’d really not know where to start if I even considered such things.
asiangrrlMN
@JD Rhoades: Triple down on this. It’s a hot button that is soooo easy to push.
Joseph Nobles
Anybody willing to help clean up the fucking Gulf oil spill should get amnesty. I’ve got no problems with that.
LD50
No, he’s being totally logical — IF you assume, as he presumably does, that Mexican immigrants are by definition ‘criminals’.