Give Scott McInnis credit. He knows how to change the subject.
No one is talking about McInnis and elk anymore. Not when McInnis has moved the stakes up a few notches, to actual human beings.
That’s where the credit ends and where the jokes get a little rougher. McInnis has really stepped into it this time. He has gone the full Tancredo — or is it the full McCain? — saying, if elected governor, he would hope to bring a version of the Arizona immigration law to Colorado.
Yes, that’s the probably unconstitutional and certainly un-American Arizona immigration law he wants to bring here — the show-me-your-papers law that could have been pulled straight out of “Casablanca,” except without Bogart or the music. We’ll always have Maricopa County?
It’s the law that has put Arizona at the center of the immigration-reform debate, and not necessarily in a good way. The lawsuits have begun. The boycotts are being organized (including by our own Denver Public Schools, which leaves one wondering where DPS will go if Colorado follows). And the jokes? On “Saturday Night Live,” Seth Meyers intoned, “I know, I know. It’s a dry fascism.”
I asked to talk to McInnis about this, but he declined. I wanted to know what the former cop thought of the details of a law mandating that cops “make a reasonable attempt” at identifying legal status if there’s a “reasonable suspicion” the person involved in “lawful contact” is an illegal immigrant.
I don’t know if the law is reasonable, but it’s certainly vague. And though the law says a cop can’t rely “solely” on ethnic background, there is clearly no other way to do it.
And it gets worse: If the cops don’t act on “reasonable suspicion” — which is apparently something less than “probable cause” — they can be sued. No wonder the Pima County sheriff says he won’t enforce the law.
So, bring it to Colorado? Target the million or so Coloradans with Latino backgrounds? Bring on the lawsuits? Bring on the boycotts?
I don’t know which is worse — if McInnis really thinks this is a good law or if he thinks this is an issue he can safely demagogue. I wanted to ask him if he saw Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer stumble when asked what an illegal immigrant looks like. It’s nearly as funny as Seth Meyers.
“I do not know,” she said. “I do not know what an illegal immigrant looks like. I can tell you that I think that there are people in Arizona who assume they know what an illegal immigrant looks like. I don’t know if they know that for a fact or not.”
She said that they’re still trying to come up with guidelines for the law. We all know what the law will do — go after those with the wrong accents or the wrong shoes or who press 2 at the ATM.
But the debate sometimes leaves out an important point. The problem with the law only begins with those here legally who could get caught up in a sweep without papers on them.
What about American citizens who happen to be (or look) Latino? What about people whose ethnicity, in another time, could just as easily be Polish-American or Italian-American and who live with the expectation they can walk the streets without being asked for proof they belong here?
I get the what-part-of-illegal-don’t- you-understand question all the time. What part of civil liberties doesn’t McInnis get?
There was a rancher shot and killed in Arizona. It appears that an illegal immigrant may have killed him. People are upset. People are upset that the federal government hasn’t secured the border. People are upset about the Mexican drug cartels.
There’s reason to be upset. But the truth is people were upset about illegal immigration long before the cartels. The truth is this is a chapter in the long story of American immigration, a story that’s not always pretty.
It’s long past time for real reform. The new Democratic proposal requires illegal immigrants to pay a fine, pay back taxes and, if they learn English, have a chance to become a citizen.
Everyone knows the politics of this issue — the possible short-term gain for Republicans, the long-term demographics favoring Democrats. Even so, Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, among others, have come out against the law. Meghan McCain told the truth about the law that her father, in a tough primary, has abandoned.
And Michael Gerson, the axis-of- evil Bush speechwriter and now a conservative columnist for The Washington Post, wrote this truth:
“When millions of American citizens of Hispanic origin are told they will not be ‘solely’ targeted based on their ethnicity in Arizona, they understandably hear they will be partially targeted on the basis of their ethnicity. . . . If conservatives and Republicans cannot even understand such concerns, they will not deserve Hispanic support.”
I don’t know what support McIn nis thinks he deserves since he declined to take my questions. But what could he say? I know if it were me, I’d stick with the elk.
Mike Littwin writes Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-5428 or mlittwin@denverpost.com.
