It's crazy the way those people think. Here's a good article about profiling:
It's time to profile profiling
11/27/01
The concept of profiling didn't originate here in New Jersey, but thanks to our public officials, many people think it did. The Statehouse crowd, with their endless speeches and hearings, made "profiling" a household word with the word "racial" attached in front of it.
Trenton makes, the world takes. Perhaps it's time to take this one back.
In the post-9/11 world, the term "racial profiling" has gone from being a description of a specific police practice to becoming a mantra invoked to avoid discussion of crucial issues of national security.
The original debate over profiling was an important one. Should the rights of American citizens under the U.S. Constitution be in any way affected by the question of race? This is a key constitutional issue, and one the courts have not yet settled.
But the term "racial profiling" is now being used in a whole new area, one that the courts have long since cleared up. Many journalists and public officials now use the term as shorthand for an argument that the Bill of Rights applies not just to everyone who is a citizen of the United States but just about everyone on the planet.
When the United States announced stricter visa procedures for people visiting the United States from countries linked to terrorism, critics accused Attorney General John Ashcroft of racial profiling. And when the FBI recently asked police chiefs around the country to question some 5,000 foreign citizens about possible links to terror activities, some police chiefs declined on the grounds that this would be racial profiling.
It wouldn't, for a number of reasons. An obvious one is that the subjects of the probe come from 26 separate countries and are not all of the same race. They are not even of the same ethnicity or even necessarily of the same religion. All they have in common is that they come from countries suspected of harboring terrorists.
That's an important distinction. News reports yesterday told of documents found in Osama bin Laden's terrorist training camps indicating that men from at least 21 countries were instructed on how to blow up "buildings, bridges, embassies, schools, amusement parks" and other targets in the West. Perhaps some of the 5,000 are graduates of these camps. Perhaps not.
But checking up on them is not racial profiling. It's profiling, period. And profiling is what every immigration officer of every country on Earth practices every day. Immigration officers profile for every possible reason -- economic status, reason for visit, employment status and most important, country of origin. The United States, for example, profiles in favor of Japanese and against Poles. The Japanese can enter without a visa as can visitors from most European countries. Japanese tourists can enter easily because it is assumed they will spend lots of money and then go home. People from Poland, meanwhile, are discouraged because they are poorer and therefore more likely to overstay their visas and get jobs here.
Is this racial profiling? Arguably. But let some unfortunate citizen of Poland take the United States to court for denying him his right of equal protection under the 14th Amendment. The court will tell him that he has no rights under the 14th Amendment. The rights enumerated in the U.S. Constitution apply only to American citizens. This was made clear by the Supreme Court in a 1976 case titled Mathews vs. Diaz. "In the exercise of its broad power over naturalization and immigration, Congress regularly makes rules that would be unacceptable if applied to citizens," said the majority opinion.
It is perhaps noble that so many Americans want to extend those rights to the entire world. But it is also naive. When it comes to questioning those 5,000 gentlemen from foreign countries, the main objection, if I may presume to deduce it, is that their patriotism should not be questioned. But their patriotism is not being questioned. They are no doubt patriotic, but to their own nations, not ours. They are here on non-immigrant visas, which means their stated intention is to return home soon.
Imagine the situation were reversed. Imagine you were working in Libya on a non-immigrant visa during the Reagan administration. A friend of mine was doing just that. When Ron blew up Moammar's house, my friend was kicked out of Libya. He was glad to go and had no sense that his rights had been violated.
Similarly, we are not violating the rights of these men by having our police keep tabs on them. For all we know, the U.S. Air Force may be dropping smart bombs on their houses in time for the evening news. Will they be angry? They will have every right to be. And we have every right to know just where they are and what they're up to in case they decide to act upon that anger.
And then when all this is settled we can continue our domestic debate on racial profiling in peace.
Paul Mulshine is a Star-Ledger columnist.
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