Apologies To China
IBD Editorials
Posted 05/18/2010 06:58 PM ET
Diplomacy: The administration's apology tour continues with a mea culpa to the world's worst human-rights violator for Arizona's enforcement of U.S. immigration law. You'd think Tiananmen Square was in Phoenix.
In talks last week with China on the subject of human rights, the U.S. delegation volunteered how sorry we were for Arizona's decision to protect its citizens and its border against illegal immigration — the operative word being "illegal."
You would assume the Chinese broached the subject to blunt any criticism of their policies and record. But our delegates beat them to it by groveling on their own initiative in front of the architects of the slaughter of millions, a one-child policy with forced abortions and the denial of freedom for Tibet.
"We brought it up early and often," Assistant Secretary for Democracy and Human Rights and Labor Michael Posner boasted afterward. "It was mentioned in the first session and as a troubling trend in our society and an indication that we have to deal with issues of discrimination or potential discrimination."
Did Posner tell the Chinese it is federal law that requires legal aliens to have proof of legal residency with them at all times? And did he tell them Arizona requires identification only in the context of a lawful contact regarding a violation of another law and only then if there's a well-defined probable cause to suspect the individual might be here illegally?
We'd be happy to compare America's human rights record with China's any day of the week. Ours is the only country in the world people are trying to break into. Certainly the people of Tibet wish they had a border with the U.S. and not with the thugs in Beijing.
Did Posner bring up how China arrests and deports back to Pyongyang any North Korean refugee who manages to escape Kim Jong Il's workers paradise, where a certain and agonizing death in one of North Korea's gulags awaits?
Perhaps they discussed the detention and quarantine of 70 Mexican nationals, including an official at Mexico's consulate, in Guangzhou a year ago, after a Mexican man infected with the H1N1 virus arrived over a holiday weekend.
No other cases of infection were found, and only Mexican nationals were quarantined. Mexico's ambassador to China tried to visit 10 of the Mexicans but was denied access.
China also decided to ban all Aeromexico flights coming into China and advised the Mexican government to get over it. "We hope Mexico could focus on the bigger picture of fighting against the epidemic," said a foreign ministry spokesman.
Imagine if Arizona had quarantined those Mexican nationals. Would the administration have been silent? Would Los Angeles City Councilman Ed Reyes, who has organized a boycott of Arizona, have remained mum? Why hasn't he demanded California cut economic ties with Beijing?
Arizona is not only enforcing federal immigration law. But, as Kerry Picket of the Washington Times points out, it's also following Section 834b of the California Penal Code, which requires "every law enforcement agency" to "fully cooperate with the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service regarding any person who is arrested if he or she is suspected of being present in the United States in violation of federal immigration laws."
If Arizona's law is racist, so is California's. Yet the administration is silent about the latter, perhaps because it's not being enforced, particularly in the sanctuary cities of San Francisco and Los Angeles. We doubt that Councilman Reyes will apologize to China for his state's "racist" law.
Nor do we expect this administration to stop apologizing and bowing to the world's thugs.
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