Florida immigration bill would exempt white immigrants

I almost could not believe my eyes when I read this at Salon:

Florida Republican state legislator William Snyder has proposed a great new immigration law for his state, modeled on that one in Arizona. But this one — which GOP gubernatorial candidate Rick Scott supports, of course — has a special twist: White people are exempt!

The more articulate/acceptable-to-the-mainstream supporters of the Arizona law usually point out that the law forbids police from racial profiling. The proposed Florida bill doesn’t really bother pretending.

That’s right. On page three of the bill (see it here) very similar to Arizona’s anti-immigration bill, an amendment states that if an officer has suspicions over a person’s immigration status, that person will be “presumed to be from the United States” if they provide a “Canadian passport” or from any other “visa waiver country.” The Miami New Times points out that “other than four Asian nations, all 32 other countries are in Western Europe, from France to Germany to Luxembourg.”

While it’s difficult to muster up the strength to write about this unbelievable bill without an incoherent bevy of potty-mouth words, one thing that we can get out of this is exactly how revealing it is of the blatant racism that’s behind these anti-immigration efforts. It’s also fitting how Snyder used to be a police officer himself in Miami (is someone trying to make old cop fantasies come true?). Either way, I hope this gets the attention and opposition it needs to kill this bill — and immediately.