Can you tell what an illegal immigrant looks like by the way they dress?
U.S. Rep. Brian Bilbray apparently thinks you can. The California Republican was talking on air to MSNBC's Chris Matthews, defending the controversial Arizona legislation that's being described as the toughest law in the country against illegal immigration.
The law empowers local law enforcement to question people they suspect are in in the United States illegally. Critics say that's a disastrous recipe for racial profiling.
But Bilbray says that "trained professionals" can spot illegal immigrants by how they're dressed. An excerpt of the interview:
Chris Matthews: ...like what, like what? Give me a non-ethnic aspect that would tell you to pick up somebody.
Rep. Bilbray:
They will look at the kind of dress you wear, there's different type of attire, there's different type of ...right down to the shoes, right down to the clothes. But mostly by behavior it's mostly behavior, just as the law enforcement people here in Washington, DC does it based on certain criminal activity there is behavior things that professionals are trained in across the board and this group shouldn't be exempt from those observations as much as anybody else.
Here's what the watchdog organization Media Matters said about Bilbray's comments:
So either Bilbray thinks that all undocumented workers are wearing some kind of uniform or team shirt that will easily allow Arizona officers to grab them up...or he's just clumsily, wrongly, and, frankly, stupidly trying to justify what will obviously become a horrible situation for all Latino (or Latino-dressed?) residents of Arizona.
His subsequent comments on behavior are just as offensive. Because what would that behavior be, exactly? It isn't as if undocumented immigrants are engaging in behavior that makes them instantly identifiable as "illegal."
http://blogs.chron.com/immigration/archives/2010/04/post_368.html