Chip Shots: Raising Arizona: Fear Strikes Out

Chip Shots
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I'm Chip Ramsey a career broadcaster who has been a sports radio program director in Milwaukee and Nashville. I've covered everything from high school and college sports (including the SEC, Big Ten, MVC and OVC) to Major League Baseball, The NFL and the NHL. I have a few things to say, and when I want to say them, I say them here.

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Chip Shots: Raising Arizona: Fear Strikes Out

Raising Arizona: Fear Strikes Out

Add Mike Freeman to the growing list of alarmists and fear mongers ripping Arizona for their new immigration law. In his latest column for CBS Sportsline , Freeman creates a totally upsurd scenario to simply scare people:

It's 2011 and the All-Star Game is just a few days away in Arizona. Albert Pujols decides to take a stroll in downtown Phoenix. A police officer drives by and doesn't realize that Pujols is a baseball icon. To the officer, he looks potentially like an illegal alien. He is, after all, brown skinned.

Pujols is stopped by the police. "Papers please," the officer says. If Pujols somehow forgot to bring proof he's an American citizen on his walk, then potentially off to jail he'd go.

Gee, I don't know Mike, but I'm guessing Albert keeps his driver's licence in his wallet like the majority of Americans. If he's walking around without a wallet and ID, I can only assume that he might get some grief, just like you, an African-American or me, a middle aged white guy would get. And not just in Arizona, but anywhere in the US.

Of course, the odds of something like that happening are slim and none, but they get written about to get people riled up about the new Arizona law targeted at ILLEGAL aliens. That descriptive word once again is ILLEGAL.

Every foreign player that plays in the U.S. is documented. They have a work visa or a green card. How many times have we heard about some spring training SNAFU where some Dominican or Panamanian player is late for camp because they couldn't get their paperwork straight. So, it's a myth that the law targets citizens or those with work visas. If you get stopped at a state highway patrol roadblock and you don't have your license, registration or insurance card, you are going to court. I don't hear many complaints about that.

What the law does do is make sure that someone is here legally. There are 12-14 million illegal aliens in the U.S. These are people who are undocumented, who sneaked into the country and enjoy many of the benefits that you and I do without having to pay the freight for them. If you go to a ballgame and pay full price for your third row box seats and you find out the kids in the seats next to you sneaked in the ballpark and paid nothing, that's bound to tick you off. Or, if you see someone shop lifting at a store. How come it's okay to arrest shop lifters but not people who are ILLEGAL immigrants?

I have no issue with anyone who comes here for a better standard of living. My grandfather did in 1907, but he came through the front door at Ellis Island and not through a hole in a fence. The Arizona law is a desperate and, perhaps, unconstitutional attempt at trying to curb one of the biggest problems in that state. It's not designed to massively lock people up as the left is screaming (and you know who you are, Eugene Robinson), it's designed to dissuade people from streaming across the boarder in the back of trucks.

Arizona had the chones to stand up and do something about it, unlike the politicians in the federal government which do not want to tick off the Hispanic voting block. Since the Hispanic voting block tends to party shop, both the Democrats and Republicans are pandering to them to curry their favor. No laws, crack downs or any other legislation will be even be discussed until after the 2010 election so as not to anger potential voters. Harry Reid's call for legislation is a smoke screen, designed to put the Republicans in a corner. It's not a real call to action.

More from Freeman:

What's happening in Arizona isn't something from a science-fiction movie or 1930s Germany. It's real and the sports world (especially baseball) might be drastically affected because of these laws in the months and years to come. Arizona should change its state motto from "God Enriches" to "Papers please."

The new law gives police the right to stop, question and detain anyone "if reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the U.S." Basically anyone who looks or sounds Latino is targeted by the law. It's all very Fahrenheit 451.

Again, all fear mongering. In 1930's Germany, they rounded up German nationals who the government wanted to eliminate. No one in Arizona wants to get rid of Hispanics, they just want the ILLEGAL ones. Just like some states want to round up deadbeat dads. They don't want all the divorced fathers, just the ones not paying child support.

And Mike, Fahrenheit 451 is a movie about burning books, not rounding up people.

The calls for boycotting the 2011 all-star game are an over reaction to something most people choose to ignore. And believe me when I tell you that the majority of Hispanic ball players could care less about it. Many of them just work her and go back home in the off season for winter ball. Many of the Hispanic players who live here have become American Citizens or in many cases enjoy duel citizenship. They are not the issue nor should they be used as pawns by people like Mike Freeman who clearly don't understand the issue in the first place.