On the new Arizona legislation on migrants...

I don't live in Arizona, so I can only observe Arizona's new legislation on weeding out illegal aliens from afar. Almost all responses, particularly those in the liberal New York Times, are negative, accusing the new Arizona law as oppressive, racial profiling in disguise.

I must say, I agree with those negative views...to a certain extent. In principle, the law is all legal. Afterall, who can argue with the fact that these are illegal aliens who sneak into the country illegally, thereby breaking the law in the first place? To counter that, most of these illegal migrants would tell the story of poor economy or violence or oppression (political or otherwise) or some such, in their native countries that propel them into smuggling themselves to a new country. On a human scale, there's no argument about that. But then, there are a few billion people out there in the world who live poorly and would love to get a second chance in America. Do they deserve a chance to come to the United States illegally, and stay too? I don't think any rational person can say yes to that. To that end, there really is no question about the legality of this new Arizona law.

On the basis of the new law, most opponents point to the very real possibility of racial profiling because it's likely to target the Hispanic communities in Arizona. While politicians and law enforcement would deny that, nobody would naively believe that claim. Sure, racial profiling is discrimination. But if the "illegals" that you want to weed out come from one particular demographic group, do you target that group, in order to be effective? You bet. Honestly, this whole concept of racial profiling is so politically correct. Everyone wants to believe that it doesn't exist, in the name of political correctness; yet even my 5-year-old knows it's there. Can't we just drop that pretense and hypocrisy?

Don't get me wrong. I don't like racial profiling any more than anyone else, particularly who might get targeted. Afterall, I'm in a minority group in US as well. It's going to be there, for as long as we live. It's just part of human nature.

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The new law in Arizona reminds me of the Vietnamese boat people in Hong Kong some 30 years ago. The crisis in Vietnam and the ensuing war forced alot of civilians to flee the country by boat. Hong Kong was still under the British colonial rule, and the Brits made the decision thousands of miles away from Hong Kong, that Hong Kong should open its door to all Vietnamese boat people, for humanity reasons, with no limit to the amount of people it can take.

Surely, it's easy for Britain to take the high moral ground, while leaving the burden to Hong Kong, because it was the people in Hong Kong who had to live with these Vietnamese, not the Brits who lived in their comfortable homes in the British Isles. And, the Hong Kong government was the one paying the tab too, and not Brits.

You might not know it, but these Vietnamese were called refugees initially. As time progresses, and the number of Vietnamese increased, with no end in sight, it's become increasingly evident that Hong Kong simply could not absorb the Vietnamese realistically. While most of the Vietnamese were peaceful, there were invariably thugs and gangsters in the mix, bringing with them guns and violence to Hong Kong, which is exactly how it's like in Arizona now.

In order to control the violence, all Vietnamese were put into gated camps to disallow them from sneaking out. Nobody liked that; surely not the Vietnamese, and not the Hong Kong people, but even more so by the Brits who claimed that encampment measure to be inhumane. Well, what did the Brits do? And what had they done to help Hong Kong anyways? Zippo.

At one point, Hong Kong government has offered residency in Hong Kong to the Vietnamese in the camps, thereby allowing them to work and live in more normal life in Hong Kong. Not surprisingly, very few of them took up the offer, because all they wanted was a ticket, as refugees, to other Western countries like Canada, US, UK, Europe, and Australia. The Viets didn't give much of a damn about Hong Kong since it's just a halfway house to them. They complained, they rioted in the camps, but there had never been any expressed gratitude for pulling them out of the dinghy when they ran out of food and water, and no other countries would accept them. There came a time, when all these Western countries ran out of their own patience and "quotas" of how many Vietnamese they could take, and closed the door of any more Vietnamese in refugee status.

In short, Hong Kong was stuck with these Vietnamese, and they were stuck in Hong Kong. Hong Kong couldn't reasonably send them back to Vietnam when it's still at war with its own fractions. No other countries would take them. And yet, they still would not want residency in Hong Kong.

During the height of the Vietnamese boat people crisis, Hong Kong government adopted a measure which was pretty much the same as Arizona. All Hong Kong residents were (and still are) required to bring an official ID with them. (In Hong Kong, everyone has to have a Hong Kong ID card for identification.) Supposedly, police can stop anyone on the street and demand the ID for verification purpose. There was no local opposition to that at all because everyone knew that that's the only way. And no one complained about the racial profiling. You might think that all Asians look the same. But to anyone with an Asian eye, a Vietnamese looks very different from someone from Hong Kong, who looks very different from someone in Japan or Korea, and so on. So, in reality, even the RHKPF did not say it out loud, everyone knew that's how it would be done, that policemen on beat would mostly question the ID from Vietnamese-looking non-residents.

Even as a very Hong Kong looking resident, born and raised as such, I was stopped a few times to show my ID as well. I'm not sure why people find that oppressive, because I don't have a problem with that at all.

Such was my own experience with a law exactly like the new law passed in Arizona. To those who oppose it, I'd say, if you have nothing to hide, there really is nothing much to that. But to those who have something to hide, you can't and shouldn't really complain that people are trying to find out what law(s) you have broken, however benign it might be.

But...implicit to all these is that, the police force in Hong Kong is one of the cleanest and least corrupt in the world (after the establishment of ICAC in which the British did a remarkable job in weeding out corruption). Without knowing much about the police force in Arizona, I can't say for sure how serious a threat it might be, for police to hassle civilians, legal and illegal alike. A law is only as good as the enforcement that comes with it. If Arizona cannot sort this out, the law could turn into a legal license for harassment by police. And, that, would be a true shame.