O O Ø O O O O
Scottish Nuns
It's been a while since I took a poke at political correctness...
The recent flap over “racial profiling” at the border caught my attention the other day when, in typical pd.o style, I found myself screaming at my television. The screaming was directed at a passenger who was complaining that he had been fingerprinted on his way into the US as a result of having an entry stamp from Syria on his passport. Racial profiling, he cried!
Hogwash.
The problem is in the adjective racial. The political correctness police have hammered it into our collective consciousness that anything with the word racial must inherently be bad. (Thankfully, it is still legitimate to discriminate against the stupid and incompetent, though I fully expect these to be the next to fall. Can you imagine what hiring policies will be like when we can longer judge people based on their competence?)
Thankfully, it is still legitimate to discriminate against the stupid and incompetent
By simply labelling an incident as a “racial profiling,” the populace must immediately conclude that someone is in the wrong. One of our esteemed leaders, the Right Honourable Denis Coderre, did exactly this yesterday, when referring to the recent US Border Flap. See if you can spot the value judgement in this sentence:
“I believe that’s it’s racial profiling and we have to do something about it.”
Before I really get rolling, let me make a few disclaimers, so I have something to hide behind when the broken bottles start flying at my virtual head:
- Using race as the only predictor of criminal behaviour, terrorist or otherwise, is stupid.
- Using profiling in lieu of evidence for the purposes of investigation is stupid.
- Inferring causality or correlation from raw statistics is stupid.
- Ignoring data, when searching for a needle in a haystack, is the dumbest of them all.
Now, back to the recent border flap, and the Right Honourable Denis Coderre.
The it that Mr. Coderre was labelling as “racial profiling” in the quote above was a decision by US officials to start requiring valid passports from travellers living in Canada who are actually citizens of the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand or Singapore. Furthermore, foreign nationals from almost 50 other Commonwealth countries would need both a passport and a visa to enter the US.
The Right Honourable Denis Coderre doesn’t like this decision. “All the screening, all the testing, all the criteria that you have to go through to become a permanent (Canadian) resident,” he says, “I think that's enough.”
The Right Honourable Denis Coderre is an idiot.
One of the tenets of the security industry is this little truism: trust is not transitive. I trust Evan. Evan Trusts Bob. Bob trusts Alice. Alice trusts her cousin, Lou. I’ve never even heard of Lou. Why the hell should I lend him my car? Just because some Canadian bureaucrat thinks someone deserves to live here does not mean the United States should let them on in. Furthermore, we are talking about landed immigrants here, not Canadian citizens. Canada is in no position to tell the US whether a particular foreigner should have a visa to enter their country.
Terrorism is a tough crime to fight. You can't fight terrorism after the fact. You have to fight it before it happens. This is terribly inconvenient all-round, yes. Unfortunately, the alternative is do do nothing. Hunting for would-be terrorists is almost exactly like hunting for a needle in a highly irritable, cranky haystack. Profiling, like it or not, is a necessary tool in this hunt.
That's profiling. Note the omission of the racial adjective.
Profiling is pattern recognition. It involves using all the data at your disposal to arrive at an important conclusion: is there something strange about the nervous-looking person parked in front of the bank with the stocking on his head?
Strip-searching 80-year old Scottish nuns is probably not going to turn up many links to Al Qaeda.
Border guards are hunting for individuals with links to terrorism. Most of us are not terrorists. Hence, most searches and background checks are going to turn up nothing. Since entirely too many of us absolutely need to be on whatever side of the 49th we’re currently not on, it’s simply not feasible for each and every one of us to be dragged into the dark little room and interviewed. Asking them to utterly ignore race-based data is ridiculous, as strip-searching 80-year old Scottish nuns is probably not going to turn up many links to Al Qaeda.
Oh sure, I’ll admit that basing these decisions on noting more than country of birth is stupid. But asking border guards to ignore this piece of information is even stupider. Stupider even, than strip-searching Scottish nuns.
Yeah, that’s pretty stupid.
Tuesday, November 5, 2002
PD DLXXII
Reader Feedback
From: Chris
Sent: Tuesday, November 5,
2002.
Actually, this isn't correct kjell.
“Furthermore, we are talking about landed immigrants here, not Canadian citizens.”
Actually, Canadian citizens are being fingerprinted and photographed too. This doesn't necessarily negate your argument, but it does throw a different tint on things. Strikes a little closer to home.
I was just listening to a radio interview where some girl and her hubby were going to go to the US. She happened to be born in Iran but was a Canadian citizen and had basically lived all of her life here (she returned once to visit her Grandma 15 years ago). Anyway, she was at the pre-clearance area in the Vancouver airport when the she was told that she needed to register (which means she gets fingerprinted and photoed). Not being keen on having an active record with a foreign government she conferred with her hubby and they decided to cancel the trip. They said "Errr, no thanks. We don't want to visit your country that bad. We value our privacy. Thanks anyway."
The rest of the interview was her talking about how she was detained in the airport and ordered to register anyway. Apparently the customs guards thought it was US territory. She wasn't allowed a phone call (as she wasn't being arrested) and she wasn't allowed to talk to Canadian officials. Eventually she ended up signing something saying that she refused to register (and now is on file with Uncle Sam) but she never did consent to fingerprinting. Hmmm, I suppose she'll never be allowed into the US ever again.
Anyway, my point is, is that you are mistaken. This rule applies to Canadian citizens as well as landed immigrants.
-Chris
And Kjell's subsequent reply
Chris:
Actually, Canadian citizens are being fingerprinted and photographed too. This doesn't necissarily negate your argument, but it does throw a different tint on things. Strikes a little closer to home.
No. Separate issue, and not the issue that I was quoting the honourable Denis Idiot about.
I stayed away from the fingerprinting issue for two reasons. 1) The US is (slowly) backing off from it, and 2) Border Guards are idiots.
They're also fingerprinting people who have a stamp from any of the big seven countries in their passport. I'm not talking about that either, because it seems pretty freaking obvious. (Now realistically, they should not be fingerprinting. They should do what the Israelis do, and put you in the little room for 4-12 hours, grilling you. Fingerprinting is actually the least intrusive thing they could do. I suppose if they wanted to be clever, they could scrape a DNA sample out of the seat after you leave).
There has been no talk about requiring visas (or even passports) from Canadians at all.
In other words, Denis Idiot got so happy about throwing around the “Racial profiling” card (does place of birth really constitute a race anyway?) He decided to continue to poke his nose where it doesn't belong; i.e. Foreign Policy. I notice our Foreign Policy minister (and Prime Minister, for that matter) backed away from this one rather quickly.
As to border guards being idiots, well, I'll leave you to the archives on that one. The point remains—They should not be ignoring data, such as your place of birth, or your supposed “color” when deciding who gets to go to the little room. That's dumber than using only country of birth.
-kj