In trying to get at the core issue involved in the growing firestorm over
The List, I got singed.
(Click here to read my other blog.)Runnerjeff wrote: “Brent Hunsaker's analogy with a hypothetical list of smokers is flawed. Smokers are not breaking the law; illegal immigrants are.”
Legalamerican wrote: “I so agree with runnerjeff. Smokers are not breaking the law Brent Hunsaker. Apples and oranges. I hope that one day all criminals are on a list.”
Thanks for the comments, however I cannot accept your assertion that my analogy is flawed because your premise is flawed.
You assume that all the people – adults and children – on the list are “illegal”.
Bad assumption. In fact, from our interviews we have discovered some people on the list are documented immigrants while a few are actually American citizens.
Still, you seem to argue that the list is somehow the moral equivalent of a sex offender registry because, after all, they are all criminals, aren’t they?
Now
that’s apples and oranges.
Only those convicted in a court of law populate the sex offender registry. Before their convictions, they were innocent. Why can't the people on the list be afforded the same presumption? To my knowledge they've only been "listed", not convicted.
Yet you automatically condemn them all based only on the word of some “citizen” who produces the list with stolen information and then hides in the shadows. By what constitutional authority does he (or she) get to be judge, jury and executioner?
Okay, back to the point of my original blog:
Strip away the distorting heat of the illegal immigration debate, and the list is simply about the violation of trust.
People have to trust their government will protect information given in confidence.
Governor Herbert’s spokeswoman, Angie Welling, said it best: “When people do business with the state, they deserve to know that their private information is indeed private."
Thanks Angie, my point exactly.
