IN MY SHOES: What It's Like To Be Sheriff Joe
Agence France Presse profiles Maricopa County (AZ) Sheriff Joe Arpaio - who’s been dubbed Hitler and a Klansman by activists sympathetic to forged documented aliens - but who prefers to be known as the “toughest sheriff in America” because of his zero-tolerance policies towards illegal immigration:
On a recent Mexican holiday, one group batted around a Joe Arpaio pinata, an effigy filled with sweets that children attempt to split open with a stick.
The opprobrium heaped in Arpaio's direction is water off a duck's back: after 16 years in office, the veteran lawman is showing no signs of mellowing. …
“[D]on't try to intimidate me to stop enforcing the laws. It will never happen.” …
He has nothing against immigrants - his parents were Italian immigrants ('legal' he adds pointedly) - or Mexicans, he says.
For Arpaio, illegal immigration is a fairness issue. Why should some people wait years for citizenship through the proper channels while others slip across the border? …
His public support - 80 to 90 percent approval ratings in polls - make it unlikely he will lose a campaign for re-election in the fall.
“I get more press in one day than the governor gets. … If you go anywhere in the world, all you have to do is say Arizona,' and they say Sheriff Joe.'
“Do you think they know who the governor is? I'm the toughest sheriff in America.”
Editorial Note: AFP quotes one Elias Bermudez, head of an illegal alien advocacy group called Immigrants Without Borders, who claims that Arpaio has “capitalized on the fear and vulnerability of people who came into this country without documents, not in defiance of the laws of the United States, but because this country does not have a legal mechanism to seek work with documents” [emphasis, The Stiletto]. In fact, the US Department of State offers eight classes of visas for those who come to the U.S. temporarily to work. All the AFP reporter had to do was go to the State Department’s Web site – as The Stiletto did - to refute this ridiculous claim.
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