Posted on 05/20/2010 8:51:52 AM PDT by Mr. Mojo
(CNSNews.com) - President Barack Obama said his administration is taking a “very close look” at Arizona’s new anti-illegal immigration law, examining it for any “implications, especially for civil rights.”
“I want everyone, American and Mexican, to know my administration is taking a very close look at the Arizona law,” said President Obama during a press conference on Wednesday with Mexican President Felipe Calderon.
“We're examining any implications, especially for civil rights,” said Obama. “Because in the United States of America, no law-abiding person – be they an American citizen, a legal immigrant, or a visitor or tourist from Mexico – should ever be subject to suspicion simply because of what they look like.”
Several top administration officials, who have criticized the law on television and before Congress, admitted they have not either read the law or studied it in detail.
For example, on May 17, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) asked Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, former governor of Arizona, about the law during a hearing about the Gulf Coast oil spill, saying, “Have you had a chance to review the new law that was passed by the state of Arizona?”
“I have not reviewed it in detail, I certainly know of it, senator,” said Napolitano.
Napolitano also said, “That’s not the kind of law I would have signed.”
On May 13, Attorney General Eric Holder said he had not “read” the law but went on to criticize it. He told the House Judiciary Committee that he had "expressed concerns" about the Arizona law, "on the basis of what I've heard about the law" from newspaper and TV reports.
Holder has also questioned the constitutionality of the law and has said the federal government may challenge it in court.
"I've just expressed concerns on the basis of what I've heard about the law,” Holder told the House Judiciary Committee. “But I'm not in a position to say at this point, not having read the law, not having had the chance to interact with people [who] are doing the review, exactly what my position is.” Phillip J. Crowley, assistant secretary for public affairs in the State Department, also admitted that he has not read the law.
“Have I read the law? No,” he said on May 18.
“You’re talking about the context of this law and you haven’t read it?” asked the Fox News reporter.
“I’m simply responding to a challenge that says that we at the Department of State were apologizing for America,” said Crowley. “We were actually standing up to America by saying this is how we function in a civil society. This is how we function under the rule of law.”
Crowley was defending Michael Posner, the assistant secretary of the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor at the State Department, for telling the Chinese Delegation during a meeting about human rights that the Arizona immigration law is an example of a “troubling trend in our society” and an indication of “discrimination or potential discrimination” in America.
Can Eric Holder read this?
“California Penal Code:
834b. (a) Every law enforcement agency in California shall fully cooperate with the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service regarding any person who is arrested if he or she is suspected of being present in the United States in violation of federal immigration laws.
(b) With respect to any such person who is arrested, and suspected of being present in the United States in violation of federal immigration laws, every law enforcement agency shall do the following:
(1) Attempt to verify the legal status of such person as a citizen of the United States, an alien lawfully admitted as a permanentresident, an alien lawfully admitted for a temporary period of time or as an alien who is present in the United States in violation of immigration laws. The verification process may include, but shall not be limited to, questioning the person regarding his or her date and place of birth, and entry into the United States, and demanding documentation to indicate his or her legal status.
(2) Notify the person of his or her apparent status as an alien who is present in the United States in violation of federal immigration laws and inform him or her that, apart from any criminal justice proceedings, he or she must either obtain legal status or leave the United States.
(3) Notify the Attorney General of California and the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service of the apparent illegal status and provide any additional information that may be requested by any other public entity. (c) Any legislative, administrative, or other action by a city, county, or other legally authorized local governmental entity with jurisdictional boundaries, or by a law enforcement agency, to prevent or limit the cooperation required by subdivision (a) is expressly prohibited.”
What they’re mad about is not the law, per se,
but the intention to enforce it.
I’m not sure they can rule that an “intention to enforce” is a problem, but I’m sure they’ll try,
because, in their world, the “articulated knowledge” of the “intelligentsia” trumps written law.
The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that it’s not the law itself that he finds offensive—it’s that AZ wants to actually ENFORCE it. Several states and the US has similar laws on the books, but they’ve never been enforced. At least not recently.
Does this mean that someone in the White House has actually read the law?
Hah, GMTA! You posted your conclusion just a few seconds before I posted mine! I agree, I think that’s it: the enforcement of the law.
Does that include reviewing the jail cells of the thousands of illegal aliens in the US?
Or visiting the 50+ illegals on Death Row?
A-hole.
WHAT A HYPOCRITE. The same man that thinks the US Constitution is toilet paper, NOW IS WORRIED ABOUT A LAW BEING CONSTITUTIONAL. The Constitution is not a suicide pact.
You cannot pick and choose the laws you will follow.
Maybe we are.
You nailed it. The problem isn’t the law, but that Arizona plans on paying attention to it! Immigration laws are meant to be touted every 6 years, then ignored.
I really hope they try somehow to strike it down. With %70 of the nation for it, it would be politically disastrous.
The logistical hoops they must jump though to arrive at the intended conclusion will cause their heads to explode.
What’s interesting is how AZ is standing its ground in the face of the usual media-PC tactics - intimidation, threats, the usual red-button words like “racist” and “discriminatory”, etc. - and the whiners are completely befuddled.
They’re following the playbook that worked so well in Europe, Canada, and the big universities, but suddenly they’re confronted with an opponent that refuses to be bullied. Even boycotts aren’t working! They’re stumped.
Stay tuned, this is fascinating.
-PJ
Just trying to fire up their base for November.
I’m an engineer, but I was taught to read before college.
“I think that’s it: the enforcement of the law.”
Spot on.
Eric Holder will call it the “Anticipatory Unlawful Enforcement Doctrine”.
“... suddenly they’re confronted with an opponent that refuses to be bullied.”
#####
Coming soon to such concepts as:
White racism.
Political correctness.
Non-judgmentalism.
Government “programs” that are nothing more than coerced theft from the productive.
And in the interview with Calderone, after he decried the Arizona law as racist,
he was asked what they’d do with someone who snuck into Mexico from Guatemala,
“is someone would do they, we’d send back them.”
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