Posted on 04/01/2012 1:24:34 PM PDT by moonshinner_09
U.S. Supreme Court should overturn Arizona's anti-illegal-immigration law THE U.S. Supreme Court should strike down four troubling provisions of Arizona's anti-illegal-immigration law. They conflict with federal laws and ought not become models for states grappling with illegal immigration.
The federal government has exclusive authority over immigration enforcement. One can debate the efficacy of federal efforts but Arizona's 2010 immigration law was a wrongheaded attempt to supersede federal law.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals blocked key provisions of the law, including requiring law enforcement to question people about their immigration status, ask for documentation and detain those without it. Arguments that this could lead to racial profiling are persuasive. The immigration status of people arrested would also have to be determined before they could be released
(Excerpt) Read more at seattletimes.nwsource.com ...
Seattle must be feeling the heat of being overrun with illegal aliens leaving Arizona. Deal with it hippies!!! I guess with the “boycott” thing not working out, the SCOTUS is all you have left!
What’s worse is that the federal law is more “draconian” than AZ’s law . . . but the feds don’t enforce those laws.
I worked in downtown Seattle when they had that huge illegal alien march and it was very impressive. The cops should have had buses waiting at the end with enough gas and food to make it to mexico.
But this article, that event, etc., is why I so enjoy my new home in central Kentucky. I feel almost as if I wasted those 45 years in Seattle.
The Seattle Times is a dried out, tired liberal rag, and the editorial board has never met a socialist cause it didn’t like.
Fortunately, they are going broke so fast that the bleats it publishes seem more like the cries of the Wicked Witch of the West than editorials. “I’m melting...melting...”
Good riddance.
west coast state drug laws also conflict with federal laws...
the dept of just-us should immediately file suits against the governors of those states with ‘medical marijuana’ provisions and arrest all state, county and local law enforcement that participated in undermining federal authority
oh, sorry... does this not jive with the emotional narrative of the author? my bad
Who cares what the Skittles Times has to say.
I disagree, but it is clear the federal lower courts consider any state law to be prima facie unconstitutional. In doing so, they are destroying federalism without a constitutional convention.
The only candidate who recognizes this dual threat is Newt.
No they shouldn’t.
Funny how they included the word “illegal” in the banner.All this time I thought that were nothing more than “undocumented”.
Wouldn't that be an interesting campaign promise?
If we can't impeach the Frauds, maybe we threaten to lock the lying slime balls up.
The fundamental problem is that the Federal government is lawless. If only the Federal government can enforce immigration laws and the Federal government chooses not only to ignore those laws, but actually facilitate lawlessness, that forces the states to contemplate just what to do when the national government has become the enemy.
Christy is trying to dress up his resume for the VP slot that Romney will hand him. Nothing more. We are in real trouble if Romney takes the nomination prior to the Convention. The Convention is our only hope now! Santorum just stunk the nomination process up with his insistence that he is the only Conservative. He learned a great deal from Mr. Newt, but also left a great deal on the table that he did not learn. I cannot even watch him anymore. Can you imagine what 4 years of Santorum would be like? Can you imagine what 4 years of Romney would be like?
I can certainly imagine what 4 years of Mr. Newt would be like...major change and major reform and a massive heart attack for the establishment. Can't you just see those bozos in Washington doing the Washington two-step to keep Mr. Newt out? It would be sweet just watching them react to Mr. Newt getting the nod from WE THE PEOPLE and not from them. I can't wait! It must happen!
8:}
Predictably, groups that favor relaxed enforcement of immigration laws, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, insist the law is unconstitutional. The arguments we’ve heard against it either misrepresent its text or are otherwise inaccurate. Let’s look at the major criticisms individually:
It is unfair to demand that aliens carry their documents with them.
It is true that the Arizona law makes it a misdemeanor for an alien to fail to carry certain documents. “Now, suddenly, if you don’t have your papers ... you’re going to be harassed,” the president said, “That’s not the right way to go.” But since 1940, it has been a federal crime for aliens to fail to keep such registration documents with them. The Arizona law simply adds a state penalty to what was already a federal crime. Moreover, as anyone who has traveled abroad knows, other nations have similar documentation requirements.
“Reasonable suspicion” is a meaningless term that will permit police misconduct.
Over the past four decades, federal courts have issued hundreds of opinions defining those two words. The Arizona law didn’t invent the concept: Precedents list the factors that can contribute to reasonable suspicion; when several are combined, the “totality of circumstances” that results may create reasonable suspicion that a crime has been committed.
For example, the Arizona law is most likely to come into play after a traffic stop. A police officer pulls a minivan over for speeding. A dozen passengers are crammed in. None has identification. The highway is a known alien-smuggling corridor. The driver is acting evasively. Those factors combine to create reasonable suspicion that the occupants are not in the country legally.
The law will allow police to engage in racial profiling.
Actually, Section 2 provides that a law enforcement official “may not solely consider race, color or national origin” in making any stops or determining immigration status. In addition, all normal Fourth Amendment protections against profiling will continue to apply. In fact, the Arizona law actually reduces the likelihood of race-based harassment by compelling police officers to contact the federal government as soon as is practicable when they suspect a person is an illegal alien, as opposed to letting them make arrests on their own assessment.
It is unfair to demand that people carry a driver’s license.
Arizona’s law does not require anyone, alien or otherwise, to carry a driver’s license. Rather, it gives any alien with a license a free pass if his immigration status is in doubt. Because Arizona allows only lawful residents to obtain licenses, an officer must presume that someone who produces one is legally in the country.
State governments aren’t allowed to get involved in immigration, which is a federal matter.
While it is true that Washington holds primary authority in immigration, the Supreme Court since 1976 has recognized that states may enact laws to discourage illegal immigration without being pre-empted by federal law. As long as Congress hasn’t expressly forbidden the state law in question, the statute doesn’t conflict with federal law and Congress has not displaced all state laws from the field, it is permitted. That’s why Arizona’s 2007 law making it illegal to knowingly employ unauthorized aliens was sustained by the United States Supreme Court on May 26, 2011.
Conclusion
In sum, the Arizona law hardly creates a police state. It takes a measured, reasonable step to give Arizona police officers another tool when they come into contact with illegal aliens during their normal law enforcement duties. And it’s very necessary: Arizona is the ground zero of illegal immigration. Phoenix is the hub of human smuggling and the kidnapping capital of America, with more than 240 incidents reported in 2008. It’s no surprise that Arizona’s police associations favored the bill, along with 70 percent of Arizonans.
President Obama and the Beltway crowd feel these problems can be taken care of with “comprehensive immigration reform” — meaning amnesty and a few other new laws. But we already have plenty of federal immigration laws on the books, and the typical illegal alien is guilty of breaking many of them. What we need is for the executive branch to enforce the laws that we already have.
Unfortunately, the Obama administration has scaled back work-site enforcement and otherwise shown it does not consider immigration laws to be a high priority. Is it any wonder the Arizona Legislature, at the front line of the immigration issue, sees things differently?
The same Seattle Times whose editorial board celebrated when Cheney underwent surgery? At least they were not as worse as the Seattle PI who folded but available online. They were in your face liberals..
This Republic needs to decide if we are, in fact, a Nation of Laws or of Anarchy. Then act accordingly.
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