I suspect there may be much more going on in this case than meets the eye. The conservative justices are very smart guys, all five of them. I think they were wise enough to look ahead at the damage this AZ law could do to the GOP & conservatism because of the liberal media coverage of the enforcement of these state immigration laws. The liberal media coverage of enforcement would have been a public relations disaster for the GOP and conservatives. We would have seen endless news reports about situations when “poor Jose and Christina and their two children traveled to AZ from Mexico and were just trying to do honest work to feed themselves when they were arrested, prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced to six months in jail merely for seeking work. Their children ended up in state custody...their family was torn apart...all because of those Wascally Wepublicans who passed this horrible law in Arizona.” Those reports would have been quite damaging to the GOP.
Then there would be the poor Mexicans who are pulled over for minor traffic violations, don’t have a driver’s license, and are arrested on immigration charges and held for two weeks until trial in some overheated jail in Arizona or Alabama. The potential for politically damaging news coverage was massive before this ruling. I think Roberts and the other four conservatives saw this potential damage and decided to stop this political disaster before it started. That’s a big reason why they struck down the AZ law that allowed local police to arrest people for minor immigration violations. You’ll never hear them say that publicly but I suspect that was a big part of their thinking on this case.
And lawful American citizens don’t want to be harassed by “immigration traps” in small towns where they get pulled over for going 2 MPH over the speed limit and have to sit on the side of the road for 20 minutes while local cops check their background at a glacial speed and then wander slowly back to your car. I’ve been in that situation a few times and it ain’t no fun. Although a driver’s license is sufficient in AZ to prove citizenship, do you really want local police pulling over everyone for very minor traffic offenses while they look for illegal immigrants?
The right way to defend the border is to defend it AT the border and not by harassing people hundreds of miles inside the border. We know how to seal the border. For various reasons, our federal government just hasn’t made the decision to close off the Mexican border. The way to proceed here is to elect Romney and then put pressure on him to finally close the Mexican border. Use those drones that the Obamites want to send after farmers to patrol the border, end illegal immigration, and to rescue immigrants who are running out of water in the summer or freezing in the winter (because their “coyotes” didn’t prepare them for the harsh conditions along our border). That’s the right way to solve the illegal immigration problem. I support the Conservatives on the SCOTUS on this decision. Gov. Brewer and the democrats can now both declare victory while leaving immigration enforcement largely to the federal government.
That would make them feckless and unfit.