I've been thinking about the lawsuit that President Obama's Justice Department filed against the State of Arizona in seeking to rule Arizona's latest controversial immigration law unconstitutional. After all the hullabaloo, all the kvetching, all the cries of fascism and police state from the left and those who see illegal immigration as a new human right--the lawsuit is not a civil rights case. It is a straight down the line case of whether or not the Federal government's legislative primacy on immigration matters supersedes the action that Arizona has taken.
As I am not a constitutional scholar or a federal judge, I do not have an informed opinion on the suit's merits. I cannot however, dismiss it summarily. It seems to me that Holder and Justice have a reasonable case, EVEN if Arizona is really just enforcing federal law.
That said--the fact that Justice went with the jurisdictional argument and not the civil rights argument shows what a bag of wind the whole civil rights screed was. There was an almost reflexive institutional bias against the State of Arizona, one that presupposed that their law was put together by a bunch of desert rubes with no sense of how to craft law in the age of civil rights. There never was a civil rights case here--there was just bloviating by a bunch of people who would gut whatever exists of current immigration law.
Saturday, July 10, 2010
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Just because the Feds have primary jurisdiction over immigration doesn't mean the States are precluded from exercising some authority, especially when the Federal Government is clearly shirking its responsibilities and especially when illegal immigration costs the individual States so much. And furthermore, sanctuary cites have blatantly passed laws inconsistent with Federal immigration law. Why have they not been sued?
I for one welcome this lawsuit. It'll be worth 2 nationally and 10 points in Arizona. Just ask Arizona Democrats.
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