“Show Me Your Papers”: The Constitution Protects U.S. Citizens From Laws Like Arizona’s
Arizona’s frustration with our nation’s dysfunctional immigration system is understandable. But its restrictive “show me your papers” immigration law is unconstitutional and un-American.
The U.S. Constitution protects and safeguards our most fundamental rights—the rights that are the bedrock of our freedom and democracy. Each of us has the right to be treated equally and fairly, and to not be discriminated against on the basis of the color of our skin or the accent with which we may speak.
Arizona’s law violates these precious Constitutional protections. Already, in Arizona and other states with “show me your papers” laws, U.S. citizens who don’t happen to carry proof of their birth in the United States in their back pockets are being treated with suspicion and are facing arrest and detention until they can convince law enforcement authorities of their citizenship. This racial profiling and assault on personal freedom and security is both unconstitutional and un-American.
The U.S. Constitution was also written to safeguard and protect our fundamental character as a nation of united states. In areas where it is important for states to determine their own policies, the Constitution protects states’ rights. But in areas where it is important that our nation speak with one voice, the Constitution prohibits states from taking matters into their own hands.
Immigration is one of those areas involving our country’s relations with foreign countries and nationals where our nation needs to speak with one voice. Just as states cannot sign their own treaties with, or declare war on, other countries, so too states cannot enact their own immigration laws. If they could, the resulting patchwork of 50 different state laws would lead to confusion, conflict, and chaos.
Other nations would retaliate and treat U.S. citizens unfairly as they travel, work and study abroad. Citizens and immigrants alike would flee from one state to another, seeking freedom from discriminatory laws. Businesses would leave states where their workers and visiting foreign managers were subject to intrusive police demands for “papers.”
The United States could not survive as two nations—one slave, one free. Neither can the United States accommodate two sets of immigration laws—one that requires the Department of Homeland Security to enforce the laws that Congress enacts, and the other that requires all of us, citizens and immigrants alike, to “show me your papers.”
By: Jeanne Butterfield, Special Counsel, Raben Group, Published in U. S. News and World Report, April 23, 2012
“Sustaining Their Prejudices”: The Arizona Immigration Law Is A Constitutional Nightmare
You thought the healthcare case created a storm. Well you haven’t seen anything yet. Next week the Supreme Court hears oral arguments on the constitutionality of SB 1070, the Arizona immigration law. Any case that involves race creates political fireworks.
The Arizona law is a constitutional nightmare.
One part of the law allows the police to hold people arrested indefinitely until their immigration status is verified. What it means is that American citizens who look like illegal immigrants because they have brown skin and who are suspected of a crime can be held indefinitely without trial. This part of the law violates the due process clause in the Fifth Amendment and the equal protection clause in the 14th Amendment. SB 1070 flushes fundamental American civil liberties down the toilet.
The Arizona law states that “the intent of the law is attrition through enforcement to deter the unlawful entry and presence of illegal aliens.” Well, you have a constitutional problem right there. Article I, Section 8 the Constitution clearly gives Congress, not the states the power “to establish a uniform Rule of Naturalization.”
The state says it had to act since the feds haven’t acted. There are several problems with this argument.
The reason that the founders gave Congress the power to regulate immigration is that there would be chaos if each of the 50 states did the same thing and created their own immigration policies.
For another thing, the logic of the Arizona argument is the same thing as saying that it or any other state could declare war against another country if Congress didn’t. Article 1, Section 8 not only gives Congress the power to set rules of naturalization, it also gives it the power to declare war. And why not let the states instead of Congress have the Article I power to coin money. Of course that would lead to economic disaster. I don’t know about you but I don’t have the math skills to figure out the exchange rate for financial transactions between Maryland and Virginia.
Finally, the state’s argument that the feds are not acting is just wrong. Illegal immigration has slowed steadily in the last few years. There has been a large increase in the number of Border Patrol agents stationed on the Mexican border. And the Obama administration has deported record numbers of illegal immigrants convicted of crimes. But supporters of SB 1070 just want to overlook the facts so they can sustain their prejudices.
George W. Bush and Barack Obama proposed a solution to the problem that doesn’t even violate the Constitution. These presidential proposals would intensify enforcement of immigration efforts at the Mexican border, penalize employers who hire undocumented workers, and create a path to citizenship for people in the U.S illegally. Congress failed to act on either of the proposed laws. Even though the two presidential proposals are similar, several GOP senators who supported the Bush proposal now oppose the Obama bill. Go figure.
After the court issues rules on the Arizona law in June, the justices should disperse as quickly as possible because whatever they do, there will be a lot of very unhappy people out there.
By: Brad Bannon, Washington Whispers, U. s. News and World Report, April 19, 2012
“What A Revolting Development This Is”: Romney’s Immigration Adviser Says Mitt Won’t Support GOP DREAM Act
During the GOP presidential primary, Mitt Romney staked out the most extreme position on immigration of any Republican candidate. Romney even campaigned with his immigration policy adviser Kris Kobach, the author of Alabama and Arizona’s harsh immigration laws, on Martin Luther King Day.
Now that Romney is the presumptive nominee, he’s trying to soften his immigration rhetoric to win over Hispanic voters. The Romney campaign even tried to publicly downgrade Kobach from “adviser” to mere “supporter” yesterday — an effort that failed after Kobach refused to play along.
Nor is this the only example of Kobach refusing to let Romney etch-a-sketch away his harsh positions on immigration. After Romney said over the weekend that Republicans need to embrace a Republican DREAM Act to win over Hispanic voters, Kobach told the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent that the former Massachusetts governor will not support any version of the DREAM Act that offers a path to legal status — like the GOP version Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) plans to introduce. And he added that no Republican should support such a proposal:
[Kobach] stated flatly that he didn’t think Republicans — or Romney — should, or would, support any version of the DREAM Act that provides undocumented immigrants with any kind of path to legal status.
If Romney sticks to this — and Kobach said he would — there’s very little room for him to moderate his approach to immigration. In addition to advising Romney on immigration, Kobach is a national GOP voice on the issue, suggesting the right would not permit any move of this kind.
“I’d absolutely reject any proposal that would give a path to legal status for illegal aliens en masse,” Kobach said. “That is what amnesty is. I do not expect [Romney] to propose or embrace amnesty.”
Details of Rubio’s proposed DREAM Act have not been announced, but the first-term senator has outlined a plan that would not offer a direct path to citizenship but would enable them to remain in the country legally. Despite his promise to veto the DREAM Act earlier in his campaign, Romney told a crowd at a private fundraiser that he wants a Republican DREAM Act to make the GOP the party of “opportunity.”
But if Rubio’s plan includes a path to legal status, or if Romney supports a plan that does, then Kobach said it would be an “unacceptable” proposal. “A path to legal status for someone who is here illegally is amnesty by definition,” he said. “It gives the alien what he has stolen.”
By: Amanda Peterson Beadle, Think Progress, April 18, 2012
“A Closeted Campaign”: Tell Us More About Your “Private Views” Mitt
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed pieceon Thursday, the veteran conservative journalist Fred Barnes offered Mitt Romney some advice for improving his campaign, including the sensible (and one might also say humane) suggestion that on immigration, the presumptive nominee “would be wise to move away from his harsh position in the primaries.”
Then Barnes included this fascinating sentence: “According to a Romney adviser, his private view of immigration isn’t as anti-immigrant as he often sounded.”
What exactly does that mean? Does it mean Romney said things that he doesn’t really believe? What are we supposed to make of a candidate who takes certain public positions to court one group of voters — and then tries to reassure an entirely different group of voters by leaking the fact that he doesn’t really believe what he said to win votes from the first group? How many other “private” positions does Romney hold that we don’t know about?
This is an important question because I think the Romney campaign will be engaged in a series of two-steps between now and Election Day. On the one hand, he needs to keep reassuring conservatives that he is really with them on a whole series of issues. But the whole premise that he was the most “electable” Republican rested on the unstated — was this “private,” too? — premise that he was the most “moderate” candidate in the field and could thus appeal beyond the conservative hard core. Romney wants the GOP base to think he’s a staunch conservative and swing voters to believe he’s a closet moderate. That’s why I suspect we’ll hear more hints about Romney’s “private” views on a lot of other matters.
Romney is not the first candidate to try to be all things to all people. But he has a special problem because he has taken a great many contradictory public positions over the years, depending upon whether he was trying to appeal to a general-election electorate in Massachusetts or a Republican primary electorate nationwide. Keep an eye out for more hints about Romney’s “private” views. At some point, he will have to reconcile what he says with what his aides hint at. And he will have to do this publicly.
By: E. J. Dionne, Jr, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, April 13, 2012
“Regressive And Counterproductive”: What A Romney-Rubio Administration’s Immigration Policy Would Look Like
Mitt Romney is the presumptive Republican presidential nominee now that Rick Santorum has dropped out of the race, and Sen. Marco Rubio’s (R-FL) name has frequently been mentioned as a possible vice presidential pickfor Romney to help him win over Hispanic voters.
But if Romney chose Rubio as his vice president and won, what would a Romney-Rubio administration set for its immigration policy? Nothing that would help fix the nation’s dysfunctional immigration system, according to a new analysis by the Center for American Progress, based on their existing polices:
A Romney-Rubio administration would advance the following counterproductive legislative priorities:
-Make E-Verify, the nation’s flawed internet-based work-authorization system, mandatory for all employers in the hope that undocumented immigrants will self-deport
-Pursue a “DREAM-less” DREAM Act, which would grant legal status but no path to earn citizenship for unauthorized immigrants who were brought here at a young ageWe can also be certain that a Romney-Rubio administration would adopt the following regressive administrative priorities:
–Support for states seeking to pass anti-immigrant laws like Arizona’s S.B. 1070
-Implementation of a comprehensive “self-deportation” strategy for undocumented immigrants in which the government would make life as miserable as possible to try to force undocumented immigrants to leave the country on their own
-Elimination of prosecutorial discretion that helps enforcement agents prioritize serious criminals over nannies and busboys
–Construction of another 1,400 miles of border fencing despite the exorbitant cost
“Voters should ask themselves whether they want to support a potential administration with immigration positions far more extreme than their own,” the reports’ authors write.
Romney has tried to woo Hispanic voters in his campaign, even winning a majority of the demographic in the Florida GOP primary. But his extreme immigration stances have also alienated Hispanic voters. A recent poll showed that President Obama is leading Romney among Hispanic voters 70 to 14 percent. Judging from the policies that could be expected, Romney may need more than Rubio as a potential vice president to win over the fastest-growing segment of the population.
By: Amanda Peterson Beadle, Think Progress, April 11, 2012
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