With today’s not totally unexpected ruling on the Arizona immigration law, sensible minds can draw some comfort from Justice Scalia’s dissenting opinion:
“To say, as the Court does, that Arizona contradicts federal law by enforcing immigration law that the president declines to enforce boggles the mind..”
From The Politico:
Scalia takes swipe at Obama immigration action
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia suggested Monday that the Framers of the Constitution would have “rushed to the exits” if presented with the idea behind President Barack Obama’s recent decision not to enforce certain immigration laws.
The Supreme Court’s decision to strike down most of the key provisions of Arizona’s SB 1070 immigration law “boggles the mind” in light of the Obama policy shift, Scalia added.
Speaking in dissent of most of the court’s rulings on Arizona’s immigration law, Scalia took a clear swipe in his remarks at the Obama administration’s new policy ending deportations of many young adults brought into the country illegally — which was not part of the Arizona case.
“The president has said that the new program is ‘the right thing to do’ in light of Congress’s failure to pass the administration’s proposed revision of the immigration laws,” Scalia said. “Perhaps it is, though Arizona might not think so.”
Scalia asked whether states would have entered into the union had the Constitution included a clause enacting immigration laws but stipulating that the president had a choice on whether to enforce them. Delegates would have “rushed to the exits” at Independence Hall.
By passing a state immigration law, he added, Arizona had “moved to protect its sovereignty — not in contradiction of federal law, but in complete compliance with it.”
But, “if securing its territory in this fashion is not within the power of Arizona, we should cease referring to it as a sovereign state.”
The court upheld a key piece of the Arizona’s law — requiring police to check the immigration status of those they arrest or stop for questioning — but struck down other pieces of the law, arguing the state had stepped into the bounds of federal law.
“To say, as the Court does, that Arizona contradicts federal law by enforcing immigration law that the president declines to enforce boggles the mind,” Scalia said.
The problem that Arizona faces, Scalia said, is not that scarce resources are being toward enforcing immigration laws elsewhere and not in that border state, but the Obama administration’s policies.
“The husbanding of scarce enforcement resources can hardly be the justification for this,” he said of the new Department of Homeland Security directives, “since those resources will be eaten up by the considerable administrative cost of conducting the non-enforcement program, which will require as many as 1.4 million background checks and biennial rulings on requests for dispensation.”
Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio said Monday that the Supreme Court protected “a good section” of the state’s immigration law by upholding the controversial “show me your papers” provision of the law.
“I think this is a good section that’s been upheld,” Arpaio said on local TV station KNXV. “I would have liked to see where we would have the authority to arrest illegal aliens just by being here illegally and book them into our jails, but that’s not going to happen. But I think this sends a message that we will be involved in enforcing the illegal alien laws and our police officers will be able to at least try to determine if they’re in this country illegally.”
The Supreme Court’s highly anticipated decision struck down three of the four key provisions of SB 1070 but upheld the provision that requires police officers to determine the immigration status of an individual who has been stopped for questioning when there’s reasonable suspicion that the person is in the country illegally.
Arpaio, the sheriff of Maricopa County who calls himself the “toughest sheriff in America,” has been accused by critics of racial profiling, and the Justice Department announced in May that it is suing the sheriff.
In his interview Monday morning, Arpaio pushed back on those accusations, maintaining that he’s simply interested in doing “the right thing.”
Asked if he expects Immigration and Customs Enforcement to cooperate with the sheriff’s department, Arpaio said this remains to be seen.
“It’s going to be very interesting to see what the Homeland Security does now, if they will continue to pick up the illegal aliens we come into contact with,” he said. “So we’ll see what happens.”
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To sum it up, and you can ask nearly ANY Border Patrol agent, the United States federal government steadfastly refuses to enforce the laws on the books and they continue to hamper the efforts of those literally on the front lines!…
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0612/77791.html#ixzz1ypO2PzEA
The Life in Exile 