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Judge Blocks Major Parts of Arizona’s Anti-Immigrant Law |
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Just hours before Arizona’s controversial anti-immigrant law was to go into effect, a federal judge today blocked one of its most contentious provisions—the requirement that police stop and question anyone they have “reasonable suspicion” is undocumented.
The law does not define “reasonable suspicion,” a fact that many opponents say is a carte blanche for racial profiling.
Earlier this month, the federal government filed suit to block Arizona from implementing the new law, which has drawn heavy criticism from civil rights organizations, immigrant groups, unions and the religious community.
U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton also blocked provisions of the law making it a crime to fail to apply for or carry alien registration papers or for “an unauthorized alien to solicit, apply for, or perform work,” and a provision “authorizing the warrantless arrest of a person” if there is reason to believe he or she might be subject to deportation.
Arizona is expected to appeal the temporary injunction ruling, however, and most observers believe the case is eventually going to the U.S. Supreme Court.
In a statement the Justice Department said the court “ruled correctly.”
While we understand the frustration of Arizonans with the broken immigration system, a patchwork of state and local policies would seriously disrupt federal immigration enforcement and would ultimately be counterproductive.
When the suit was filed, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said:
The solution to our broken immigration system must protect all workers and provide a fair path toward citizenship for undocumented workers already living and working in the United States. It must address the unique circumstances faced by undocumented students who were brought to the United States by their parents long ago. It must include an independent commission to determine our society’s genuine need for more workers that does not afford employers a steady stream of exploitable labor. And it must include a mechanism to ensure that employers are held accountable when they break the law.
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Dear Mr. Hall,why do you and others that write commentary on this blog insist on writing distortions? Quote “the requirement that police stop and question anyone they have resonable suspicion is undocumented”
The does not say that it says after a stop has been made for some other violation and the police think there may be something wrong with this picture they are required to try and find if the person is a legal citizen.
What you and others print is an outright lie and you all know it.
This law may never go into effect but telling lies about what it says is a detrement to everyone that reads what you print.
Is everyone in the U.S.A. completely deaf, dumb and blind? Why can’t people see what is happening to us as AMERICAN CITIZEN TAXPAYERS? We are being forced to pay for entitlements for illegal aliens. It is taken out of TAXPAYER monies.GEt them out of here, cut them off, they are users and abusers of the AMERICAN TAXPAYERS WHO STILL HAVE A JOB!!
The BP oil leak disaster will continue to affect local economies around the Gulf of Mexico for many years, and the environment will require decades of recovery. Now the Associated Press reports that New Orleans is back in the thick of an oil slick thanks to an errant tow boat called the Pere Ana C. The boat is said to have struck a wellhead in Louisiana marshland. MSNBC reports that Plaquemines Parish President Nungesser explains oil is shooting in the air right about now.
As I reported earlier, the ninth circuit court has already upheld an AZ law regarding illegal alien employment and from the link below ‘In the Supreme Court’s only decision addressing the preemption doctrine in the context of legislation involving illegal aliens, De Canas v. Bica (1976), the Court unanimously upheld the constitutionality of a California statute prohibiting employers from knowingly employing “an alien who is not entitled to lawful residence in the United States if such employment would have an adverse effect on lawful resident workers.” In his opinion for the Court, Justice William J. Brennan, usually a strong proponent of federal power, rejected the argument that the statute was preempted by the Supremacy Clause because Congress has the exclusive power to regulate immigration. Brennan explained that the Immigration and Naturalization Act was principally concerned “with the terms and conditions of admission of the INA and the subsequent treatment of aliens lawfully in the country” and that it therefore did not necessarily prohibit restrictions on the hiring of illegal aliens. The Court remanded for a determination of whether the statute was being enforced consistently with federal law.’
In short the law may well withstand its challenges – in due course. However one thing that I think this fiasco has made clear is that the federal government has absolutely no interest in enforcing its immigration laws and even if it did, some group like the ACLU or La Raza could keep enforcement tied up in court for years.
Therefore under no circumstances can we allow so-called ‘comprehensive immigration reform’ to pass because it will be a rerun of 1986, in which legalization came in hard and fast but we are still waiting for enforcement. We can’t even mention amnesty until enforcement has been not only passed and actually put into practice but also litigated. It is also interesting to see the ‘leader of the free world’ and the Democrats favor illegal aliens over US citizens, isn’t it? November should be interesting….
Does anybody else find it amusing that Obama sued AZ for enacting a law that mirrors and enhances federal immigration law but does not say a word about sanctuary cities that openly DEFY federal immigration law? This man went to law school?
http://jurist.org/forum/2010/05/arizonasimmigrationlaw.php
The fact is, on immigration, just like the bank bailout, Iraq, civil liberties, torture, and Afghanistan, President Obama has done everything possible to build on the horrible Bush legacy. He has deported a million more hapless immigrants than Bush did, yet you are insisting hysterically that the federal government has abandoned immigration enforcement. Perhaps, current US law on immigration is particularly difficult to enforce – you know – like drug laws, or US military domination of Iraq and Afghanistan, or the 50-year-old failed economic blockade of little Cuba.
I, for one, wish this law would go into effect long enough for the population of this country to see the results. I would prefer to see more massive street mobilizations against this law that the media would have a hard time ignoring, rather than the smattering of racists now protesting the court order and getting built up as more significant than they are.
All unionists should heave a sigh of relief, and turn toward the tasks ahead, which are to organize the employed and unemployed into a Labor Party, organize the unorganized whether they are from Arizona or anywhere else, march on Washington to demand a WPA-type massive government funding of needed infrastructure repairs as well as a conversion toward clead energy. It would be nice if some of our more immigrant-phobic brothers and sisters would direct some of their righteous indignation toward those responsible – the rich crooks who run everything and control the ruling party. (Did I say party? I meant the ‘two’ parties.)
Sad day for America.
These illegal aliens are being used as pawns by both parties and every union and civil rights organization.
How about someone looking at the cause of the problem. Why are these people leaving Mexico? Why doesn’t someone start yelling at the Mexican government?
It is a country rich with natural resources and tourist attractions. Their unemployment is lower then ours. Why can’t they treat workers better?
That is where you should should be picketing!! That is where you should be organizing! Not here.
The president doesn’t hire illegal aliens. You need to look next door or the stores or businesses that you know that are hiring them and put these employers in jail who are breaking the law because they are not paying social security or taxes or insurance for these people that they know are illegal and not hiring American citizens out of work. I am sure cash money is being passed out without a paper trail. These people wouldn’t be here if you wouldn”t hire them. We know that a lot of Americans are hiring illegal aliens and your city may be number one for cheap labor. Why don’t you turn in an employer who hire illegal aliens and you can solve two mysteries with one stone.
‘hysterically’? Did you actually READ my comment? And ‘racists’? What’s this? The Spencer Ackerman/Journolist opening? Just yell RACISSSSSST! The term ‘racist’ has been used so loosely for so long that it has more or less lost all meaning.
As for ‘those responsible’, AZ also passed a law allowing it to lift the business licenses of businesses who knowingly hire illegal aliens. It too has been challenged and is in the court system. In fact, Obama has all but ended raids at worksites, replacing them with audits of companies’ personnel records to LOOK for illegal workers—who are FIRED, but not arrested.
It is not rocket science as to how to get control of the whole issue of illegal workers. From my recent op-ed in the Roanoke Times:
· Initially for new hires, we should mandate the use of E-Verify, a highly accurate, free, simple, and fast verification system used by more than 200,000 employers across the United States. It will catch those who are using only forged SSNs and will likely end the theft of children’s identity as it will connect SSNs and birth dates. All who have honest errors in their information will have ample time to correct them. Those who are using these SSNs illegally will be denied employment.
· At least semi-annually, the SSA should resume sending out “no match” letters which will alert employers that they have invalid information on one or more of their employees, such as a SSN that does not agree with name or birth date. Employers can then clear up any honest errors and terminate employees who are working illegally. Employers who fail to respond to these letters should face criminal sanctions plus liability for any harm that befalls any victims of this identity theft.
· The IRS and SSA should cooperate to alert victims of identity theft as soon as they suspect that it is occuring. This is critical in cases of complete identity theft (theft of an individual’s entire ID), which would not be caught by E-Verify. The victim should not have to wait until he is presented with a bill for unpaid taxes owed by an illegal worker to discover his victimization.
Better living through technology.
AFL-CIO turns its back on U.S. workers, endorses illegal immigration & open borders
Unions weakened during high immigration
The AFL-CIO in May 2001 reissued its endorsement of an amnesty for 6 to 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States. This is the second year in the row that the AFL-CIO has astonishingly rejected one of organized labor’s most honored traditions: protecting U.S. labor markets from being flooded by foreign workers.
In February of 2000, the executive council of the national union federation voted to urge Congress to begin granting amnesty to the 6 million illegal aliens currently avoiding arrest in this country. The union bosses would reward their lawbreaking with U.S. citizenship.
The council also voted to seek a repeal of a law that makes it illegal for companies to hire illegal aliens. The AFL-CIO had been one of the major supporters of passing the law in 1986.
As a result of the new action, the AFL-CIO has placed itself on the same side as sweat shop operators and the most egregious of cheap-labor industrialists in their desire to globalize the U.S. labor market. If foreign workers are free to take jobs in the U.S. whether or not they have a legal right to be here, then one can expect the surge of illegal immigration to become even larger. And American workers will be forced to compete on a global level. Since global wage averages are a small fraction of current U.S. wages, the AFL-CIO has adopted a policy that condemns American workers to a race to the bottom in wages and working conditions.
Bottom-line business
Why would the AFL-CIO do such an anti-worker thing? Good bottom-line business.
That is, the AFL-CIO ceased acting like a champion of American workers and made a good business decision.
As a business, the AFL-CIO makes its money off dues. Immigrants — and especially illegal aliens — have proven to be much easier to organize and to make into new union members. The AFL-CIO sees illegal aliens as a lucrative market for dues to keep the bureaucracy of organized labor humming.
So the AFL-CIO as a business is willing to sell out the American worker for the same reason that other businesses pay huge contributions to Congress to keep the supply of cheap foreign labor coming.
The leaders of the AFL-CIO knew that their actions are likely to anger the rank and file American laborers. But they took a calculated risk for the sake of the two groups which represent the future of the labor movement: foreign workers and government workers who see the business of government growing to meet the needs for social services in cities of high immigration.
Bad policy, even for the current round of aliens
Adding to the callousness of the AFL-CIO’s strange move is the story behind the illegal aliens they are now championing. Those aliens are in low-wage non-union occupations, many of which were unionized and much higher paying 20 years ago. But the presence of so many illegal aliens, as well as the highest surge of legal immigrants in the nation’s history, resulted in busted unions and the driving out of American workers. Now, the AFL-CIO is working for the illegal aliens. But the gains will be very short-term. If the amnestied illegal aliens join the unions and manage to raise their wages, they are likely to lose their gains to the next swarm of illegal aliens. Nothing draws illegal aliens like an amnesty. The 6 million present illegal aliens mostly rushed to this country after the nation’s first amnesty in 1986. Another amnesty is sure to draw even more new ones, especially if the AFL-CIO succeeds in offering the new illegal aliens the chance to work legally without companies being threatened with sanctions.
All of us with personal connections to the labor movement (I grew up in a union household and earlier was a member of the AFL-CIO and a local officer) have reason to feel disappointment. The greatest moral high ground of union leadership was always the claim that it cared not just about members of the unions but about the plight of all workers. With its decision to emphasize adding membership among illegal aliens above protecting the wages and working conditions of American workers in general, the AFL-CIO has given a great deal of rhetorical ammunition to critics who have always assumed the worst about organized labor. The hope for the American labor movement is that American workers will rise up and shout down this ill-informed amnesty policy when it is trotted out in union locals across the country this year. We’ll hope the American workers who built the unions — and pay the salaries of the union chieftans — will bring their leaders back around to living up to their core responsibilities.