Immigration Law

Some Lawyers deliberately 'push the evelope'. This one has been working for Sheriff Arpaio and is running for office in Kansas. My hunch is, he will run on an ... anti-immigration platform?

Check my reply here for my reasons. The magic words I didn't find when I posted that reply were 'Supremacy Clause'.

And that isn't just me - Karl Rove expects 'some constitutional problems'. So does Lindsay Graham. And Arizona's attorney general, Terry Goddard, sees a “mistake.”

Arizona's police chiefs, who will be tasked with executing the law, are opposed to the bill.

 

That doesn't matter The language of the bill is irrelevant when they aren't allowed to legislate in the first place.

Heed my words: The bill is going down.

 

The Arizona law assigns enforcement authority for federal law to local cops.

The US congress has enacted laws that assign the enforcement of immigration laws to the Department of Homeland Security's U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). They said something along the line in the Homeland Security Act (HSA) of 2002, Pub. L. No. 107-296, 116 Stat. 2135 (Nov. 25, 2002).

In my reading, if the clause says if a state law is in conflict with the US Constitution, the Constitution wins, then it also says that, when a state arrogates to itself the power to legislate over matters under federal legislative authority, the Feds win.

 

Checking for violations is enforcing a law, no matter that they then hand the people over to the ICE afterwards.

The law obliges cops explicitly to specifically check for violations of federal law i.e. immigration law. Immigration law, very very likely, is in the exclusive federal domain.

That bill's author, Kobach, has introduced into the bill this peculiar idea of his that every local cop has the inherent authority to enforce any federal law. Think that through. It means that, in Kobach's mind, any village deputy is empowered to ... enforce immigration law, federal tax laws, anti espionage laws, the US military code of justice etc. pp. ...

Well, I don't think so.

 

Every state law enforcement official can and do already do this when they, en passant, detect violations of federal the law - they will then notify the relevant agency - ICE, FBI etc. They are, however, not specifically tasked and ordered by law to check for violations of immigration (i.e. federal) law as the new Arizona law commands. You see the difference?

This is about federal pre-emption of state legislation. Precedents make clear that immigration is a federal matter and that the Constitution does not authorize the states to conduct their own immigration policies.

 

But this is not an immigration policy.

 

T2,
... please ... to enact a law is to set policy.

 

You miss my meaning. The law is not about immigration. It is about removing people who are in the country illegally -- the two are distinctly separate issues.

 

Legally, that is a distinction without a difference.

This is not a matter for a state to legislate on. They are pre-empted. Because congress has already legislated on the matter and the federal government is exclusively responsible for such legislation and its enforcement.

 

...and your credentials to make that assertation are???

 

I make these assessments based on my knowledge of how federalism works (to wit, we do have federalism here in Germany; matters of who may legislate over what and who enforces which laws are basic questions) and what I read on Wiki and legal blogs on US law and I see a strong legal case against the Arizona law.

Persuade me (as in: with arguments) that I am wrong, and I may change my view, but cut that sort of crap.

 

I'll grant you both points. However I am wondering how a nation formed from colonies could have an actual legal power (to dictate what is and what is not legal immigration) over the lands they control. For me it is then the question how any nation could have legal power over their territories, every nation is eventually founded upon a displacement of the original natives. This is of course speaking from an ideal point of view on legality and assuming that what is ultimately legal is not decided by humans.

From my naive point of view, there should be no borders

To nitpick a little on my previous statement about the natives: If I got my theories on human history right, the native North Americans were not even the first to arrive on North American soil, there are some decent theories that tribes from Asia arrived in two waves and that the first, to which the Clovis culture belonged, was displaced by the second.

Edit:
Oh and to the person who repped me: Yeah... I guess... I have no idea who you are :/

 

One - we never said that Germany doesn't have federalism, and to bring that up makes me wonder what you think we believe in terms of your country.

Two - you might have the knowledge of how federalism works but having that knowledge and living with something are two separate matters. Just because you've read something on Wiki (which, even with a ton of sources to back up some of their articles, I take with a grain of salt mainly because it's user created) or on legal blogs of US law, does not make you an expert of how our country is run. Remember, legal blogs are usually written by those who think they know the law best when in fact putting the law on paper and actually enforcing it are again, two separate issues. Even though I lived there for 13 months (granted I was 11 at the time, so 20 years ago), and even if I read up on German law, etc., I would never assume that what I know is the end-all, be-all of the nation's way of doing things. Basically what I'm saying is this - you might "know" our laws, but living with it is a totally different experience. We've had raids against illegal immigrants of the Mexican variety in my state of Indiana, which is quite a bit north of the US/Mexico border, because there's something here (probably the now almost defunct auto industry as well as farms) that brings them here in droves - probably also the fact that we are so far north of the border. We live with this. Why should we 'cut the crap' as you so eloquently put it and try to persuade you, when you're not living with this day in and day out?

 

Ragusa, you have a habit of completely dismissing opinions on one side of an argument by that lame claim 'prove it' when you have not done an adequate job of supporting your opinions (and in this case they are opinions not fact even though you seem to want to present your opinions as fact and expect us to just fall in step).

I personally believe the law is a reasonable attempt to correct a shortfall in the current federal laws. Obviously, the Supreme Court will eventually rule whether or not the law is Constitutional -- or the federal government will get off its lazy ass and take care of the issue making the AZ law obsolete.