Supreme Court upholds main provision of Arizona law on illegal aliens

A website called Thomson Reuters reports:

WASHINGTON, June 25 (Reuters)—The U.S. Supreme Court upheld a key part of Arizona’s crackdown on illegal immigrants on Monday, rejecting the Obama administration’s stance that only the U.S. government should enforce immigration laws in the United States.

The nation’s highest court, in an opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy, unanimously upheld the state law’s most controversial aspect, requiring police officers to check the immigration status of people they stop.

But in a split decision, the justices also ruled that the three other challenged provisions went too far in intruding on federal law, including one that makes it a crime for illegal immigrants to work and another that requires them to carry their documents.

“Arizona may have understandable frustrations with the problems caused by illegal immigration … but the state may not pursue policies that undermine federal law,” Justice Kennedy wrote in a 25-page opinion.

Kennedy said the mandatory nature of police checks did not interfere with the federal immigration scheme, and found unpersuasive the Obama administration’s argument that this portion of the law must be preempted at this stage. [cont.]

It was always so wild that the federal government was claiming that for a state simply to enforce existing federal law, which the federal government itself was not effectively enforcing, was to usurp a federal prerogative. Wild, but not surprising. The federal government is currently led by traitors and criminals.

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Stephen P. writes:

There is a lot of misunderstanding about the decision on the Arizona law. Today the court struck down three of the four parts of the law. The most important ones. The law had provisions that made it a crime to be in Arizona illegally and a crime to hold a job in Arizona without proper papers. These provisions included the punishment of jail time if convicted. This was the main part of the law and provided the teeth so to speak. It was struck down today (along with another minor 4th provision).

The only thing allowed was the part of the law that was getting all the attention, the checking of papers. although this is welcome news, Arizona was largely defeated today.

The media did a dreadful job reporting on this law from the beginning.

LA replies:

While I am a strong critic of the news media, in their defense I have to say that it is very difficult to give an accurate picture of a court decision that has multiple parts relating to a law that has multiple parts. What are the more important and the less important parts of the law under consideration is a matter of judgment, not fact.

Diana M. writes:

I think the Supreme Court decision was a devastating blow to our side. So they upheld one provision—so what? The rest of the law was gutted! The way they wrote the decision, even the pathetic provision that they upheld can be appealed.

Meanwhile, the Feds are now bearing down upon Arizona by suspending existing immigration agreements with that state.

This is horrible.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 25, 2012 12:05 PM | Send