OPINION:
On Oct. 14, a federal judge blocked key portions of Alabama’s new immigration law after several groups, including the Obama Justice Department and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), asked for an injunction. The Justice Department claims that states that assist in enforcing federal immigration laws are violating the constitutional separation of powers.
Really? If that’s so, I wonder if state police in Alabama are barred from arresting someone trying to pass counterfeit $100 bills because our currency is federal. Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution gives Congress the power “to provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States.” It doesn’t say anything about state troopers.
Likewise, Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution authorizes Congress “to establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization.” State police arresting illegal aliens have nothing to do with deciding who can be naturalized.
“Does it really cause harm to the United States when a state informs the federal government of persons who are in violation of federal law and then leaves it to the federal government to decide whether to initiate deportation proceedings?” Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange wrote in the state’s response.
The attitude of U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.’s Justice Department in suing Alabama and Arizona and threatening to sue Indiana, is, “We’re not going to enforce the law, and you can’t, either, no matter what impact this is having on your state. And, we’re going to pitch the idea to Hispanics that only racists would want immigration laws enforced. By the way, here are directions in Spanish to your local polling place.”
It should be noted that a great many Hispanic Americans want border enforcement.
Aiding and abetting, as usual, is the ACLU, which seems to develop a nervous tic at the very thought of American sovereignty and has sued several other states over their immigration laws, including Georgia and South Carolina.
The ACLU’s immigrants rights Web page declares: “No human being is illegal.”
Well, of course no human being is illegal. This is nonsense - a straw-man argument. People are not illegal, just their actions are, such as entering the country illegally or knowingly employing someone who is here illegally.
The page states: “For more than twenty years, the Project has been … focusing on challenging laws that deny immigrants’ access to the courts, impose indefinite and mandatory detention and discriminate on the basis of nationality.”
Well, it’s true that illegal immigrants are entitled to fair treatment and due process. As the Bible admonishes, “Do not mistreat an alien or oppress him, for you were once aliens in Egypt.” (Deuteronomy. 10:19) However, stretching this to justify mass illegal immigration is, well, a stretch. If Israel interpreted it that way, it would shortly no longer exist. Neither would the United States of America.
Think about that last phrase in the ACLU’s statement - “discriminate on the basis of nationality.” Every nation discriminates between its own citizens and other people. Abolishing this distinction would mean that U.S. citizenship would be dead.
This is the legal equivalent of open borders. It also would turn legal immigration into a cruel joke, in which people who play by the rules are last in line.
The ACLU also has declared war on states trying to ensure that the people pulling levers at the ballot box are qualified and are whom they claim to be. The ACLU has threatened to file a lawsuit against a proposed Ohio photo-ID voting law and is suing to block a Missouri ballot amendment that would tighten voter ID.
The recently defunct ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), prosecuted in multiple states on voter-fraud charges, is ramping up under new guises.
Against obvious voter fraud like Al Franken’s car-trunk ballots in Minnesota in 2008 as well as the typically vigorous turnout from cemeteries in Chicago and other large cities, Republican legislators are trying to even the playing field or at least keep it from resembling the Dawn of the Dead.
Leftists claim that photo-ID requirements are akin to poll taxes and Jim Crow. Why? Because voters will have to purchase a photo or have a valid driver’s license or other photo ID. Georgia authorized free photo IDs, but that has not stopped the overheated accusers, who have stopped just short of calling it a form of lynching.
Not all Democrats have fallen for the demagoguery. Former Rep. Artur Davis, Alabama Democrat, wrote in the Montgomery Advertiser on Oct. 17, “I’ve changed my mind on voter ID laws - I think Alabama did the right thing in passing one - and I wish I had gotten it right when I was in political office. When I was a congressman, I took the path of least resistance on this subject for an African-American politician. Without any evidence to back it up, I lapsed into the rhetoric of various partisans and activists who contend that requiring photo identification to vote is a suppression tactic aimed at thwarting black voter participation. … it is chilling to see the intimidation tactics brought to bear on African-American, Democratic legislators in Rhode Island who had the nerve to support a voter ID law in that very liberal state.”
The left thrives on voter fraud, illegal immigration, billions in taxpayer money to cronies (Solyndra, etc.) and a “mainstream media” that look the other way.
The good news is that independents have had about enough. And the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations are supposed to rally President Obama’s base, but their base behavior is alienating millions. The New York Times and CBS won’t show the vandalism and the obscenity-laced signs and banners, but they’re available on the Internet.
With former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other liberals egging them on, the drugged-up demonstrators are becoming poster children for the Democrats’ metastasizing lawlessness. Are they to become the face of that once great political party?
Make a mess in the public square? “Yes, we can!” Obey the law? “No, we won’t!”
Robert Knight is a senior fellow for the American Civil Rights Union and a columnist for The Washington Times.
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