DAVE SCHULER at The Glittering Eye considered the Arizona immigration testimony before the Supreme Court.
Money quote(s):
"The Supreme Court heard oral arguments today in the case Arizona v. United States, the federal challenge to Arizona’s immigration law, considered draconian by its foes and obvious by its defenders. You can’t draw hard and fast conclusions about how the justices will rule based on oral arguments but the day did not go well for the Obama Administration."
It's tough to make strong arguments when your case is so weak.
"To my untutored layman’s eye the federal government’s argument appears to be that it can have its cake and eat it, too. The Congress can pass and the president can sign laws and then, if enforcement or even simple management is too burdensome, it can merely ignore them. That strikes me as a political argument rather than either a policy or a legal one. Congress should either authorize the resources necessary to enforce the laws it passes or limit their scope so that they can be enforced with the resources they’re willing to grant." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)
Mr. Schuler isn't wrong about what Congress should do, but getting Congress to do what it should do is beyond the powers of mortal men.
"On immigation the Congress has chosen the path of political least resistance by in theory having fairly strict immigration law while in practice having very limited immigration law. That doesn’t make any sense either from a policy or legal standpoint.
Just to restate briefly my views on immigration I don’t think we have an immigration problem in this country. I think we have a temporary problem of Mexican immigration in this country, temporary because of Mexican demographics and, indeed, Latin American and Caribbean demographics more generally. I think that we should increase the number of work permits available to Mexicans by at least an order of magnitude, possibly several orders of magnitude, give employers better tools for verifying the status of the workers they hire, and thereafter enforce immigration laws strictly in the workplace, imposing severe penalties on employers who refuse to comply. But, honestly, I’m not worried about the issue because, as I’ve said, it is temporary and the recent stories about immigration from Mexico slowing or even reversing recently fully support my view."
Congress has gotten around much in the way of immigration-related costs by putting the financial burden for legal immigrants firmly on those immigrants themselves, by requiring DHS (and State) to impose fees, making many of these functions pay for themselves.
The costs of dealing with illegal immigrants aren't amenable to such an approach.
4/25
No comments:
Post a Comment