Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Obama vs. Arizona: Administrative, Not Constitutional

Jim Antle draws our attention to the Supreme Court once again being less than impressed with the arguments advanced by Solicitor General Donald Verilli this time over Arizona's immigration law.
There is a great deal to be unimpressed about. U.S. v. State of Arizona & Brewer argues that S.B. 1070 would "conflict with and undermine by the federal government's careful balance of immigration enforcement priorities and activities" by imposing "significant and counterproductive burdens on the federal agencies charged with enforcing the national immigration scheme, diverting resources and attention from the dangerous aliens who the federal government targets as its top enforcement priority." But as I argued back in July 2010:
When the DOJ argues that S.B. 1070 "will impose significant and counterproductive burdens on federal agencies" what they mean is that the ICE operated Law Enforcement Support Center in Williston, Vermont could get a lot more phone calls from Arizona. So it could blow the overtime budget of DHS. The is an administrative issue, not a constitutional one. Perhaps it will cause some inconvenience for the feds. But let us never confuse inconvenience with unconstitutionality.
But then again what else can we expect of the Obama Administration? An administration whose Attorney General admitted under oath that he had not read the Arizona immigration law and had only glanced at it.

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