Arizona immigration law goes to Supreme Court this week

By Catholic Online (NEWS CONSORTIUM)
4/23/2012
Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)

Four provisions of law have lower courts blocked

The Supreme Court will hear oral argument this coming Wednesday in the federal government's challenge to the Grand Canyon state's controversial anti-immigration law, S.B. 1070. Called Arizona v. United States, the case will not only be the Court's second politically-charged blockbuster in as many months, but also a rematch between the Solicitor General Donald Verrilli and D.C. super-lawyer Paul Clement.

Super lawyer Paul Clement represents Arizona and Governor Jan Brewer. He is trying to unblock these provisions by framing them as 'Arizona's efforts at cooperative law enforcement' with the United States.

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LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - Last month in March, three days were spent as both parties faced off over the limits of federal power in the health care cases. In the forthcoming case, they will have a single hour debate over whether states may invade fields of immigration policy the federal government claims to occupy, the final oral argument of the term.

Four provisions of the law have blocked lower courts, conflicting with federal immigration laws. Two of the blocked sections make it a crime under state law for an undocumented immigrant to be present in the state, fail to register with the federal government and attempt to obtain work or hold a job without governmental authorization.

Another section requires police officers to check the immigration status of anyone who has been arrested, stopped or detained -- and who the police reasonably suspect to be in the country undocumented.

The fourth provision at issue allows police to arrest individuals without a warrant if they have probable cause those individuals have committed deportable offenses.

Clement represents Arizona and Governor Jan Brewer. He is trying to unblock these provisions by framing them as "Arizona's efforts at cooperative law enforcement" with the United States.

"President [Barack Obama] fairly describes our Nation's system of immigration regulation and enforcement as 'broken,'" Clement wrote in Arizona's brief. Clement then spends several pages describing the health, safety and economic difficulties Arizona has faced as a result of that "broken" system, citing the state of emergency declared in 2005 by then-Gov. Janet Napolitano, who now serves as President Barack Obama's secretary of homeland security.

The United States has many pertinent issues regarding the Arizona law.

"The framework that the Constitution and Congress have created does not permit the States to adopt their own immigration programs and policies or to set themselves up as rival decision makers based on disagreement with the focus and scope of federal enforcement," Verrilli told the justices in the federal government's brief.

"[B]y refusing to respect Congress's designation of the Executive Branch to take the lead in the enforcement of the federal immigration laws, and by requiring all Arizona officers to adhere instead to the State's own policy of 'attrition through enforcement,' Arizona has exceeded the permissible bounds of cooperation," Verrilli wrote.

Lecturer in law at Yale and Stanford Lucas Guttentag calls the case a "defining moment for the Court.

"The arguments and the legal claims are technical, but the implications are sweeping," Guttentag said. "Core concerns about discrimination and profiling" -- in Arizona's case, against the state's Hispanic residents, documented or not -- "are the reason why the Supreme Court has historically held that states may not intrude into the field of immigration regulation. It leads to discrimination, harassment, interference with foreign relations and an undermining of the national interest in national uniformity."

� 2012, Catholic Online. Distributed by NEWS CONSORTIUM.

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Keywords: Arizona immigration, Supreme Court, lawyer Paul Clement, lower courts

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1 - 3 of 3 Comments

Dave Francis
1 year ago
In a new Reuters-Ipsos opinion poll found about 70 percent of those surveyed favored state laws that let police check a person's immigration status and make it a crime for an illegal immigrant to work in the United States; about 30 percent opposed such measures. WHAT MORE PROOF DOES THIS ADMINISTRATION WANT, THAT THE AMERICAN PEOPLE HAVE HAD ENOUGH OF THIS COSTLY TRAVESTY?This week the Supreme Court will hear Arizona vs. United States and if its policing statutes go against this small defenseless border state, the American voter must push, pursue and use the severe pressure of the vote to verbally intimidate every Republican, Democrat and Liberal to get the “THE LEGAL WORKFORCE ACT” in front of the House, before taxpayers suffer any more at the hands of corrupt politicians who have sold us into financial slavery.

Repeating that special visas should be expedited for top professionals in Science, Engineering, and a whole range of high technology, given us the brain power for a futuristic U.S, but we must spend the money to check on females who are carrying an unborn infant, with new detection systems at entry ports, as 400.000 arrivals are ready to conceive annually and then apply for welfare. Just calculate the uncompensated cost to hospitals that have to pay for these deliveries, that are then passed on to taxpayers? By the Congress just amending the Birthright Citizenship Act of 2011 (H.R.140) the country could discontinue this billion dollar soaking of individual states? Don’t know who to call in Washington, and then phone 202-224-3121 the switchboard that will connect you with your Representative? Every prudential contender would be well advised to read the immigration sullen statistics advanced by “The Heritage Foundation” Can we afford 2.5 Trillion dollars to legitimize the 20 million plus Illegal’s who have settled here? That is what the Heritage Foundation has forecasts. Not all Tea Partier’s have excellent grades from NumbersUSA that will halt the illegal alien occupation and the population growth.
Tafur
1 year ago
9000 Americans are killed each year by illegal aliens.
4 of those dead are from my home town.

No one has a right to come to this country. Any law that is not enforced is broken.

Maybe no one has noticed, but living spaces is disappearing and water is a real shortage.

Failure to enforce the law is a falls between a felony, neglect of duties, malfeasance of duties.
The US will be lucky to survive until 2020. I chose 2020 as the year that George Soros expects a new constitution to be implemented.
George Soros has 33 Goals:
1. Legalize all drugs.
2. Ban private possession of firearms.
3. A new constitution by 2020.

I have known about Soros' goals for sometime now, however, I never gave them much heed until Soros placed an illegal alien in the US.

The Roman Catholic Church needs to keep a few things in mind. You support Obama and Obama supports:
1. Partial Birth Abortion..
2. Killing a baby sometime before discharge from the hospital and after being at home for 7-10 days is not far behind.
-Abortion has killed about 50,000,000 American babies since 1973.

3. Obama is bent on destroying the effectiveness of the Roman Catholic Church.
- as evidenced by the latest controversy over providing abortions and contraception for employees of the Catholic Church.
- Obama has withdrawn support for the Defense of Marriage Act and facvors same sex marraige. (Why this is the same as the failure to enforce our Immigration laws)
- The Catholic Church is losing contracts to provide social services to the needy because they will not allow same sex couples to adopt.

You are accomplishing what you actively seek, and when you are done; you may not like what you have worked for. Why has Obama targeted the Catholic Church? Because of its hierarchical organization. In other words Obama has targeted the Pope.

I could go on, however, I am going to stop right after another age old axiom:
You Do Not Make Deals With the Devil! and this is what you are doing
techwreck
1 year ago
This case involves a simple issue - "Does a state have the right to protect its citizens when they are endangered by a failure to act by the federal government." The federal government's claim tha AZ is creating it's "own immigration programs and policies or to set themselves up as rival decision makers based on disagreement with the focus and scope of federal enforcement" is phony, because Arizona's legal requirements for immigrants are identical to those of the federal government. AZ is merely enforcing the federal requirements because the President has failed to do so for political reasons. The Supreme Court will invent a new right for the federal government if it limits the right of AZ to protect its citizens, and we can kiss our Constitution goodbye!

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