Kobach explains Arizona illegal alien law

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The following op-ed from the New York Times by Kansan Kris Kobach, who was involved in the forming of the law, explains the law and speaks to its critics.

On Friday, Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona signed a law — SB 1070 — that prohibits the harboring of illegal aliens and makes it a state crime for an alien to commit certain federal immigration crimes. It also requires police officers who, in the course of a traffic stop or other law-enforcement action, come to a “reasonable suspicion” that a person is an illegal alien verify the person’s immigration status with the federal government.

Predictably, groups that favor relaxed enforcement of immigration laws, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, insist the law is unconstitutional. Less predictably, President Obama declared it “misguided” and said the Justice Department would take a look.

Presumably, the government lawyers who do so will actually read the law, something its critics don’t seem to have done. The arguments we’ve heard against it either misrepresent its text or are otherwise inaccurate. As someone who helped draft the statute, I will rebut the major criticisms individually:

Continue reading at the New York Times.

Comments

4 responses to “Kobach explains Arizona illegal alien law”

  1. Harold Aylworth

    It is so unfortunate that many won’t take the time to read Kobach’s editorial or miracles of miracles actually read the law in Arizona. I don’t understand why it is okay to ignore our immigration laws and yet if we, as citizens, ignore filling out IRS forms its the slammer for those folks, without the whole innocent until proven guilt part. It hardly seems fair. Can someone explain when nationality became a race?

  2. With the escalating violence along the Mexican border spilling into the U.S. what better use for the thousands of battle hardened solders retuning from Iraq and Afghanistan then to secure our southern border. As a tax paying American citizen I am tired of seeing my country trashed by an invading army of criminals.

    Instead of amnesty we should expel those of any nationality who have committed a criminal act by entering our nation illegally. If you have come to the U.S. by fraud or any other illegal means you are not an immigrant, you are a criminal. You have no right to be here.

    As the primal scream for help comes from Arizona, our leader in Washington plays his fiddle, cynically attempting to prop up his failing regime by aligning himself with race baiters like Al Sharpton, and by misrepresenting the wording of a law designed to protect American citizens who are under siege in there own country.

    How many more Americans will be gunned down by criminal aliens before our government fulfills its primary function, to protect its citizens?

  3. Invasion grows

    Not only are the citizens of Arizona being invaded from Mexico, it would seem the invasion also includes mercenaries bused in from neighboring states.

    Evidently Arizona citizens aren’t capable of handling their problems without help from George Soros of the Open Society Institute and his crowd. As left-wing fascism strikes at the heart of our nation, heroes like Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona, stand firm in the face of provocation by radical left-wing organizations like the Service Employees International Union.

    These barbarians are no longer at the gate. They have metastasized into the body politic of our sleeping nation.

    With insidious deliberation, we are being devoured from within by forces alien to our Constitution who are replacing our beliefs with their distorted progressive dogma.

    We must be aware, we must resist, or we will lose all that we value.

    http://cjonline.com/opinion/2010-08-06/letter_invasion_grows

    http://members.cox.net/gbontrager/

  4. David Kalat

    God bless Arizona. Our government doesn’t.

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