House Dems Heading To Alabama To Shed Light On Immigration Law

By Andrea Salazar

House Democrats will be visiting Alabama Nov. 21 to bring attention to the effects the state’s immigration law has had on the Latino community.

Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.), a stark opponent of the Alabama law, considered the strictest immigration law in the country, is leading the effort. Acknowledging that he does not expect any immigration measure to make it to the House or Senate floors before the next election, the congressman said the Alabama visit is to raise awareness.

“The more light you shed on the abusive anti-immigrant law of Alabama, the more likelihood there is that you’re going to defeat it,” Gutierrez said at a news conference Thursday. “We’re going there to say that we came to listen and in listening also to ask you what it is you would like us to do as we return to the Congress of the United States.”

HB56, the Alabama immigration law, requires schools to find out students’ immigration status and calls on police to check a person’s status during stops or arrests if there’s “reasonable suspicion” that the person is in the country unlawfully.

Rep. Terri Sewell (D-Ala.) is welcoming her colleagues to Alabama and calling on her state to play the role it did during the civil rights movement.

“So many of the injustices that this nation has faced have been addressed on the ground in Alabama, and once again I believe that we in Alabama will lead the way with making sure we get a federal immigration policy and not a piecemeal state by state effort,” Sewell said.

Gutierrez emphasized that all visiting representatives would be spending their own money to pay for the trip. To that effect, Rep. Charlie Gonzalez (D-Texas) said they were making the trip because immigration is an issue that affects everyone.

“If the law does not protect you today, it will not protect me tomorrow,” Gonzalez said. “We all have an interest in this.”

Pointing out that the author of the Arizona immigration law, Russell Pearce, was recalled in a special election this past month, Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), warned politicians to take immigration seriously.

“That recall better be a harbinger for a lot of politicians that it’s time you took this issue of immigration in a serious way,” Grijalva said. “Look at comprehensive reform in a federal level and quit using people in their communities - Alabama, Arizona and others - as a whipping boy for a political advantage.”

Reps. Joe Baca (D-Calif.), Yvette D. Clarke (D-N.Y.), Al Green (D-Texas), Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), Grace Napolitano (D-Calif.) and Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas) will join Gutierrez, Grijalva, Gonzalez and Sewell in Alabama on Monday where they will hold a field hearing and attend the launch of a campaign to repeal the Arizona immigration law.

ACLU, Heritage Foundation Weigh In On Supreme Court's Next Term

By Andrea Salazar

Health care reform and Arizona’s immigration law are expected to be two of the major issues the United States Supreme Court tackles during its fall 2011 term starting in October, and legal analysts representing both ends of the political spectrum are expecting victories for their sides.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the Heritage Foundation held dual events in Washington, D.C. Wednesday previewing the upcoming term.

Both organizations touched on the subject of ‘Obamacare’ and agreed that politics must have been involved in the decision to forgo appealing a lower court’s ruling deeming the health care reform law’s individual mandate unconstitutional.

However, Paul Clement, former U.S. solicitor general and partner at Bancroft PLLC, said the question of the mandate’s constitutionality is only the beginning.

“A lot of the focus has been on the individual mandate, but the individual mandate is the tip of the constitutional iceberg when it comes to this case,” he said, “Because you have the question of whether or not the individual mandate is constitutional, if the individual mandate is, in fact, not constitutional, then you have the question of what effect does that have on the rest of this remarkably long and remarkably multifarious statute.”

The ACLU has not officially released an position on the matter, but its legal director, Steven Shapiro, said the mandate falls under the commerce clause and is, therefore, constitutional.

As for Arizona’s immigration law, the constitutionality of which could impact “copycat” laws in states like Georgia, Alabama, Utah, Indiana and South Carolina, Clement says that the administration may face challenges trying to make its case.

“The burden’s on the federal government to explain why it is that immigration is sufficiently different from every other area of the law that a state can’t effectively try to enforce the federal substantive law,” Clement said.

The ACLU’s Omar Jadwat, however, argued that S.B. 1070 goes beyond a federal versus state issue but also has major civil rights implications.

“It’s reminiscent of Jim Crow laws,” Jadwat said, explaining that penalties for being unable to prove one’s legal status creates a system where “certain people are essentially not persons.”

Rulings on the cases the Supreme Court accepts are expected in late June.

Supreme Court Hears Arguments On Arizona Immigration Law

The Supreme Court heard arguments today over how large a role states can play in enforcing federal immigration laws. At issue is a 2007 Arizona law that revokes the business license of anyone found employing unauthorized aliens.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, representing Arizona business owners and backed by the Obama Administration, argue that Congress intended for immigration laws to be the same in all states, and that the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) preempted almost all state efforts to impose penalties on businesses who hired unauthorized aliens.

Arizona says that IRCA contains an exception for state licensing laws and that states have historically been allowed to put whatever conditions they want on business licenses.

The Justices seemed hesitant to allow Arizona’s broad licensing power, with Justice Stephen Breyer several times pointing out that federal law carefully balances punishments for hiring illegal aliens against punishments for racial discrimination in hiring. Breyer suggested Arizona’s high penalty for hiring illegal aliens will force employers to avoid hiring anyone whose legal status might be questionable, leading to a racial hiring bias.

Justice Antonin Scalia seemed less concerned with the consequences, noting that states would probably not have felt the need to go this far if they thought the federal government were enforcing current immigration laws.

The Obama Administration’s lawyer, also arguing that Arizona had gone too far, suggested there was a difference between a state’s power to issue licenses and the power to revoke licenses. Solicitor General Neal Katyal also said that Arizona’s current licensing rules are very different from the rules Congress had in mind when IRCA was passed in 1986.

The court’s ruling, which will likely be handed down in spring or early summer, may have an effect on Arizona and other state laws on immigration, depending on how broadly the court decides to rule.

The case is Chamber of Commerce v. Whiting.

Group Wants Federal Immigration Program Dismantled

An organization dedicated to promoting rights for immigrants says that a federal program designed to help state and local governments crack down on illegal immigration is not working.

The report put out by the National Council of La Raza, the largest Hispanic rights advocacy group in the U.S., concludes that the 287(g) program, a provision within the Immigration and Nationality Act that allows state and local law enforcement officials to enter into agreements to enforce federal immigration laws, is causing harm to Latino communities nationwide.

“The 287(g) program has been implemented without adequate training, oversight, transparency and accountability,” said La Raza official Elena Lacayo during a conference call with reporters on Thursday.

“The program should be terminated,” she added.

According to the report, the program has produced several unintended consequences, such as granting police unchecked authority to arrest nonviolent immigrants, and using race as a basis for doing so. Moreover, the report states that 287(g) “has led to a clear deterioration of the relationship between Hispanics and the police.”

As an alternative, La Raza and other like-minded organizations want Congress to prioritize passing comprehensive immigration reform that would include a pathway to citizenship for illegals currently in the U.S. However, since the failure of the McCain-Kennedy bill in 2007, efforts to pass legislation have largely stalled, with lawmakers and groups alike pressing for enhanced border control.

That could change now that the Senate has passed a bill aimed at tightening security along parts of the country’s southwest border. The $600 million measure, which the Senate passed today by taking a temporary break from its August recess, will send 1,500 Border Patrol agents to the region, and will fund two unmanned aerial drones as well as establish military-style bases along the border. Supporters, mostly Democrats, say the bill represents the bargaining chip they believe is necessary to get Republicans to negotiate with them on reform. Still, as of now there are no plans to scrap 287(g).

Since 1996, roughly 70 local police jurisdictions have become enrolled in the program. Arizona’s controversial immigration law, SB 1070, grew largely out of the state’s participation in 287(g), which has also taken root in areas close to Washington. Prince William County, a suburb located just 20 miles south of DC, officially enrolled its police department in 287(g) in 2007. Prince William officials attribute reduced crime in their county to participation in the program.

““287(g) is one of the few bright spots in immigration enforcement,” said County Board Supervisor Corey Stewart (R). “I would credit [the program] with reducing Prince William County’s crime rate by 37% in the last two years,” he added.

Earlier this week, Stewart released draft legislation that if passed, would allow the state of Virginia to enforce federal immigration laws. Stewart’s bill is modeled after SB 1070, but avoids what he calls “legal pitfalls” that utimately gave a U.S. District Judge cause to enjoin certain parts of the Arizona law.

Virginia Lawmaker To Introduce Arizona-Esque Immigration Bill

A new battle over the right of states to enforce federal immigration law may soon spring up in Congress’ backyard.

Using Arizona’s controversial immigration law as a model, Prince William County (Va.) Board Chairman Corey Stewart has crafted a proposal to crack down on those who are in the state illegally. Stewart’s bill would allow state and local police to check the immigration status during any lawful stop, detention, or arrest of any person suspected to be an illegal alien. The bill would also place restrictions on hiring illegals, and would ban all policies and ordinances that grant sanctuary status to illegals. Additionally, like Arizona’s SB 1070, the bill contains language that completely forbids law enforcement officials from using racial profiling as a means of targeting suspected illegals.

Yet Stewart’s camp says that unlike the Arizona law, key parts of which were enjoined earlier this week by U.S. District Court Judge Susan Bolton, their bill would hold up in court.

In her ruling, Bolton said that “requiring police to check the immigration status of those they arrest or whom they stop and suspect are in the country illegally would overwhelm the federal government’s ability to respond, and could mean legal immigrants are wrongly arrested.”

“Judge Bolton enjoined the sections of SB 1070, which created the mirror state code violation for alien registration or traveling without legal documentation, but none of the sections which simply directed [law enforcement officials] to enforce federal law,” an aide to Stewart told me.
 
“Section 3 [of Stewart’s bill] as a whole mirrors the section of SB 1070 which was upheld, not enjoined, and therefore Corey’s version of the model Virginia law puts the direction to enforce federal immigration law in the same section,” he added.

Stewart’s latest foray into immigration policy is certainly not his first. In 2007, Stewart, the highest elected official in Prince William County, a suburb of Washington, D.C. located just 25 miles south of the city, campaigned for and passed a county-wide resolution that allowed local law enforcement officials to check the immigration status of anyone they arrested. The initiative also enrolled the county in the federal government’s 287g program.  Last year, it was reported that violent crime in the county had dropped almost 37%, a statistic Stewart credited in part to the enactment of his policy.

Stewart will push state lawmakers to consider his bill, the Virginia Rule of Law Act, when they convene for a new legislative session in January 2011.