Arizona immigration law before the Supreme Court

Oral arguments give the impression that the justices support the Arizona immigration law, and that even includes Justice Sotomayor.

In fact, the Justices make the exact same points I made two years ago. And no, I don’t think they have been reading my blog, I just think that they are very obvious points.

From the Politico article:

several of the court’s conservatives picked up on Arizona’s argument that the state’s policy isn’t really at odds with the laws Congress has passed, but with the way the Obama administration is choosing to enforce them.

Scalia twice asked Verrilli to cite a case in which the court struck down a state law for interfering with executive priorities, rather than a congressional statute. He could not do so, but said Congress specifically ceded broad powers on immigration to executive officials.

And that’s similar to what I previously wrote:

The Arizona law directing police to enforce the federal immigration laws is a procedural law and does not represent a substantive change to existing federal laws, so I don’t see that there is any preemption of federal law going on.

The real reason why liberals hate the Arizona law is that they disagree with the federal law that makes it illegal for people from other countries to move here and work here without proper permission from the federal government. There’s no support in Congress to open up the borders to all who wish to move here, but liberals are sneaky and they have effectively been able to get something closer to free open borders by not enforcing the immigration laws.

It doesn’t necessarily violate the Constitution if the executive branch assigns a very low priority to enforcing a law, but neither does it violate the Constitution if a state decides to assign a higher priority to enforcing the same law, assuming that nothing in the statutes passed by Congress explicitly prohibits states from doing that.

Comments

[MRM]

This case is another example of a concept I've trid to explain to fellow conservatives. The 24-7 media and Internet might make it possible to alert sheeple voters to all of the oddball tactics the left uses for things like immigration, firemen entrance exams, social justice and other crap so that they know the scum just below the surface when Dems say they are for the common man.

[The Engineer]

Thank God it looks like the Supremes are going to back Arizona. Indiana has a similar law, that has been similarly blocked.

The law was for good reason. Illegal alien DUI who NEVER held a driver's license, but who somehow was never deported, and eventually killed himself and two others while driving drunk.

[Doug1]

Excellent points.

As well I don't think there's anything wrong with racially profiling suspects so long as their race is not the only factor is suspicion. Under the Arizona law it's not. Law enforcement must have a reasonable belief that that the individual has broken the law.

[HS: The term is "reasonable suspicion," and that's inherently constitutional because that's what the Supreme Court has previously said is the standard for stopping someone.]

[Doug1]

The Obama government's argument that each state should not be allowed to have it's own immigration policy is an essentially fraudulent argument. Arizona's laws doesn't set up different standards from the Federal government as to who is and who isn't a legal versus illegal immigrant. It just establishes it's own supplemental enforcement of the federal standards.

What's wrong with that?

Also racial profiling is entirely sensible in this case. What are the chances that an entirely white Euro looking person is an illegal immigrant in Arizona? Very, very low. (They'd be higher in NYC.) What are the chances that an Hispanic looking person who either doesn't speak English at all or does so very badly is an illegal in Arizona? Considerable.

We use gender profiling all the time.

[HS: There are indeed illegal immigrants in NYC who look white.]

[MRM]

This is also another example of the libs not considering the legality of something, and just pushing it for political reasons. Everything was legit in how Arizona set this up (as well as Indiana), but it goes against Dem politics therefore they must fight it and argue against it. It has nothing to do with the constitution. Weird thing for the Dems is how nationally this is supported by 68% of people.

[Underman]

"Weird thing for the Dems is how nationally this is supported by 68% of people."

It's opposed by 2% of people, though. Doesn't their opinion matter? Protection of minority rights and all that?