Investor’s Business Daily
WASHINGTON, DC — After smearing Arizona’s immigration law as racial profiling, the Justice Department has issued its lawsuit against the state. But it’s not about civil rights anymore. It’s about a federal “right” to not enforce U.S. law.
When Arizona passed a law last April mirroring U.S. federal immigration law, it was the opposite of the sort of challenges states historically bring to the feds.
Back when, say, schools were being desegregated, federal troops had to face off against state sheriffs because state laws were in direct contradiction to federal laws.
Not so with Arizona’s law, which requires the state to help buttress federal law. That means federal and state agents should be enforcing an out-of-control illegal immigration crisis -- brought on by spillover from Mexico’s horrific cartel war -- together.
But to the politicos now running the federal government, Arizona’s law is, for political reasons, painted as racist.
“I think it certainly could invite profiling,” huffed Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano last May, shortly after admitting she hadn’t even read the law.
“We could potentially get on a slippery slope where people will be picked on because of how they look as opposed to what they have done,” worried Attorney General Eric Holder back then.
Even President Obama is onboard, stating last week: “These laws have the potential of violating rights of innocent American citizens and legal residents, making them subject to possible stops or questioning because of what they look like or how they sound.”
The infuriating thing is the Arizona law requires commission of a crime first before lawmen can ask questions. Obama’s own federal enforcers already have this right, yet somehow have avoided racial-profiling charges.
This shows that the race-baiting is really all about winning over the far-left Latino vote, because the federal lawsuit against Arizona doesn’t have any charges at all about civil rights violations.
It’s now all about federal laws “preempting” state laws, as if Arizona’s law somehow contradicted federal law. It doesn’t.
“The Constitution and the federal immigration laws do not permit the development of a patchwork of state and local immigration policies through the country,” the lawsuit says.
But there is no patchwork in this seamless following of federal law here. The real patchwork is in federal enforcement.
Arizona itself is under siege from Mexican cartels who violate the state’s border because they’ve been thwarted by stepped up immigration enforcement on other states’ borders.
The cartels have given Arizona the second-highest kidnapping rate on the globe, and vast swathes of land have been conceded by the Feds to cartels, complete with signs warning locals to stay out.
That federal unwillingness to enforce the law in Arizona underlines that the Obama administration has been derelict in its duty to enforce the laws of the land.
The feds say they want to focus on cartels and ignore garden-variety illegals caught in the act of committing crimes.
But that only signals they haven’t learned the lesson of James Q. Wilson’s “broken windows theory,” which emphasizes the value of enforcing against petty lawlessness to discourage far worse crimes and criminal networks.
It’s one thing for Feds to not want to do their job. But it’s appalling to see the government smear a state as racist, and then bring a lawsuit that only highlights its own failure to do its job.
If it’s a crime to enforce federal law, then why do these laws exist?
Copyright 2010 Investor’s Business Daily, Inc.