Message:
"At a legal level, it is true that nothing has changed. S.B. 1070
never took effect, so no law was lost.
At a more realistic level, everything has changed.
States have been left helpless to deal with the anarchy created by the
failure of the federal government to enforce border security. Whereas
yesterday it was unclear how far states (such as Rhode Island) could
go, today states are powerless.
The inability of a state to implement a policy of checking the
immigration status even of people already under arrest for some other
crime is remarkable.
While I cannot blame the Judge for striking some provisions of S.B.
1070 (particularly those creating independent criminal sanctions),
the ruling as to checking the status of people already under arrest
is mind-numbing.
As a reader to my prior post points out, states already routinely run
searches for a variety of statuses, including outstanding warrants,
child support orders, and non-immigration identity checks. Each of
these checks potentially could delay release of an innocent person or
burden some federal agency.
The Judge's reasoning, particularly that the status check provision
violated the 4th Amendment even as to persons already under arrest,
applies just as easily to these other status checks.
With a federal government which refuses to take action at the border
until there is a deal on "comprehensive" immigration reform, meaning
rewarding lawbreakers with a path to citizenship, this decision will
insure a sense of anarchy. The law breakers have been emboldened
today, for sure.
As it stands this afternoon, it is perfectly rational for someone
faced with the choice of obeying the immigration laws or not, to
choose not to do so. The choice of lawlessness makes a lot more sense
than spending years winding through the byzantine legal immigration
system, because the end result will be the same but lawlessness gets
you here more quickly.
When the law and the federal government reward lawlessness,
something is very wrong."
- William A. Jacobson, Associate Clinical Professor of Law, Cornell
Law School, Ithaca, NY (1984 graduate of Harvard Law School)
I'm no lawyer or law expert, either. However, when law professors
begin using words like "remarkable" and "mind-numbing", it kid of
sheds some light on what might be going on.
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Thu Jul 29 2010 4:39:23 PM