A law passed by Alabama legislators to curb illegal immigration has been permanently blocked by the Obama Department of Justice (DOJ), which announced this week that the measure “punished immigrant children for exercising their constitutional right to go to school,” among other things.
The law made it a state crime to be an undocumented alien and made it illegal for them to work in the state. It also allowed police to detain those suspected of being in the country illegally, made it a crime to rent a house or apartment to an illegal immigrant and criminalized contracts with illegal aliens. Additionally, new public school students were required to provide immigration information to enroll.
The DOJ followed the American Civil Liberties Union’s (ACLU) footsteps in quickly filing a lawsuit to block Alabama’s law shortly after it passed in 2011. Like the ACLU, the DOJ accused Alabama of crossing a constitutional line, asserting that the law would lead to “the harassment and detention of foreign visitors, legal immigrants and even U.S. citizens who may not be able to readily prove their lawful status.” The feds also claimed the measure would burden children by demanding that students prove their lawful presence, which in turn, discourages parents from enrolling them in school.
Years of litigation and hundreds of thousands of dollars later, Alabama has lost the battle against the federal government to control illegal immigration within its boundaries. This week a federal court in the northern district of Alabama entered afinal judgment resolving the lengthy conflict and permanently prohibiting the state from enforcing most of the provisions in its 2011 law. A group of open borders organizations had also joined the DOJ in the legal battle so the state was clearly at a disadvantage.
Besides claiming that Alabama’s law is unconstitutional, the DOJ said it threatened to impose significant burdens on federal and state agencies by diverting their resources away from dangerous criminal aliens and other high-profile criminal activity. The federal government is already making the nation safer, according to the DOJ attorney handling the case, by “aggressively prosecuting and deporting criminal aliens in record numbers.”
Alabama’s law would have diverted the attention of state and local authorities from violent criminals to ordinary families, the DOJ prosecutor says, adding that it also would have “forced parents to uproot their sons and daughters from their home.” Additionally, the law would have punished immigrant children for exercising their constitutional right to go to school, according to the DOJ.
The Obama DOJ has colluded with the ACLU to challenge other immigration control laws, including those in Arizona, South Carolina and Utah. In fact, the agency’s bloated civil rights division, formerly headed by a renowned illegal immigrant advocate (now Labor Secretary Thomas Perez), created a secret group to monitor laws passed by states and local municipalities to curb illegal immigration. The undercover body is known as the National Origin Working Group.
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Why Obama is racing against the clock on immigration
BY SEAN SULLIVAN October 24 at 11:42 am The Washington Post
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President Obama used a very urgent tone Thursday in remarks designed to press House Republicans to pass immigration reform, calling on them at least twice to try to get it done "this year."
"Let's not wait," the president said. "It doesn't get easier to just put it off. Let's do it now."
Politically speaking, the president is right. The longer the immigration debate drags on, the lower the odds it will culminate in a bill on his desk.
The clock is ticking. (CB/Bigstock)
Here's why.
Every day that goes by is a day closer to the 2014 midterm elections. And the months leading up to Election Day are a time for lawmakers to campaign, raise money, and do everything they can to hold on to their jobs. It's not a time for a contentious legislative debate that could complicate the fall campaign.
That's why history has shown that little gets done legislatively right before the election. Members are in their districts and states more and more often and less and less willing to take risks in Congress.
And immigration reform is a risky proposition for many House Republicans. Despite national polls showing the public largely in favor of overhauling the nation's laws, the calculus is often different back home. This is in large part why months after the Senate passed a sweeping bipartisan immigration bill, the House has yet to act.
But that doesn't mean it won't. Republicans have already moved ahead on some piecemeal measures. And House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said Wednesdaythat he was "hopeful" something could get done by the end of the year.
Coming off a fiscal battle that badly damaged the Republican brand, there is, arguably, more political incentive for Boehner to act on immigration than there has been in the past. Republicans need to repair their image. Helping pass broadly popular reforms is one way to do that.
But there isn't much time left on the legislative calendar this year, and it's not clear whether Boehner will bring immigration to a vote before the year is up. But this much we do know: Every day that goes by makes it increasingly difficult to pass new immigration laws.
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