Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who has said he wrote Alabama’s tough immigration law on his laptop while sitting in a Kansas turkey blind, got a boost Wednesday when a federal judge ruled that key parts of the law can be enforced immediately while other parts remain blocked for now. So Alabama authorities can question, and hold without bond, those suspected of being in the country illegally, and public schools must verify students’ citizenship and report statistics to the state. The law has drawn multiple legal challenges, including from the Obama administration. Kobach said the Alabama judge’s ruling bolsters more than supporters of that state’s law. “It really helps the other states trying to fight the good fight here in stopping illegal immigration,” he told an Alabama TV station. And Kobach plans to push the 2012 Kansas Legislature to pass an Arizona-style immigration law.
“The prognosis for the next few years is bad with a chance of worse,” wrote columnist David Brooks. “And the economic conditions are not even the scary part. The scary part is the political class’s inability to think about the economy in a realistic way.” The problem, Brooks contends, is that instead of recognizing the many different factors contributing to the economic downturn, ideologues “pick out the one factor that best conforms to their preformed prejudices and, like blind men grabbing a piece of the elephant, they persuade themselves they understand the whole thing.” Thus many Democrats push for more government spending to combat low consumer demand, and Republicans call for lower taxes and less regulation to combat low business investment. “If we’re stuck with these two mentalities,” Brooks writes, “we will be forever presented with proposals that are incommensurate with the problem at hand.”
Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who has said he wrote Alabama’s tough immigration law on his laptop while sitting in a Kansas turkey blind, got a boost Wednesday when a federal judge ruled that key parts of the law can be enforced immediately while other parts remain blocked for now. So Alabama authorities can question, and hold without bond, those suspected of being in the country illegally, and public schools must verify students’ citizenship and report statistics to the state. The law has drawn multiple legal challenges, including from the Obama administration. Kobach said the Alabama judge’s ruling bolsters more than supporters of that state’s law. “It really helps the other states trying to fight the good fight here in stopping illegal immigration,” he told an Alabama TV station. And Kobach plans to push the 2012 Kansas Legislature to pass an Arizona-style immigration law.
