“Here in Washington, the immigration debate is in stalemate. But in Kansas, there has been a breakthrough,” wrote Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank, one of many national voices to weigh in on the ugly joke by state Rep. Virgil Peck, R-Tyro, suggesting Kansas use helicopters to shoot not only feral hogs but also illegal immigrants. “There are a few logistical problems with Peck’s idea, including the fact that Kansas isn’t a border state. But maybe Oklahoma and Texas will grant overflight rights for immigrant-hunting sorties,” Milbank wrote. Rep. Charlie Gonzalez, D-Texas, chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, was unamused, telling the Dallas Morning News: “Speaking of human beings like animals and implying gun violence as an acceptable course of action crosses a line that his own party and his own peers should not tolerate.”
Good for Gov. Sam Brownback for calling on state Rep. Virgil Peck, R-Tyro, to apologize for “joking” in a House Appropriations Committee hearing that illegal immigrants could be hunted and shot like feral hogs. “I think it’s completely inappropriate,” Brownback said. But Peck didn’t seem sorry for his comment. Nor did he seem to understand how outrageous it was, saying after the hearing that he was “just speaking like a southeast Kansas person.” Not surprisingly, news of Peck’s statement quickly spread across the country. The Hispanic group Somos Republicans in Phoenix demanded that Peck apologize, saying its members are “sick and tired of the bigotry from state legislators.” Update: Peck handed out this signed apology to his fellow House members today: “My statements were regrettable. Please accept my apology.”
“Litigation is ongoing regarding many of the provisions of this bill, and should Kansas adopt this legislation, it will be certainly ‘buying’ costly litigation,” Allie Devine, vice president and general counsel for the Kansas Livestock Association, testified at a House Judiciary Committee hearing last week on an Arizona-style immigration bill proposed for Kansas. Devine added: “The bill places new requirements on businesses and local units of government without providing any of the training, or funding for the new requirements. It appears to be another unfunded mandate from the state to local units of government that will pass along to property taxpayers.” Todd Landfried of Arizona Employers for Immigration Reform testified that Arizona has lost $2 billion in direct economic impact as a result of its immigration law.
Good for Gov. Sam Brownback for indicating that he isn’t supportive of a bill the House passed last week that would repeal Kansas’ law allowing qualifying children of illegal immigrants to pay in-state tuition rates. Brownback sponsored a similar college tuition bill when he was in Congress but ended up voting against it. His stance on repealing the 2004 Kansas law has been unclear, though he has spoken movingly in the past against demonizing illegal immigrants. Brownback said last week that he wanted to focus on “identifying a problem and solving it.” The tuition law is not a problem.
Given the current makeup of the Kansas House, the only surprise in its approval of a bill to repeal the state’s in-state tuition law for qualifying children of illegal immigrants was that the vote margin wasn’t greater. Secretary of State Kris Kobach championed the bill in an Eagle commentary: “Beyond the illegality of the 2004 law itself, giving in-state tuition rates to illegal aliens specifically rewards the aliens’ lawbreaking. The law actually denies in-state tuition rates to aliens who possess a lawful student visa. Talk about perverse incentives. Giving in-state tuition to illegal aliens is also profoundly unfair to other students. It is a slap in the face to the law-abiding American students from out of state who must pay nearly three times as much in tuition.”
A comment by a Kansas state lawmaker is getting some national attention — unfortunately. Rep. Connie O’Brien, R-Tonganoxie, in arguing last week for repeal of the state’s in-state college tuition law for children of illegal immigrants, recounted how she and her son saw a student who didn’t have a driver’s license pick up scholarship money at Kansas City Kansas Community College last year. “We could tell by looking at her that she was not originally from this country,” O’Brien said. When asked how she could tell that the young woman was an illegal immigrant, O’Brien said: “Well, she wasn’t black, she wasn’t Asian, and she had the olive complexion.” O’Brien issued an apology today: “I misspoke and apologize to those I offended.”
Offering a seven-point plan for “attrition through enforcement,” Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach participated in a panel discussion on “real immigration reform” at the Conservative Political Action Conference this week in Washington, D.C. “You ratchet the level of law enforcement . . . to ensure that it is in their (illegal immigrants’) best interest to follow the law and in their case, just go home,” Kobach said. Kobach also called on states to challenge birthright citizenship, claiming to know about a Mexican woman who was lowered by ropes over a border fence in order to give birth to twins who would be U.S. citizens. Anti-immigration lobbyist Mark Krikorian even suggested Kobach may be in a future CPAC presidential straw poll.
Secretary of State Kris Kobach is the subject of a Newsweek profile headlined “America’s Deporter in Chief” that summarizes his extensive (and continuing) legal work fighting illegal immigration and links his zeal to the illegal immigration status of some of the Sept. 11 attackers. “I don’t have a racist or nativist bone in my body,” he tells Newsweek, adding that “in a legal debate, when your opponents turn to name-calling, it’s a good sign you’ve already won.” Meanwhile, a new report by the Southern Poverty Law Center, titled “When Mr. Kobach Comes to Town,” calls Kobach’s work a “legal jihad” blazing “a trail of tears.”
“We teed this up for the court because we thought the court would agree with us,” Secretary of State-elect Kris Kobach said about ugly plans by some states to try to prevent the 14th Amendment, which grants citizenship to all children born in the United States, from applying to children of illegal immigrants. But as with other Kobach anti-immigration measures, this one likely will be tossed out by the courts. The U.S. Supreme Court has a long history of supporting the 14th Amendment, including against past challenges aimed at African-American, Chinese-American and Japanese-American citizens.
Lamenting that the nation has just seen a “lost decade” on immigration reform, writer Roberto Suro predicted disappointment for the Republicans planning to pass tough new laws aimed at forcing an exodus of the 11 million undocumented residents. “The number of illegal arrivals dropped sharply during the recession, but the people already here did not leave, though they faced massive unemployment and ramped-up deportations,” he wrote. “If they could ride out those twin storms, how much enforcement over how many years would it take to seriously reduce their numbers?” Even so, the new GOP chairmen of related House committees have big plans to step up border security, workplace enforcement and arrests of illegal immigrants.
Once upon a time, the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act was co-sponsored by Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., and supported by Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Goddard. As recently as 2007, Brownback was among 11 Senate Republicans who voted to advance the legislation, which would offer immigrants brought illegally to the United States before the age of 16 a chance to become legal residents if they attend college or join the military. But Tiahrt long ago changed his mind about the DREAM Act, preferring to talk about securing the border. Brownback, now Kansas’ governor-elect, has backed so far away from it that Latino leaders rallied last week in Wichita trying to get him to state his position on it. And when the DREAM Act had what may have been its last chance during the lame-duck Congress last week, Tiahrt voted “no” and Brownback didn’t vote on a key procedural motion.
The state’s most absurd campaign ad of 2010? Topeka Capital-Journal columnist Ric Anderson gave that title to Mike Pompeo’s tank commercial in the 4th Congressional District. “Over footage of tanks barreling their way across a battlefield, a narrator describes how Pompeo led an armored battalion to secure West Germany’s border and will now fight to protect the U.S. border with Mexico,” Anderson wrote. He concluded: “Wow, so is the message here that Pompeo’s willing to drive a tank to El Paso or San Diego — or at least to the southern terminal of the Kansas Turnpike — to turn back illegal immigrants?”
Columnist Gail Collins jokingly expressed regret that questions about beheadings don’t come up more frequently in gubernatorial debates, as it did last week when Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer was challenged about her false statements about beheadings in the Arizona desert. “It’s usually all about bonded indebtedness and pensions,” Collins wrote. But Collins said the questioning and other false claims about crime raise a serious issue for Arizona and the rest of the nation: “Whether crime by undocumented immigrants created public fear, which then led to the Arizona law and Brewer’s current popularity. Or whether politicians, in search of a winning issue, created the fear all by themselves.”
Clearly, the United States needs to deal with its illegal immigration problem. But actions should be based on facts, not hysteria. For example, the number of illegal immigrants in the United States dropped by 8 percent from 2007 to 2009, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. And contrary to claims about out-of-control crime along the southern border, crime rates in border counties are among the lowest in the entire country, according to FBI crime data. Also, not only has Arizona’s crime rate been decreasing in recent years, its violent crime rate is at its lowest level since 1983. Also contrary to claims, Phoenix is not the world’s No. 2 kidnapping capital. Most children of illegal immigrants are born to parents who have lived in the United States for years and didn’t just cross the border to “drop” a child, as some GOP lawmakers contend. And after her bumbling debate performance last week, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer finally retracted her claim that there have been beheadings in the Arizona desert.
The decision by U.S. District Judge Susan R. Bolton to block the enforcement of several provisions of a controversial Arizona immigration law is a good first step toward reversing a discriminatory measure that should never have been adopted. Bolton was right to prevent state law enforcement officers from demanding immigration papers from those they “reasonably” believe are in the United States illegally. The judge noted that such stops would probably mean that legal residents and U.S. citizens would be “swept up” by this obnoxious and patently xenophobic requirement. We would have preferred a broader ruling striking down the law in its entirety, but Bolton issued a thoughtful and well-reasoned decision that merits respect. There is little doubt that some on the right will find reason to use her decision as political fodder to stir up anti-immigrant, anti-court and anti-federal sentiment. This would be wrong. What is needed is not more vitriol but increased cooperation in crafting a comprehensive federal immigration reform bill to address the legitimate concerns of states such as Arizona. — Washington Post
The federal court’s issuance of a temporary injunction against enforcement of the major provisions of the Arizona immigration law appears specious. Judge Susan Bolton bought the Justice Department’s claim that the federal government has broad and exclusive authority to regulate immigration, and therefore that any state measure that is inconsistent with federal law is invalid. The Arizona law is completely consistent with federal law. In effect, the court is saying that if the feds refuse to enforce the law the states can’t do it either, because doing so would transgress the federal policy of nonenforcement — which is nuts. This decision tells Americans that if they want the immigration laws enforced, they are going to need a president willing to do it, a Congress willing to make clear that the federal government has no interest in pre-empting state enforcement, and the selection of judges who will not invent novel legal theories to frustrate enforcement. They are not going to get that from the Obama/Reid/Pelosi Democrats. — Andy McCarthy, National Review Online
It was no surprise that a federal judge blocked most of Arizona’s anti-immigration law from going into effect. Though many Americans are understandably frustrated about illegal immigration, immigration policy and its enforcement are a federal responsibility. Kris Kobach, who is running for Kansas secretary of state and helped draft the Arizona law, predicted that the law ultimately would be upheld. “This is only the first shot in a very, very long battle,” he said. But Dennis Burke, the U.S. attorney for Arizona, noted that “the proponents of this went into court saying there was no question that this was constitutional, and now you have a federal judge who’s said ‘hold on, there’s major issues with this bill.’” Kobach and others have argued that the law could be a blueprint for other states to follow, but Burke said “the blueprint is constitutionally flawed.”
“Secure the border” may have been the most-spoken phrase during The Eagle editorial board’s recent candidate interviews. But how to do it? As New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson has said, “If you build a 12-foot fence, you’ll get a lot of 13-foot ladders.” Author and Univision anchor Jorge Ramos predicts that in the unlikely event that a secure fence were built along the 1,925-mile border, “we would quickly enter the age of the Mexican balsero, or boat person.” And Bloomberg columnist Al Hunt concludes that “the politicians have no intention of addressing this issue in this election year; President Barack Obama’s recent call for action was about politics, not legislating; his Justice Department’s suit against Arizona’s anti-immigrant measure, however sound, ends any slim hope for bipartisan action. Most Republicans are pandering to an anti-immigrant base and opposing the president on everything.”
President Obama is getting a boost from some evangelical leaders in his call for comprehensive immigration reform. The Rev. Bill Hybels of Willow Creek Community Church in Illinois, the Rev. Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention and other leaders support an overhaul that would include some path to legalization for illegal immigrants already here, the New York Times reported. Roman Catholic, mainline Protestant, Jewish and Muslim leaders long have favored immigration reform, but evangelicals have had more policy pull with GOP lawmakers in recent years. Still, the chances of reform passing this year remain slim to none.
Kansas isn’t among the nine states backing Arizona’s immigration law. But Kansas Attorney General Steve Six is disappointed by the federal lawsuit aimed at blocking the law. “Washington’s decades-long failure to enforce and modernize America’s immigration laws has forced the states to do most of the heavy lifting on the issue of immigration,” he said in a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. “The federal government should be our ally, not our adversary, in the fight to control illegal immigration.”
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer’s recent claim that law enforcement agencies have found beheaded bodies in the desert isn’t true, according to medical examiners in Arizona’s border counties. But what else is new? “Brewer’s mindlessness about headlessness is just one of the immigration falsehoods being spread by Arizona politicians,” wrote Dana Milbank of the Washington Post. “Border violence on the rise? Phoenix becoming the world’s No. 2 kidnapping capital? Illegal immigrants responsible for most police killings? The majority of those crossing the border are drug mules? All wrong.” But as Milbank noted, creating this misperception of out-of-control crime has been key to gaining public support for Arizona’s immigration law.
“Americans don’t need to be mollycoddled with phrasings from the Statue of Liberty and references to the United States being a land of immigrants. They need to be spoken to honestly,” columnist Mary Sanchez wrote about President Obama’s recent speech on immigration reform, which she gave a “C” grade. Among the reality Sanchez wants discussed:
– “About 40 percent of the illegal population initially arrived legally, and then never went home. And that group, many of whom are former foreign students and visitors from a wide range of countries, did not cross our southern border in the dead of night.”
– “The assumption many Americans make is that there is a legal way for low-wage immigrants to arrive in the United States — if only they were honest and upstanding enough to pursue that option. But such an option doesn’t really exist.”
As a matter of policy, President Obama was right earlier this year to criticize a harsh new immigration law in Arizona as “misguided.” On Tuesday, the Justice Department was right to challenge it as a matter of law. The Arizona legislation, which was signed in April and scheduled to go into effect at the end of this month, requires police officers to check the immigration status of those who are lawfully stopped if there is “reasonable suspicion” that they are in the country illegally. The law also makes it a crime for undocumented workers to seek employment and authorizes private citizens to sue state agencies that do not enforce the law. States are free to determine most laws and policies within their borders — even if the results are reprehensible and shortsighted. What they cannot do is pass laws that trump or ignore the federal government. The Justice Department suit, filed in Phoenix federal court, correctly calls Arizona on this breach, noting that the Constitution and Congress have vested the federal government — not the states — with exclusive authority to establish immigration and nationality laws. The Obama administration argues convincingly that allowing states to set their own policy toward immigration could harm U.S. foreign policy and lead to highly disparate treatment of immigrants from state to state. — Washington Post
It is outrageous that President Obama and his administration are suing Arizona because we are taking steps to secure our border — a job the federal government has failed to do. Calls for comprehensive immigration reform are like focusing all of our efforts at cleaning up the oil spill in the Gulf before stopping the gusher at the bottom of the ocean. There is no other country in the world that tolerates the type of situation that exists on our border with Mexico. Why aren’t we demanding that Mexico democratize its economy, create opportunities for its own citizens and mature into the trading partner and ally that American and Arizona surely needs? Surely it is in Arizona’s best interests to demand resolution to this crisis before being overwhelmed by an oncoming greater refugee crisis. The fruits of the current struggle can be reaped by demanding that our weak political culture in our nation’s capital do one thing right first — secure our border now. — Chuck Coughlin, Arizona Republic
The Justice Department’s lawsuit against Arizona’s new ID-check law drew a sharp response from the law’s author, Kansas secretary of state candidate Kris Kobach, who predicts defeat for President Obama’s strategy because “there is no federal statute that Arizona’s law conflicts with.” Writing for Human Events, Kobach concludes: “The Obama administration seems to believe that the president has the authority to set aside a state law because it is contrary to his political agenda, suspend the enforcement of federal laws for political reasons, and seize from Congress the legislative power to grant an amnesty. So much for a country governed by the rule of law, not the rule of man.”
Rep. Jerry Moran (left), R-Hays, pointed out during a debate Tuesday how Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Goddard, used to support allowing the children of illegal immigrants to pay in-state tuition and allowing illegals to get driver’s licenses. But that was then. Now the candidates for Senate are trying to outdo each other in their outrage about illegal immigration. Last week both men issued statements condemning President Obama for supporting amnesty, even though Obama said he didn’t. On Tuesday each issued a statement condemning the U.S. Justice Department for filing a lawsuit against Arizona’s new immigration law. “It is abundantly clear that the federal government is more concerned with going to battle with Arizona than putting a stop to the war happening along our southern border,” Tiahrt said. Moran said that “instead of spending money on a lawsuit, the Obama administration should use those resources to secure the border.”
President Obama noted last week how immigration reform has been “held hostage” by political posturing, and he said the question now is “whether we will have the courage and political will” to pass comprehensive reform. Based on the responses of our state’s two leading GOP candidates for U.S. Senate, the answer is “no.” Both men blasted Obama for supporting amnesty for illegal immigrants (even though Obama said that amnesty would be “unwise and unfair”) and for not doing more to secure the border. Rep. Jerry Moran, R-Hays, said in a statement: “The federal government must enforce our laws and not reward illegal behavior.” Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Goddard, complained that Obama “has the audacity to seek rewards for illegal immigrants.”
“Here in Washington, the immigration debate is in stalemate. But in Kansas, there has been a breakthrough,” wrote Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank, one of many national voices to weigh in on the ugly joke by state Rep. Virgil Peck, R-Tyro, suggesting Kansas use helicopters to shoot not only feral hogs but also illegal immigrants. “There are a few logistical problems with Peck’s idea, including the fact that Kansas isn’t a border state. But maybe Oklahoma and Texas will grant overflight rights for immigrant-hunting sorties,” Milbank wrote. Rep. Charlie Gonzalez, D-Texas, chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, was unamused, telling the Dallas Morning News: “Speaking of human beings like animals and implying gun violence as an acceptable course of action crosses a line that his own party and his own peers should not tolerate.”
