Immigration Policy Center Q&A Guide To SB 1070

It deserves some revisiting, because the IPC has backed up almost every single point I made in my post addressing AZ SB 1070. The professionals at the IPC have redoubled my words minus the flowery injections of mine.

Determining whether or not someone is in the country unlawfully is not as simple as checking a database. Under the civil immigration system, most people are entitled to appear before an immigration judge before they are officially determined to be here illegally and in the process they have the right to challenge that determination, apply for relief from removal (such as asylum), and have their day in court. The Arizona law circumvents that process, potentially punishing people for being here illegally based solely on the determination of a state law enforcement officer or a federal agency before a full determination has been made.

In a strange contrast Judge Andrew Napolitano, Senior Judaical Adviser Fox News, repeats my case that the very first measure of unconstitutionality to the SB 1070 bill will defeat it in the courts before every single measure of unconstitutionality is unpacked the way it was when I last wrote on this topic.

Immigration policy is the express business of the federal government, not the states. No state is able to set new immigration policy, let alone a bill this vague is nothing but a racist witch hunt designed to destroy all civil liberties. In my legal understanding, all the explorations beyond the point that proposals for immigration policy are not handled by the states are merely intellectual exercises.

SB 1070 fails every constitutional test, but the real tragedy here is the lie that supporting this bill is anything but akin to supporting racism via racial profiling. It's not.