Texas State Representative Debbie Riddle files Arizona style immigration bill

Texas State Representative Debbie Riddle (R-Tomball) literally camped out at the Texas Statehouse Sunday night, so that she could be one of the first legislators to file bills for consideration in the upcoming Texas Legislative session.

Her first filing: An Arizona-style immigration status check.

Riddle is from Tomball, just north of Houston. Houston is one of the local governments with the onerous policy of being a “sanctuary community,” which refuses to even raise a finger to assist federal efforts to enforce documentation laws.

Last summer, the entire Houston Metro area was shocked when a 14-year old girl, Shatavia Anderson was gunned down in a field near her home. The killer was a twice-deported illegal immigrant by the name of Melvin Alvarado. Alvarado has confessed.

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"The overwhelming majority is saying that they want something done," state Rep. Debbie Riddle, who filed some of the early bills, tells the Texas Tribune. "They want their families to be safe."

Bills filed this week would:

• Require picture IDs at polling places.
• Stop state funding of any local governments that provide "sanctuary" to illegal immigrants.
• Ban any state agency printing signs or documents in any language other than English.
• Require proof of citizenship to get a driver's license .

The Tribune says that with the GOP controlling all statewide offices, the top courts and nearly two-thirds of the seats in the Texas House and Senate, "many of the tough measures that died in previous sessions are expected to have a much smoother route to passage."

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Like many states in the country, and especially among those in the southern latitudes, Texas Republicans saw big gains. As many as 22 state lawmakers of the Democrat persuasion were ousted from office last Tuesday. Republicans saw that as a mandate to begin cracking down on illegal immigrants and state policies that enable and encourage the renconquista.

While Texas Governor Rick Perry is publicly cool to the idea of the state exerting control over immigration enforcement, he’s an astute politician reportedly eying a run at the White House in 2012 or 2016. It’s unlikely that he’d vigorously oppose Riddle’s measure if he expected to get national support among a conservative GOP base that views illegal immigration as a top national priority.

We’ll see how this plays out, and whether a chastened White House has the gumption to sue Texas as well as Arizona. But expect Texas Republicans to use the Shatavia Anderson tragedy to remind legislators what’s at stake.

That didn’t take long: McCain all for considering Reid’s DREAM Act

Via Ace of Spades.

McCain promises he’ll help “resolve” their issues.  The DREAM Act, if you’re not familiar with it, would create a path to amnesty through the higher education.  Undocumented?  Get a degree in Hispanic Studies and you get your green card.  McCain likes that idea:

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To his credit, he does acknowledge that 80% of Americans say “secure the border first.”  But in his own context, that’s just another little hurdle he sees along the way to Amnesty. What should shock me—but doesn’t—is that this comes only weeks after he vanquished J.D. Hayworth in the Arizona primary.

Geez, can he at least wait until he’s elected for another term as America’s Maverick RINO before jumping off on a DREAM vote?  Reid needs five more votes to invoke cloture.  If he gets them, it comes up for a vote. 

Obama ties it off on Arizona lawsuit

Barely one day after his Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against the state of Arizona over its new-but-not-yet-enforced immigration law, the Obama White House is already distancing itself from the matter, essentially tying it off and running for the political hills.  Today's Washington Post:

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The White House has said the decision to challenge Arizona's immigration law was out of its hands, left completely up to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and the lawyers at the Justice Department.

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Obama will be called upon frequently in the next several months to make the government's case that the Arizona measure unlawfully preempts federal law. As he campaigns for Democrats at town hall meetings around the country, it will be Obama -- not Holder -- who will be at the center of the intense discussion.

A senior Democratic strategist said Obama will probably seek to avoid directly defending the government's suit, or attacking the Arizona law, which remains popular in most polls. Americans largely see the law as an effort to do something about illegal immigration in the wake of federal inaction.

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Out of his hands? The Attorney General of the United States, like all other cabinet secretaries, is a political appointee.  He serves at the pleasure of the POTUS and at no point during the conduct of his duties does a member of the cabinet take matters into his own hands or take action that falls outside of the policy agenda dictated by the White House.

The Obama regime wants us to believe that the White House really had nothing to do with this; that the lawsuit was the inevitable result of a careful reading of the Constitution and case law by the crack team of lawyers political hacks at DOJ.  If you believe that, I have slightly leaky oil well in the Gulf of Mexico for sale.  Cheap.

Obama is tying this one off and walking away, strictly for political purposes.  He's leaving Holder out there to dangle, and Holder has already taken intense Congressional heat for a disastrous appearance before the House Judiciary Committee last Spring. Between now and November, any appearances before House or Senate committees will certainly lead to intense scrutiny of  United States v. Brewer, and the political firestorm surrounding the state's action and DOJ's suit is going to torch a lot of Congressional races this fall. 

Obama can try to distance himself from the heat, but it's still his Attorney General, his Department of Justice, and his politically foolish firestorm.

Gimme some feedback in the comments.

DOJ's milquetoast lawsuit against Arizona Immigration Law

You heard it in Ecuador first--the United States Department of Justice is today filing a lawsuit against the State of Arizona, asking the District Court of Arizona to rule the state's new immigration law unconstitutional.

As is noted by Jake Tapper, the suit makes no mention of discrimination at all:

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The filing makes no assertion that the law is discriminatory or risks being applied in a discriminatory fashion, as the president and other officials said they feared would be the case. Interestingly, this suit makes no civil rights charges against the Arizona law.

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Huh? Wasn't the White House all a twitters about how the carefully crafted Arizona statute could mean that it wasn't safe to take your kids out to have ice cream?  Weren't we hearing all about how chilling it would be to let stand a law that let police stop people on the street for no good reason and demand to see their "papers?"  That's not the story now?  Apparently not.

What the suit claims is that the state is attempting to usurp a constitutionally-enumerated power to regulate immigration and establish a policy of naturalization.  But that's not what the state is doing--at all.  The statute merely grants state law enforcement officers the power to determine immigration status during routine police contact and only if a reasonable suspicion exists.  Hypothetically, that condition of reasonable suspicion is satisfied if, for example, a state highway patrolman sees a car full of 20-something men, speeding while driving erratically, on a highway known to law enforcement as a corridor used by drug dealers and human smugglers.

The state doesn't prosecute any offenders under any state statute.  It turns all offenders over to appropriate federal officials so they can do their jobs.

At Hot Air, Ed Morrissey has a little fun with DOJ's tack:

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It would be akin to saying that it’s unconstitutional for local police to respond to a bank robbery in progress because robbing an FDIC-insured bank is a federal crime.

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The same would go for preventing police from responding to a kidnapping in progress because kidnapping is a federal crime. 

There are numerous federal regulatory frameworks into which states have stepped into to impose tougher regulatory restrictions than the feds do.  Under the Clean Water Act, the federal government establishes regulatory power over discharges made into the coastal and inland waterways of the U.S.  But states such as Florida have taken not only regulatory duties, but investigation, enforcement and punishment as well.  If the federal government reviewed Florida's NPDES program and decided it was too strict or preempted the federal regulatory scheme, would they have a case?  Isn't Florida advancing the federal objective of improving state water quality with tougher restrictions?  More importantly, isn't Florida actually usurping a federal responsibility by investigating and punishing offenders?


What the Arizona case boils down to is the Department of Justice attempting to force the courts to decide a political argument.  The state of Arizona has told the federal government that the laws are not sufficiently enforced to protect the people of the state.  This is precisely what Florida told EPA decades ago when it announced its own NPDES framework.  This is not a dispute that should be settled in a courtroom.  It's one that should be settled in the ballot box, and we have a fine opportunity to get started this November.


Gimme some feedback in the comments.