When a Canadian understands the Constitution better than a lot of Arizonans or teabaggers do:
I haven’t objected to the new Arizona “papers please” law, SB 1070 (PDF), on the basis that its racist, although it probably is. I object to to it because it violates the Supremacy Clause (Article VI, Clause 2) of the United States Constitution, which clearly states that federal law is supreme and the states cannot override it.Whether SB 107o’s language exactly mirrors federal law or not – and it doesn’t – is immaterial. The fact is that the states cannot and should not be enforcing or prosecuting federal law.
Furthermore, whether the federal government is enforcing its own laws or not is also irrelevant. That is within the prerogative of the federal government under the Constitution. If the people don’t like the fact that administrations going back to Reagan’s haven’t been “protecting the borders,” they are free to elect a president who will. And that, my friends, is all.
Read the rest-he has Arizona State Senator Pearce pegged pretty well.
By the way, illegal immigrants are needed today. I’m just more willing to admit it than most craven Republicans. When all is said and done, illegal immigration is nothing more than the laws of supply and demand at work. American consumers want cheap goods, which forces American corporations to hire cheap labor. And it just so happens that you don’t get any cheaper than illegal. American politicians, being whorish cretins, will do whatever their Wall Street paymasters tell them to.What scumbag demagogues like Pearce are doing is scapegoating the only truly innocent people in the debate: the immigrants themselves. If their country was ravaged by corruption, poverty and a vicious drug war, I can only hope that most Americans would walk across a desert to feed their families on less than minimum wage. They’re not doing anything that you or I wouldn’t do, should the burrito turn.
I firmly believe that the GOP is pandering to their idiot base, but secretly know that no one is willing to pay thirty dollars for a strawberry. So they make the right noises, get everybody all stupid and excited and proceed to do exactly nothing. It’s cynical to the extreme, which is why it’s such good politics.At this point, the debate isn’t about illegal immigration anymore. It’s about the Constitution and how much of it an ignorant public is willing to sacrifice to the whims of the jackals in the political class.
We can get serious about enforcing our borders-other nations do after all-but that also means going after the incentives that drive people here in the first place.