Immigration Battles

Some wins for Enforcement; Losses for Obama & Amnesty Crowd:

Immigration Enforcement Wins Big

May 26, 2011 11:14 A.M.

By Mark Krikorian

The Supreme Court has upheld Arizona’s 2007 law requiring all employers to use the E-Verify system for checking new hires.

Of Course They Are

May 26, 2011 11:21 A.M.

By Mark Krikorian

The ACLU is challenging Indiana’s immigration law. Some excerpts:

Under other disputed provisions, police could arrest someone for having a federal immigration “removal order” on file — even if that order is not being pursued by the federal government.

“Removal” here means deportation; former immigration judge Mark Metcalf, in a CIS report published this week, finds that there are 1.1 million unexecuted removal orders — people ordered deported who have just not left. Since the feds aren’t looking for them, I certainly hope Indiana will.

And this:

Something as simple as using a picture ID card issued by the Mexican consulate would be enough to allow police to make an arrest, the ACLU lawsuit claims, even though more than 50,000 cards have been issued locally in the past five years for basic uses such as getting consular services, cashing a check or using a credit card

The “matricula consular” card, issued by Mexican consulates in the U.S. (and generally not recognized in Mexico itself) is useful only for illegal aliens. Foreigners living legally in the U.S. have U.S.-government-issued ID, by definition — usually a green card or an employment authorization document (EAD). If you need a matricula card it’s because you don’t have legitimate ID, because you’re an illegal alien.

Creating Facts on the Ground May 26, 2011 11:59 A.M. By Mark Krikorian The Supremes’ complete repudiation of the Chamber of Commerce/Obama administration opposition to state E-Verify requirements will likely result in such mandates making more progress in the states’ next legislative sessions; Georgia passed a mandate this year, and the Chamber’s strategy of scaring lawmakers away from E-Verify with the bogeyman of Arizona’s SB1070 won’t work any more. Of course, the point of the push for such state E-Verify mandates isn’t really to get all 50 states to sign on separately, but to move Congress to pass a national E-Verify mandate, something House Judiciary Committee chairman Lamar Smith would very much like to do. The state mandates help this along in two ways: First, they obviously create political momentum. But in a more practical sense, as more states require use of E-Verify — whether for all employers or just state agencies and/or state contractors — a larger and larger share of the nation’s hiring will be run through the system, increasingly making it a standard part of the employment process. In other words, the goal is to make E-Verify a fait accompli, so that when Congress finally gets around to passing the national requirement, it will be more of a mopping-up operation than the imposition of an unfamiliar requirement on unsuspecting employers. And I think we’re already getting close to that tipping point. More on the Magnitude of the E-Verify Win May 26, 2011 12:11 P.M. By Mark Krikorian A lawyer friend writes: By the way, an interesting tidbit – the administration not only supported the Chamber, but had Neal Katyal — the Acting SG [Solicitor General, who represents the federal government before the Supreme Court] — argue the case. The SG normally argues only one, maybe two, cases per sitting, and that’s reserved for the cases the gov’t sees as the most important/prominent. The reason the administration and the Chamber of Commerce saw this case as so important is that they want to hold back mandatory E-Verify as their main bargaining chip for what they really want out of a “comprehensive” immigration deal — amnesty for the Obama administration and massive increases in imported captive labor (“guestworkers”) for the Chamber. The decision makes it more likely Congress will be able to pass such a mandate on its own, not bundled with any amnesty or guestworker provisions. In other words, it’s not just a win for enforcement but also a setback for amnesty and increased immigration.