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Washington Needs to be Reminded

Written by Larry Roeder, Editor
2012-06-28

The first of several important decisions the United States Supreme Court is expected to make this week was rendered on Monday.

In the decision of Arizona v. United States, the justices rejected most of the state’s 2010 border control law but affirmed the “papers, please” provision. That provision empowers police to investigate the residency status of anyone they stop or arrest and suspect of being undocumented. Both sides of the immigration issue claimed victory.

Officials in some states, including Pennsylvania, see it as a green light to push strict state immigration laws.

Others like Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, was quoted as saying that, “The justice’s decision demonstrates that we cannot fix our broken immigration system on a state-by-state basis.” How true.

But when you have a federal government that has been lax for so many years in doing anything about the issue of undocumented immigrants, and now have a federal government that says it won’t enforce certain federal laws regarding the subject, one can’t blame the states for running out of patience. Taxpayers are footing the bills and there is no reform in sight.

What about enforcing the only provision upheld by the justices in the Arizona case? Shortly after the ruling was released, the Department of Homeland revoked Arizona’s 287(g) program, which allowed state and local police to act as immigration agents,

That means police will now have to call Immigration Control Enforcement (ICE) officers to determine the detainee’s status and that is a process that can take a long time and tie up local law enforcement officers. And, if ICE verifies that a person is here illegally, there’s nothing that police can do about it without federal approval.

According to reports, ICE will respond in three circumstances: when the illegal immigrant is a criminal, a repeat immigration violator or a recent border crosser.

Nobody is going to deport 12 million undocumented immigrants and government officials should not be looking for band aids like President Obama’s recent executive order to stop deporting undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children. It’s a good and noble idea, yet the wrong way to implement a regulation without solving the problem.

Yes, we have federal laws in place that were not enforced for a number of reasons, including the fact that the ICE department was understaffed and under-motivated to uphold them. That barn door was left open long ago and all of the horses are gone.

We need real reform that will provide paths to citizenship for those who desire and deserve it. We need to improve our methods of documentation for immigrants so that we can find and deport those who abuse the courtesies they were extended with visas and other forms of entry, and those who break our laws. Officials also need to look into reforming the Department of Homeland Security and its enforcement arm, ICE.

There is a compromise somewhere among the arguments of our nation’s leaders but they are afraid or unwilling to make the decisions to bring this issue to a satisfactory conclusion. Then they wonder why frustrated state officials take steps to address the problem on their own.

One of our nation’s founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin, believed that compromisers might not make great heroes, but they do make great democracies.

Perhaps our government leaders need to be reminded of this.

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