Posted on 07/20/2009 11:13:48 AM PDT by Steelfish
Lawyer Leads Local Fight Against Illegal Immigration
JULIA PRESTON July 20, 2009
DALLAS — On a recent morning, Kris W. Kobach, a conservative law professor, rushed late into a federal courtroom here with his suit slightly rumpled and little more than a laptop under his arm.
His mission was to persuade the judge to uphold an ordinance adopted by a Dallas suburb that would bar landlords from renting housing to illegal immigrants.
Kris Kobach outside the Dallas courthouse, where he argued that an ordinance barring landlords from renting to illegal immigrants should be upheld.
A team of lawyers from a Latino advocacy group had set up early at the opposing table, fortified with legal assistants and stacks of case documents.
Unfazed, Mr. Kobach unleashed a cascade of constitutional arguments. Case names and precedents spilled out so rapidly, the judge had to order Mr. Kobach several times to slow down.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
We need more people like this attorney before we lose the country. I am not sure how you fund them.
BUMP
...The program led to the deportation of more than 13,000 immigration violators. But some Muslim leaders said it traumatized their communities.
Typical New York Times craziness.
ping
Good tactics and bad tactics. The good tactics include going after employers who hire illegals. This makes sense, if having the federal government dictate who can hire who makes sense. And while that is debatable, it is an accepted norm, and the e-verify system has been set up just so employers only can check on immigration status.
However, a lease contract with a landlord is a different kettle of fish. With the exception of blatant discrimination, the federal government has no authority to involve itself in otherwise legal transactions. And though they would want to involve themselves in ALL transactions, there is no means to do so. That is, landlords cannot access e-verify, except for their employees for whom they will be submitting W-2 forms.
And by far the vast majority of landlords are just people who want to rent a room or a house. If e-verify was opened up to them, then it would be open to anyone. All Social Security numbers would be in the public domain.
So, try again. There are other ways to pressure illegal aliens to leave.
“We need more people like this attorney before we lose the country. I am not sure how you fund them.”
*****
Trial attorneys are heavily skewed to be Democrats by a variety of factors. On the civil side, personal injury lawyers heavily influence/control many bar associations. They are left-wing Dems who are anti-business because large fees require large tort awards.
On the criminal side, even those who start out as prosecutors typically move to the private sector. More often than not, that’s as a criminal defense attorney. And criminal defense lawyers trend left-wing because the Democrats favor victims/defendants over the rule of law.
Is this the same Kris Kobach that is running for Kansas Secretary of State?
The essence of your argument is flawed. The prospective renter can be asked to supply an SSN to run a credit check to ensure the prospective landowner has a reasonable probability of collecting rent.
So why can't they provide a matching number for e-verify to ensure they are in the country legally?
I would agree that the use of SSN's is a major invasion of privacy and a key to identity theft.
Therefore, if the purpose of collecting the number is something other than employment or applying for benefits, an "in lieu of" form of identification should be accepted such as a passport, certified birth certificate, green card, naturalization papers, health insurance card, etc.
The logic here being that if a SSN cannot be required for one non-employment related purpose such as renting to a potential illegal alien, then it ought not to be required for other such purposes such as medical treatment, applying for a credit card, etc.
The landlord-tenant and the employer-employee relationships are governed by State law and nothing precludes the States from requiring landlords and employers to show doucmentary evidence of citizenship or permanent residency before they enter into a binding contract especially so if no federal funding is involved.
The flaw in the idea is that landlords have no means to check identity, or verify ID’s or papers.
This is more obvious to me, living in the southwest, because I have had to help several citizens without identification get identification. Often the only connection they could use to prove their citizenship was if they had been arrested in the past—the police would verify their fingerprints. The police regularly perform this service, for a fee, for individuals who want to be bonded, like cashiers.
Believe me, it can be a nightmarish experience if you lose your identification paperwork. Paradoxically, because of illegal aliens, a lot of people have to *reconstruct* their identities after they have been stolen, and this is a nightmare times ten.
It can take a decade of hard work, with the errors being faithfully reintroduced into your file as soon as you think you have eliminated them. And heaven help you if whoever stole your ID has warrants pending. Every police officer you meet might arrest you, and you could be unexpectedly held for 24 or 48 hours before they realize it was a mistake. Again and again.
A part of my point that I didn’t mention is that there is a way around this problem—requiring cities to verify renters identities, providing a certification to landlords of identity, before they rent. But when this is proposed to the cities, they freak out at the idea of “a bureaucratic nightmare” and the huge cost to them for doing so.
And yet they would have no problem inflicting the identical problem on landlords. But while cities could verify ID and papers, landlords can’t. And this matters, because either landlords have to be threatened if they accept fake ID, or they will accept fake ID.
Good points. Governments should be subject to the same record keeping requirements which they impose on business. I beleive this was one of the planks of the 1994 Contract With America. It is time for another!
If he was really in it for the money he'd be on the other side.
KRIS KOBACH IS NOW BEING INTERVIEWED ON THE RINO MICHAEL MEDVED’S SHOW (1-2 PM PT). CHECK YOUR LOCAL LISTINGS.
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