Here’s another question. Someone posted the text of the Federal Immigration and Nationality Act earlier in the thread, so apparently a law like this is already on the books. How does the AZ law differ from this one, and if something very like it exists, how can it be declared unconstitutional? (Bearing in mind, I’m not an attorney, just a curious citizen...)
I don’t know specifically how they are different. It is my understanding that the Arizona act reflects the substance of federal immigration law.
And I don’t know how the feds can argue “preemption”—when federal law and state law conflict, federal law preempts state law—if Arizona’s statute mirrors the laws a. Congress passed and b. the executive branch and the attorney general are ignoring.
Holder, Zero & Co. are `between a rock and a hard place’ but I’m sure several of their best and brightest are working on some piece of jurisprudential genius that will explain that the Constitution is a `living, breathing instrument’ and some animals are more equal than others, and so forth and so on.