Another amnesty?

New York Post ^ | June 16, 2011 | Kris Kobach

[La Lydia]

History is threatening to re peat itself. Twenty-five years ago, Congress passed the Simpson-Mazzoli Act (...illegal-alien amnesty), which gave a path to citizenship to illegal aliens already here in exchange for prohibiting the hiring of illegal workers -- a provision that has been enforced only sporadically. It was a raw deal for conservatives. Tuesday, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith introduced a bill (HR 2164) to require nationwide use of the E-Verify system. While the Smith bill sounds good, in fact, it hobbles immigration enforcement. Negotiated with the pro-amnesty US Chamber of Commerce, the bill would establish a fairly toothless E-Verify requirement while defanging the only government bodies that are serious about enforcing immigration law -- the states.

... The bill stabs Arizona in the back, just after it won a victory in the US Supreme Court ... and lets the state suspend the business licenses of employers who knowingly hire unauthorized aliens and requires employers to use E-Verify.

The decision was a significant defeat for the Obama administration...

It gives a green light to the rest of the states, allowing them, too, to revoke the business licenses of employers who hire unauthorized aliens. ...

But now, the Smith bill threatens to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. The Arizona law -- along with every other state law on the subject -- would be preempted under the bill.

.... Smith's bill would change federal law so that the states can no longer take any actions against employers who knowingly hire unauthorized aliens.

State governments, not the federal government, shoulder the lion's share of the fiscal burden of illegal immigration....Now, the Smith bill threatens to tie the states' hands in addressing the problem....

[La Lydia]

We are being screwed. I wondered why the US Chamber of Commerce and big Ag would sign onto this. Now we know. I am very disappointed in Lamar Smith.

[La Lydia]

open borders ping

[freekitty]

This is what makes me mad These jerks pretend to be doing something when in reality they are continuing their destruction of America.

It’s time to make them really accountable. I think some of them deserve jail terms and no pensions; etc.

[McGavin999]

That’s a great idea. Too bad we can’t have a national referendom to abolish congressional pensions (and the pensions for their staff)

[Palter]

Chamber of Commerce has always been obl. Ag, well that’s obvious.

[stephenjohnbanker]

The US COC doesn’t give a rats a$$ about our country. They have been pro amnesty from the get go. Cheap labor is all they care about.

[Elendur]

It’s time to make them really accountable.
/// Yes!!!

ACCOUNTABLE Public Servants.
and no more amnesty, and no compromise on budgets until spending is cut.

...i’m tired of us being Charlie Brown offered another football...

[kabar]

When Kris Kobach says there is a problem, there is a problem. We are being sold down the river by both parties.

[cripplecreek]

Businesses that hire illegals who kill or rape should be made responsible for aiding and abetting.

[La Lydia]

He really is the most reliable person on this issue.

[muawiyah]

People like Smith do this in part to curry favor with their major donors ~ large agricultural interests who like slave labor.

I suspect that he has no qualms whatsoever about that sort of thing but that would be secondary to his own personal interest in having cheap lawnboys and cheaper tarts available 24/7.

The folks who are in Smith's district should get busy and get his butt out of Congress. Now is the time to start!

NOTE: He keeps a second home in Hyannisport, Massachusetts. That's for you folks who are going to jump up and say "Hey, he's really a Conservative" ~ but we are already agreed that being soft on immigration enforcement,particularly when you are ready to negotiate away bringing the states into that process to the extent possible, is a game changer and takes a politician right out of the penumbra of emanations that define Conservatism.

[Will88]

I don’t know these Texas politicians very well, but I thought I’d read here that Lamar Smith was tough on immigration enforcement. Of course, it was Kay Bailey Hutchinson who inserted language in a bill to neuter the Secure Fence Act of 2006 and remove the requirement that a fence actually be completed.

And we know what the Bush family has done on the issue, and McCain and Kyl. They border state politician, in most cases, are not the people we need determining our immigration laws and policies. The Hispanic populations in their own states seem to have put most all of them in a pandering frame-of-mind concerning illegal immigration.

And a still only partially addressed question is: Is Rick Perry any different from W and McCain and others from the border states?

[La Lydia]

When Lamar Smith was chairman of the House Immigration Subcommittee, he was tough as nails on enforcement. He had all kinds of hearings on how the Clinton administration was dropping the ball. I don’t know who got to him -— Grover Norquist? — but someone did. Perry is bad on some immigration issues, good on others. I don’t entirely trust him on immigration.

[freekitty]

Right. You would think these people are the Casey Anthony of liars.

[Will88]

I thought I'd read here several times that Lamar Smith was tough on illegal immigration issues and you provide further confirmation. Maybe the CofC got to him since that's who he worked with on this deal.

I'm not entirely against Perry because I know politicians often change some positions when going from state to national campaigns. But I want some conservatives to get all these candidates on the record concerning illegal immigration. Otherwise, they'll all take the McCain position of: secure the border first, and then nothing about what really happens after that.

[nbenyo]

Roy Beck (Numbers USA) and Mark Krikorian believe this law is a huge step in the right direction.
It would toughen enforcement in 43 states, but pre-empt parts of laws in 7 states which assess penalties to employers who don’t use E-verify. Only the feds could assess these penalties under this law.

[kabar]

I work with both of them as well as with Kris Kobach who wrote the AZ E-Verify law (as well as 1070) and the Alabama law. I will be checking with both Roy and Mark on their reaction to Kobach's piece. We had a presentation from the Chief of staff of a prominent Rep Congressman on Tuesday on Smith's bill. I raised the question of how this would impact the state laws and why would the Chamber go along with it. His response was that there was no impact on the state laws, which are generally stricter. Kobach seems to disagree and that we are snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Kris Kobach is a very impressive guy. SCOTUS has upheld the AZ E-Verify law, came down with a favorable decision on the Hazelton case, and I predict he will win the AZ 1070 court battle. From a legal standpoint, I will take his opinion over Roy's and Mark's.

Kobach graduated from Washburn Rural High School in Topeka, Kansas in 1984. Four years later, he earned an A.B. (summa cum laude) in Government from Harvard College, graduating first in his class in the Government Department. Subsequently, the Court of St. James awarded him a Marshall Scholarship, which allowed him to earn M.A. and D.Phil. degrees in Politics from Oxford University (in 1990 and 1992, respectively). He then returned to the United States and attended the Yale Law School, where he earned his J.D. in 1995 and served as an editor on the Yale Law Journal. During this time, he published two books: The Referendum: Direct Democracy in Switzerland (Dartmouth, 1994), and Political Capital: The Motives, Tactics, and Goals of Politicized Businesses in South Africa (University Press of America, 1990).

From 1995 to 1996, Kobach clerked for Judge Deanell Reece Tacha of the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals in Lawrence, Kansas. He began his professorship at UMKC shortly thereafter.

In 2001, President George W. Bush awarded him a White House Fellowship to work for Attorney General John Ashcroft. At the end of the fellowship, he stayed on as Counsel to the Attorney General. Shortly after the attacks of September 11, 2001, he led a team of attorneys and researchers who formulated and established the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System. In addition, he took part in work to reshape the Board of Immigration Appeals in 2002. After his government service ended, he returned to UMKC, where he holds a chaired professorship.

While running for Congress, Kobach represented out-of-state students (on behalf of Federation for American Immigration Reform) in a lawsuit against the state of Kansas, challenging a state law which grants in-state tuition to illegal immigrants. The suit was dismissed for lack of legal standing for the plaintiffs.

In 2005, Kobach filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Immigration Reform Law Institute, challenging a similar law in California. In September 2008, the California Court of Appeal held that California's law granting in-state tuition rates to illegal aliens was preempted by federal law. (Martinez v. Regents, 166 Cal. App. 4th 1121 (2008)).

In 2010, Kobach filed a third lawsuit, this time in Nebraska. The case is still pending.

Kobach has also litigated several lawsuits defending cities and states that adopt laws to discourage illegal immigration. He served as lead lawyer defending the city of Valley Park, Missouri in a federal case concerning an ordinance that sanctioned employers who hire unauthorized aliens. The ordinance was upheld by Missouri federal judge E. Richard Webber on January 31, 2008 (Gray v. Valley Park, 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 7238). The ACLU, representing the plaintiff, appealed the case to the Eighth Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals. Kobach prevailed in the appeal, and the Court allowed the Valley Park ordinance to stand (Gray v. Valley Park, 567 F.3d 976 (8th Cir. 2009)).

Kobach is also the lead attorney defending the city of Hazleton, Pennsylvania, whose anti-immigration ordinances had been struck down by a federal judge in Pennsylvania and again before the Third Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals.

Arizona immigration lawKobach played a significant role in the drafting of Arizona SB1070, a state law that attracted national attention as the country's broadest and strictest—at the state level—anti-illegal immigration measure in a long time, and has assisted in defending the state during the ongoing legal battle over SB 1070's legality. On February 7, 2008, Federal Judge Neil V. Wake ruled against a lawsuit filed by construction contractors and immigrant organizations who sought to halt a state law that imposes severe penalties on employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants. The plaintiffs appealed the ruling, but Arizona prevailed (with Kobach's assistance) in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (Chicanos por law Causa v. Napolitano, 558 F.3d 856 (2009)). The case is currently before the U.S. Supreme Court.

[HiJinx]

Ping!

[itsahoot]

This is a great example of why the 11th commandment is stupid, traitors come in both party flavors.

Evil, whether or not it is done with good intentions, is still evil.

[Liz]

Enough is enough-----nothing good has come from this plague of lawbreakers violating our borders.

Karl Rove was WRONG----they came from hellholes whining about a "better life".....but that was a ruse. They DID NOT embrace democracy once they had a taste of it as Rove famously said. On the contrary, they are a national security threat-----and are conspiring to tear down democracy---and their home countries are helping them. Read on:

Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Peru and are conspiring to collude with The Anti-Defamation League, The American Civil Liberties Union, the Southern Poverty Law Center and several other civil and immigrant rights groups to infringe on US sovereignity to make laws as we see fit.

The co-conspirators filed a federal class-action lawsuit against Georgia's law and are now asking a judge to halt the measure pending the outcome of their case.

TEXAS DREAM ACT DEMONSTRATION----- 2009