“In enjoining Arizona’s landmark immigration law, U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton maintains the Obama administration’s carefully cultivated fiction: that what concerns the White House regarding S.B. 1070 is its effect on legal, rather than illegal, aliens,” writes Heather Mac Donald on The Corner. Mac Donald, a participant in IWF’s immigration debate, has maintained throughout this controversy that the real issue is whether we are serious about enforcing immigration laws.
Mac Donald notes that nowhere in Judge Susan Bolton’s ruling is the subject the Arizona law’s effect on illegal immigrants addressed-I, too, found it odd that the judge focused on how difficult it would be for a small set of people to carry their identity information: visitors from visa-waived foreign countries, those seeking political asylum, and women who are fleeing domestic violence, all of whom are easily verifiable, perhaps with minor inconvenience.
“The real threat posed by S.B. 1070 was that it would disrupt the de facto amnesty that the executive branch has accorded to the vast majority of illegal aliens. It would start to implement congressional mandates and the public will that the immigration laws be enforced. For that reason, it had to be stopped,” Mac Donald writes.
Mark Levin, who filed a brief supporting the state of Arizona, is also harsh on Judge Bolton: “This is a typical example of a judge stating the correct legal standard, but then ignoring it and applying the test in a fashion completely divorced from the facts of the case in order to reach a predetermined decision.”
I haven’t read the ruling yet, but all I can say is that it seems that this puts Arizona back at the point where it cannot control illegal immigration. This is just the beginning, of course, and as one commentator (I can’t remember who) said, it might all come down to what side of the bed Supreme Court Justice Anthony gets up on the day the high court decides.