Individual Liberty — Individual Responsibility 

The Democratic Party never gives up on a bad idea.

Three years ago the nation debated “comprehensive immigration reform”. The people overwhelmingly rejected it because it was simply a euphemism for amnesty for illegal immigrants despite lawmakers protestations to the contrary. This year it's the hot topic again.

What has changed? Well, there's a Democratic majority in the House, Senate, and the executive branch. They've discovered that they can shove their socialist agenda down the people's throats, but that without a change in voter demographics it will cost them their majority.

Three years have passed, and still the federal government refuses to enforce existing immigration law on our southern border. The drug cartels from Mexico have become more violent taking the lives and property of U.S. land owners near the southern border. Because of the federal government's shameless failure to carry out its constitutionally mandated duty Arizona has enacted a law requiring its police to uniformly enforce the requirement that proper identification be provided by suspects of traffic violations and crimes. If proper identification isn't given immigration status can be questioned, and arrests made. The only thing that really changes here is that the law no longer provides officers the choice to ignore the identification requirement – something they often do when stopping Hispanic people.

This attempt to enforce existing law regardless of the suspect's race is called “profiling” and “racist” by our president, and by the president of a foreign land with even harsher immigration laws than ours - laws that require profiling of suspects and that require local officials to enforce federal law. Our own state department, without ever having read the law declares before China that the idea of uniform enforcement of the law is somehow a violation of human rights. Arizona is chastised by the United Nations for doing something that all sensible nations would do.

Here, the left is making the claim that uniform enforcement of identification requirements is “racist” and that somehow local law enforcement aiding federal law enforcement is somehow unconstitutional. That's funny, I seem to remember that existing federal law has provisions in it that allow local law enforcement, with proper training, and with an agreement with the attorney general, to enforce federal immigration law. (follow the link and go to the bottom of the page.)  This is in Title 8 of the U.S. Code (as of 2009), chapter 12, subchapter II. The entire title is available here in PDF format.

Just in case you aren’t interested in following the links, here’s what it has to say…

(1) Notwithstanding section 1342 of title 31, the Attorney General may enter into a written agreement with a State, or any political subdivision of a State, pursuant to which an officer or employee of the State or subdivision, who is determined by the Attorney General to be qualified to perform a function of an immigration officer in relation to the investigation, apprehension, or detention of aliens in the United States (including the transportation of such aliens across State lines to detention centers), may carry out such function at the expense of the State or political subdivision and to the extent consistent with State and local law.

Read Arizona’s law. It’s much shorter than the federal law at only 17 pages of straightforward text (45 lines per page). They’re simply prohibiting local jurisdictions from ignoring federal law. They’re checking identification of EVERYONE that commits a traffic infraction or is arrested (that’s not profiling, it’s the opposite of profiling, since it applies to EVERYONE), and taking steps to check upon the immigration status of people that don’t comply. Arrests are made, and the suspects handed over to federal immigration officials. And of course, the Department of Homeland Security is now considering not taking people arrested by Arizona police into custody. That’s right, the agency charged with ensuring the security of the homeland is deliberately choosing to neglect its own duty!

Three years ago a law was passed requiring a border fence be built. Another law was passed requiring electronic monitoring of the border.  Both laws were ignored and now will not be implemented.

Nothing really has changed has it, other than federal neglect of our laws simply getting worse? And now the sadly misnamed Democratic party wants to try shoving their failure from three years ago down our throats. Aren't you convinced yet? The Democratic party is no longer interested in anything but power, regardless of the cost to our nation.

Isn't it about time we defeated them once and for all?