The Arizona lawsuit

I have now had a chance to carefully read the complaint filed by the USA in its suit against Arizona. (You can reach the complaint by clicking on the title to this post0

The complaint is surprisingly weak in my opinion. In essence, it goes through the details of US Immigration law and says that this detailed law preempts the area; in other words, the feds are claiming that no state can legislate in this area. Of course, the mere existence of a detailed federal law does not mean that states cannot add their own details. States cannot legislate rules that conflict with valid federal statutes, but there is little in the Complaint that even smacks of conflict. Absent conflict, there needs to be a clear indication that Congress meant federal law to be exclusive before that conclusion may be reached by a court. Again, the Complaint does not point to any part of federal law that indicates that it is meant to be exclusive.

A second part of the complaint alleges that the Arizona law will funnel aliens to the feds who will need to be dealt with by them. This will "burden" the feds and keep them from enforcing the law in the same way as now. (Hard to imagine) I think this issue will not be successful in court. After all, the impact of the Arizona enforcement will just be to serve up to the feds a stream of illegal aliens who the feds will then need to process. The feds will be freed of the burden of catching these aliens. This alone ought to free up more federal resources than the consideration of the aliens will use. I have to believe that it takes more time to catch an illegal alien than it does to decide if he or she is to be deported. Actually, for those who are to be deported, the time should not count since these are folks that the feds want. The only burden will be on the feds to determine that there are some aliens caught by Arizona that it does not want to remove. the only time will be the time for the feds to make that determination and to say "you are free to go" to the alien in question.

The feds also make much of a section of the Arizona law that gives citizens a right of action against officials or others who prevent the full enforcement of the immigration laws. That section of the law seems clearly directed against state officials, not federal officials. The granting of a state cause of action against a state official cannot be preempted by the Congress.

The most interesting thing about the fed suit, however, is that it does not allege discrimination or any form of racial profiling by Arizona or the state police. It would seem that Eric Holder and his folks have finally read the Arizona law. Indeed, after filing this law suit, Holder and Obama owe the people of Arizona an apology for all of the race baiting talk that these two engaged in over the last few months.