Opinion Forum

Holder’s ‘In the Dark’ Criticism of Immigration Law

May 19th, 2010

On May 13, Attorney General Eric Holder, who had been critical of the new Arizona immigration law, testified that he had based his comments on newspaper and television accounts but had not read the by then more than two-week-old statute:

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., who has been critical of Arizona’s new immigration law, said Thursday he hasn’t yet read the law and is going by what he’s read in newspapers or seen on television.

Mr. Holder is conducting a review of the law, at President Obama’s request, to see if the federal government should challenge it in court. He said he expects he will read the law by the time his staff briefs him on their conclusions.

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Articles written by Dan Miller
Tags: Arizona, constitutional, Holder, illegal immigration, legislation, racial profiling
Categories: Law, News, Politics | Comments (10) | Home

10 Responses to “Holder’s ‘In the Dark’ Criticism of Immigration Law”

larry ennis | May 19th, 2010 at 5:28 am

Once again Dan Miller makes his point.
A good piece of work from Miller.
Follow the link and read all that he has to say.

d | May 19th, 2010 at 6:30 am

I would like to thank you,Mr.Miller. I read the law and it is so reasonable and not racist,if everyone would read it,there wouldn’t be such a fuss. It only gives the police the right to enforce a law we already should be enforcing. Then,folks do like to protest,and probably still will,but you’d think that if you are illegal,you would not be allowed to gather and protest,without being deported. We give people doing illegal things in our country,way too many rights.

Dan Miller | May 19th, 2010 at 8:19 am

The “news” reports continue to say that

The Arizona law, which comes into force in July, requires police in the border state to check the immigration status of anyone they suspect is in the United States illegally.

Opponents say the measure encourages racial discrimination and Obama has condemned it. His administration has threatened to sue and said the issue underscores the need for a major immigration policy overhaul.

This quote is from a Reuters article on the visit today of Mexican President Calderon. It is typical of the vast majority of news accounts I have read, of which there have been many.

Once a “misstatement” gains momentum, it takes on a life of its own and what the Arizona statute actually says fades into obscurity. The Big Lie strategy works.

larry ennis | May 19th, 2010 at 8:26 am

Aw Dan, do you think that the political powers that be might actually lead us astray? Damn right they would!
Thanks for your efforts to get the truth out.

Brian Bagent | May 19th, 2010 at 1:28 pm

Is anyone really surprised at the level of deceit and cynicism from this Chicago gang? They certainly aren’t the first and definitely not the only to be this way, but they have taken this stuff to never-before-seen heights.

d | May 19th, 2010 at 4:04 pm

Go to Mexico,illegally,see what happens to you. If you don’t get killed on your way in there. Does not hurt my feelings if they don’t come to Texas. Obama probably has not read the law,either. He knows where his bread is buttered,one place,Mexico.

Dan Miller | May 19th, 2010 at 4:16 pm

Ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies; unless I want to.

Brianna | May 19th, 2010 at 10:05 pm

Dan, why not join as an author? Your posts show up here often enough.

Tom Carter | May 21st, 2010 at 10:03 am

Several things concern me about the Arizona law (as changed):

You can say that racial profiling is not permitted, and you can change “contact” to “stop, detention, or arrest” and there’s still a problem. The hard fact is that the first and most immediate indicator of illegal status (in Arizona, anyway) is ethnicity. If you look Hispanic, you might be illegal. If you look like Conan O’Brien, you probably aren’t illegal (although you might be an extraterrestrial). My concern is not for the illegal immigrant but for the American citizen who happens to be Hispanic and is inevitably going to get a larger portion of police attention.

Read the excerpts of the law above and think about it as though you were a police officer (Brian is the expert on this). The police are damned if they do and damned it they don’t. The few racists cops can use the law as an excuse to focus on Hispanics, while the vast majority of fair-minded, professional cops risk censure if they aren’t sufficiently attentive to anyone who may appear to be Hispanic.

Finally, Arizona has no business enforcing immigration law. I sympathize with the people of Arizona, given the abject failure of the federal government in this area and the scope of the problem in this border state. However, the answer is not individual state law and immigration enforcement but an absolute necessity for Congress and the President to get their act together on immigration. Bush and the Republicans failed to do it, true, but that’s no excuse.

Dan Miller | May 21st, 2010 at 11:24 am

Tom, reasonable people can disagree on the way in which the new Arizona law will be implemented. What reasonable people — particularly those in high positions of authority — should not do is opine, erroneously, on what the law says without bothering to read it. That was my principal thesis.

That a law innocuous as written might be applied inequitably is certainly true. Laws against speeding, littering, drunk driving and the like can obviously be applied based on expressly prohibited profiling. That could be said of nearly any law. That does not suggest to me that we should have no laws.

Should the new Arizona law be applied inequitably, it will doubtless be attacked in the courts, as it should be.

It would be far better if there had been no need for Arizona to attempt to enforce federal law. The means chosen by Arizona to meet the need, generated by its proximity to the border and the failure of the federal government to enforce its own laws, fits as well as can be expected with the unenforced federal laws. It is said that nature abhors a vacuum; that seems to be the case here.