Seeds For New U.S. Civil War?

The Obama administration’s decision to file a lawsuit blocking Arizona’s tough new immigration law may be the first shot in a new civil war, not with gun-toting armies but with economic weapons.

The inability (or unwillingness?) of the U.S. government to sufficiently protect Arizona in its battle with illegal immigrants and effectively help Gulf Coast states fight the BP oil disaster serves as a run-up to a new confrontation between the states and the feds.

Arizona, via enforcement of its new immigration law, is trying to stop illegals from pouring across its border with Mexico. Ultimately, illegals find work (thanks to unethical employers) and raise their kids here in America, at U.S. taxpayer expense, as WMB previously blogged.

In the Gulf Coast states, officials and residents are fighting for their lives, jobs and homes as the oil gushing from the exploded BP rig pollutes the Gulf of Mexico and fouls the beaches of Alabama, Mississippi, Florida and Louisiana. State and local officials are ready to attack the biggest oil spill in U.S. history directly because they know what’s at stake.

Yet, in Arizona and in the Gulf region, the U.S. government – despite its vast taxpayer-funded resources – has been unable to enforce federal immigration law in the former and remove red tape to speed much-needed environmental help in the latter. To borrow from Ronald Reagan, government is definitely the problem.

You don’t live or work in the Southwest or Gulf Coast regions, so it doesn’t really matter to you? Geography aside, it matters to your wallet and mine, and the future of the United States of America. States’ rights vs. federal supremacy has deep roots in the founding of this country.

It unites and divides us all the time, and the trick for 234 years has been making the glue stick. In 1861, the glue finally came apart and nearly destroyed us. Several of my ancestors fought for the Union; one lost his life at age 22. If and when the U.S. Supreme Court gets to decide the immigration lawsuit, the central issue before the top court will be the right of the U.S. government to keep states from enacting laws that usurp federal authority.

How ironic: Arizona’s law was modeled after federal law, which the U.S. government has chosen not enforce, either by incompetence or neglect, or both. Instead of following Arizona’s lead, the Obama administration is trying to reinvent the wheel with the lawsuit and spend taxpayer money doing it.

The suit filed in Phoenix federal court spells out why the U.S. government believes immigration laws passed by Congress and enforced by a range of federal agencies must take precedence to any passed by a state Legislature.

The Arizona law requires officers, while enforcing other laws, to question a person's immigration status if there's a reasonable suspicion that they are here illegally, such as speaking poor English, traveling in an overcrowded vehicle or hanging out in an area where illegal immigrants typically congregate, according to the Associated Press.

The law also makes it a state crime for legal immigrants to not carry their immigration documents. Don’t we all have to carry ID these days? What’s the big deal? Unless, you want to assume all authorities are out to profile you?

The arguments by the Obama administration will focus on a core constitutional concern — balancing power between the states and the federal government. The issue centers on the long-running "pre-emption" legal argument that says federal law trumps state law, according to the AP.

Essentially, the U.S. Justice Department wants to discourage other states from following Arizona's lead. Unfortunately, that misguided logic misses the point: If the U.S. government was doing its job policing illegals, then it's likely Arizona would not have taken any action on immigration.

Kris Kobach (left), the University of Missouri-Kansas City law professor who helped draft the Arizona law, says the state law is only prohibiting conduct already illegal under federal law. And Harvard Law School professor Gerald Neuman believes Arizona could make a compelling legal argument that it has overlapping authority to protect its residents.

As for the Gulf Coast states, the images and stories reported by CNN point to serious flaws in the way the U.S. government is overseeing the plugging and cleanup efforts. State and local officials are pleading for the feds to allow them to be directly involved.

Why not? These folks in the Gulf Coast states have the most to lose but, more important, they know things about where they live, work and play. Did it ever occur to the D.C. bureaucrats that locals might have some better and innovative ideas to battle the oil spill? Let’s put these people and unemployed folks to work right now!

This is the same country that put a man on the moon in 1969, yet we can’t figure out how to pour our best resources (all resources) into the Gulf Coast region, right in our own backyard? What does this say about the effectiveness of the U.S. government?

Our first Civil War basically was about states’ rights with slavery as the flash point issue – the South believed it was fighting for its economic survival and way of life. Fortunately, the Union was preserved, the slaves freed and the nation eventually emerged a stronger and better place (a work still in progress).

But a new civil war, an economic one, could be brewing with Arizona and the Gulf Coast states providing the seeds of discontent. Our Founding Fathers were divided about states’ rights vs. those of a big federal government. The U.S. Constitution aimed to strike a balance, which seems now to be off, especially in preserving our borders.

Talk isn’t always cheap, as these issues illustrate. Instead of letting lawyers run the show, at taxpayers’ expense, how about action that gets the job done in timely fashion. America leads by example!

As for me, I practice what I preach at writenowworks.com.