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.

Targeting Illegals Spreads In U.S.

First it was the state of Arizona, now it’s a little town in Nebraska, the heartland of America. The message is simple: Illegal immigrants are not welcome in this nation built by generations of legal immigrants.

It’s not about racism or profiling, as some claim. It’s about our proud nation of states, towns and small communities trying to protect our way of life from outsiders who take advantage of our open borders, ignore our rules, and choose to live and work here.

Voters in tiny Fremont, Neb., had the guts to say enough when they recently voted to approve a ban on hiring or renting property to illegal immigrants who, with the help of ethically-challenged employers, seek opportunities to better themselves in the town of 25,000, just 35 miles northwest of Omaha.

Fremont's action comes in the wake of Arizona’s new law requiring police investigating another incident or crime to ask people about their immigration status if there's a "reasonable suspicion" they are in the country illegally.

The Fremont measure will require would-be renters to apply for a license from the town, which has seen a surge in immigrants in the past two decades largely because of available jobs at the nearby Fremont Beef and Hormel meatpacking plants, the Associated Press reports.

Fremont officials must refuse to issue a license to applicants found to be in the country illegally. The ordinance also requires businesses to use the federal E-Verify database to ensure employees are allowed to work.

Both the Arizona law and the Fremont measure face court challenges, the latter from the American Civil Liberties Union, which has promised to file a lawsuit to block enforcement of the proposal roughly 57 percent of Fremont voters endorsed.

Hazleton, Pa., passed an ordinance in 2006 to fine landlords who rent to illegal immigrants and deny permits to businesses hiring them, according to the AP. The Dallas, Texas, suburb of Farmers Branch also has tried for years to enforce a ban on landlords renting to illegal immigrants. Federal judges struck down both ordinances, but both are on appeal.

Supporters of the Fremont measure say it’s needed to make up for what they see as lax federal law enforcement (the Obama administration has been all over the place on the issue). Opponents say it could fuel discrimination, according to the report by AP writer Josh Funk, who interviewed Fremont residents:

Linda Nafziger said she voted for the ordinance because she doesn't think the community should be supporting illegal immigrants. But she acknowledged the measure won't end illegal immigration. "They'll just move somewhere else and be somebody else's problem," she said.

Trevor McClurg said the measure is fair because it's aimed at people who aren't legally in the United States. "I don't think it's right to be able to rent to them or hire them," McClurg said. "They shouldn't be here in the first place."

Nafziger and McClurg are correct, and that’s why this illegal immigrant issue has struck a raw nerve in our country, where jobs for legal citizens are hard to find with millions still unemployed as a result of the Great Recession.

"Not only do local ordinances such as this (in Fremont) violate federal law, they are also completely out of step with American values of fairness and equality," Laurel Marsh, executive director of ACLU Nebraska, told AP’s Funk.

Whose values is Marsh referring to – ours, or those of the illegals who want to continue to live and work here, and compound the situation by having children born in this country?
Maybe Marsh is out of step with many Americans, who are angry and frustrated with a bloated federal government that is ineffective much of the time, especially in such key economic areas as immigration.

Hard-working immigrants built this nation – English, Dutch, German, French, followed by Irish, Italian, Polish and others. The current influx is comprised of those whose native countries speak Spanish. All are welcome here, so long as they do it legally!

Officials in Arizona, a border state with Mexico, have been grappling with illegals and chose to take a stand because the federal government remained on the sidelines in enforcing U.S. immigration laws (except for some border fence construction under the George W. Bush administration).

WMB previously applauded Arizona’s courageous stance because of the resulting firestorm of criticism. It’s easy to follow the crowd or suffer in silence on any controversial issue but far more demanding to make your voice heard, especially when it’s contrary to the bleeding-heart liberals now steering public policy in D.C.

In other places on the planet, illegals are tortured, imprisoned or killed. America does not do that, but our generosity should not be mistaken for stupidity. This country does not suffer fools lightly, though our tolerance seems to suggest otherwise.

As one blogger notes, this nation offers illegals jobs, Social Security cards, welfare, food stamps, driver’s licenses, credit cards, subsidized rent or loans to buy houses, free education, free health care, a lobbyist in Washington, billions of dollars worth of public documents in their language (Spanish?), and the right to carry their native country’s flag while they protest they don’t get enough from America.

We at WMB see this immigration debate growing more divisive by the day. The implications for business, industry and legal American workers are very clear. We don’t need any more lip-service from the dolts in D.C.; what we need is real and consistent action to protect our borders and our way of life.

Bottom line: If our national leaders were doing better jobs in our behalf, then officials in Arizona and Fremont wouldn’t feel compelled to take matters into their own hands. The message is clear if the powers-that-be in D.C. choose to hear it, act on it, and not cave in to illegals and those who blindly support them.

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

Immigrant Law Hits Raw Nerve

The uproar over Arizona cracking down on illegal immigrants boils down to this: The state wants to enforce its own version of federal law and, as a consequence, discourage employment of illegals in America. We should applaud this effort, not condemn it, in the broader sense.

Arizona Senate Bill 1070, as amended, requires local and state law enforcement to question people about their immigration status if there's reason to suspect they're in the country illegally, and makes it a state crime to be in the United States illegally. The questions would follow a law enforcement officer's stopping, detaining or arresting a person while enforcing another law, the Associated Press reports.

With the exception of one senator, the entire Arizona Republican legislative delegation voted for the original bill signed by GOP Gov. Jan Brewer, who insisted racial profiling would not be tolerated in the Grand Canyon State.

If opponents can gather enough signatures to force a referendum, the law might not go into effect for years. Lawsuits challenging the sweeping measure already have been filed. For now, the law and its amendments will take effect July 29 unless blocked by a court or referendum filing, according to the AP.

Some argue the bill is a thinly veiled endorsement of racial profiling, presumably of illegal immigrants from neighboring Mexico. Under the measure, authorities could demand papers from you if you’re suspected of being illegal.

Arizona’s tough new law has brought the immigration issue to the forefront, with representatives at three levels of California government calling for economic measures against their neighbor, the AP reports.

There's a feeling, proponents of the boycotts say, that acting against Arizona will be a wake-up call to Arizona citizens and will discourage other states from enacting similar laws, according to the AP.

“This is a draconian enforcement approach that, if expanded [to] other states, would have a crippling effect on the entire national economy,” says Raul Hinjosa-Ojeda, an associate professor of Chicana/Chicano studies at UCLA who researches the economics of immigration. “The general public is going to see the negative effect this has on the business community and will begin asking themselves, ‘Do we really understand what our legislature just did? Is this really worth the cost?' ”

Does racial profiling exist in the United States? Yes, and it rightfully has been addressed in places such as New Jersey, where state police were investigated for stopping minorities on the highways.

Arizona, unlike tiny New Jersey, shares a large border with another country whose populace seeks a better way of life in a nearby land of opportunity. There’s nothing wrong with that because millions of immigrants to America, from countries around the globe, have sought the same thing for generations.

But here’s the major problem: Mexicans are illegally entering the United States and working here with the aid of unethical American employers seeking cheap labor. In theory, those jobs could go to Americans, including Hispanics who immigrated legally. While some claim our citizens would snub low wages, it’s not a stretch to see how that might not apply with the U.S. unemployment rate hovering around 10 percent.

Others argue the loss of immigrant labor would hurt American business. How? Who needs an employer who ignores federal law by hiring cheap but illegal labor? Two wrongs don’t make a right.

Unless you’ve lived in Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas, it may be difficult to fully grasp the extent of the illegal immigrant problem and why Arizona has taken such a dramatic step.


“The state (population 6,595,778) has an estimated 460,000 illegal immigrants,’’ writes syndicated Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen. “It also has a porous border with Mexico, and there is an understandable nervousness over the drug-fueled mayhem that is taking place in that country almost daily, some of it spilling back into Arizona. The people of this state are not totally crazy. They are merely misguided and scared. An amazing 70 percent of them support the new law.’’

While noting President Obama has denounced the law, Cohen adds: “… the Obama administration had better pay attention to the conditions that produced this law. In a way, another tea party movement has emerged — a scream of pain and anger from a constituency that has seen immigration laws turn meaningless and the impotence of the government flaunted on a daily basis.’’

Protests, lawsuits, boycotts, politics, and profiling charges aside: What’s wrong with the idea of securing our borders and having folks follow rules to legally immigrate here? What’s wrong with penalizing American employers who knowingly employ illegals?


Forget the Hispanic race card some use for personal advantage. America always was a melting pot of cultures since its founding; it’s one of our major strengths as a nation. My grandfather and father emigrated here from Italy; my mother’s family came from Ireland.

“Estimates of the number of undocumented immigrants currently in Houston range into the hundreds of thousands,’’ the Houston Chronicle writes in an editorial. “They have become an integral part of our economy, and their children, many of them U.S. citizens born here, attend public schools.

“Something like SB 1070 would rip the economic and social fabric of Houston and divide existing communities. Instead, our federal lawmakers should be crafting statutes that secure our borders while providing those already here a route to become permanent, legal contributors to city and state,’’ the Chronicle says.

A purist might argue this whole immigration debate amounts to a battle over individual states’ rights vs. big federal government. Arizona’s citizens seem be saying if the U.S. government won’t enforce its immigration laws, then it’s up to the states. This is not vigilantism or racism, just governing, period.

Maybe we should listen to the message, instead of condemning the messenger.

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