May 14, 2008 8:56 AM
The passage of the anti-immigrant IR 1105 yesterday placed Suffolk County among a growing number of localities to have instituted local enforcement of immigration laws. The question that several of you have e-mailed me is "What do we do next?".
In the short term, there will be a court hearing this week on whether the presiding officer of the legislature acted legally in voting on the bill. Although this suit stands for an important procedural point and may curtail some of the abuses of Bill Lindsay, we should also understand that with Mystal no longer in the Legislature, sending the bill back to a soon to be stacked committee will not prevent its passage.
A second legal challenge may be filed on the grounds that counties can't take on the role of immigration enforcers in violation of the preemption doctrine contained in the Constitution.
Finally, all of us need to begin collecting and circulating all evidence of the negative impact of IR 1105. Last night Legislator Nowick compared the bill to the cell-phone law. We need to show her and the other legislators that the consequences of this bill go far beyond a dropped call.