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Pat Young Responds: “The Arizona Law Was Written by Arizonans & Outsiders Should Stay Out of It”

Posted June 1, 2010 by Patrick Young, Esq.
Categories: Hate Watch

One of the most common arguments against the criticism of Arizona’s anti-immigrant SB 1070 law is that outsiders should not be trying to influence Arizona policy towards its own Latino population. The fact that this argument is often made by outsiders like Sarah Palin apparently does not set off the irony alarm in Arizona.

If outsiders should not be involved in this debate, then why did Governor Brewer and her cronies allow outsiders to write the law and push the agenda of a beltway anti-immigrant group?

As the Arizona Republic makes clear, the anti-immigrant law was not some desert flower groomed by native hands, but the product of an Ivy League lawyer and the nativist group that nurtured him. The Republic writes that much of SB 1070 was:

crafted by Kansas attorney Kris Kobach, an authority on immigration enforcement with a growing national reputation.

Kobach, who has an Ivy League education and ties to a controversial Washington, D.C.-based anti-immigration group, has been writing and defending city and state immigration laws since 2001. But it’s his efforts - and successes - in Arizona that have cemented his reputation as an immigration expert.

Arizona has become his test case to prove that ratcheting up laws that crack down on illegal immigration will motivate illegal immigrants to leave on their own.

“Slowly but surely, Arizona is showing that attrition through enforcement works,” Kobach said.

Kobach has a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University, a doctorate in political science from Oxford University and a law degree from Yale Law School. He said he first got interested in immigration issues as a law student reading about California’s Proposition 187, a 1994 voter-approved measure that would have denied health-care, education and social-service benefits to illegal immigrants. A federal court in California ruled the law unconstitutional.

Kobach said he was fascinated by the debate over whether states had the right to enforce immigration laws.

While at the Justice Department, Kobach began making contacts with state and local government officials.

Kobach left the Justice Department in 2003 and now teaches constitutional and immigration law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law. He’s running for secretary of state in Kansas.

Kobach’s work for the Justice Department got him in the door. Joining the non-profit Washington, D.C.-based Immigration Reform Law Institute, the public-interest law affiliate of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, earned him a seat at the table. FAIR, according to its website, seeks to improve border security, stop illegal immigration and decrease the number of legal immigrants allowed into the country.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, a non-profit Alabama-based civil-rights organization, has named FAIR among the 932 U.S. organizations it describes as “hate groups,” citing FAIR’s stance on immigration.

FAIR boasts 250,000 supporters, a very public profile and a national network of grass-roots subgroups.

In 2004, Kobach worked on a FAIR lawsuit against a Kansas law that gave children of undocumented immigrants in-state college tuition. The lawsuit was dismissed, but the work started to roll in.

Several cities hired him to help defend ordinances prohibiting landlords from renting to illegal immigrants.

He also, for free, helps state legislators craft laws.

Kobach first got involved with Arizona immigration efforts in 2006. His work defending cities’ efforts to combat illegal immigration had begun making headlines, and he was contacted by the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office to help defend the state’s Human Smuggling Act in court. Former County Attorney Andrew Thomas used the 2004 law to charge illegal immigrants as co-conspirators with the people who brought them into the country. The practice was upheld in court.

Kobach said he was first contacted by Pearce to help draft the 2007 law that makes it illegal to knowingly hire undocumented workers.

Kobach was later hired by the Arizona Attorney General’s Office to help defend the law, which was upheld by the Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. The Solicitor General’s Office has urged the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the employer-sanctions case.

When Pearce was ready to tackle state enforcement of federal immigration laws, he again called Kobach for help.

Kobach said he is happy with the final version.

Kobach said that’s exactly how the federalist system in America was envisioned.

“It’s been referred to as a laboratory of states,” he said. “One state does something that works, and other states follow.”

But critics say Arizona’s law reflects far more than the wishes of constituents. They say the law is the latest in a national effort by anti-illegal-immigration groups to change public policies using the exact legal wording they want, one state at a time. The groups, critics say, are using Arizona to serve their own greater goals.

Suman Raghunathan, immigration policy specialist with the Progressive States Network, said recent immigration law efforts in Arizona and elsewhere have been the direct result of a targeted effort from Kobach and anti-illegal-immigration groups.

“I think people have no idea that these are very well financed, well organized, planned efforts,” she said.

Both she and Kobach agree that when it comes to illegal-immigration laws, Arizona has been made the nation’s model state. It was the first state to require an ID to register to vote, the first to require employers to use E-Verify to assure employees were in the country legally and a leader in denying benefits to illegal immigrants. Now, under the new law, it’s the first to make it a state crime to be in the country illegally.

Next year, Pearce has said, he will propose a measure that would make Arizona the first state to stop the practice of giving citizenship to children who are born in the United States to illegal-immigrant parents. Ending the practice of granting citizenship to “anchor babies,” as they are sometimes called, is one of FAIR’s legislative goals…

Kobach has headed the Kansas Republican Party and drew criticism last year for apparently endorsing the birther claim that President Obama is not a U.S. citizen.

Pat Young Responds to Supporter of the Arizona Anti-Immigrant Law is a new series. Here are previous entries:
“The Arizona law was carefully crafted.”
“The law doesn’t create any new crime for being undocumented.”
“The Arizona law was amended to prohibit racial profiling.”
“The law has nothing to do with race..”

Tags : arizona, arizona boycott, kobach, pat young responds, sb 1070

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