Original Story: latimes.com
Challengers of Arizona's landmark immigration law failed to show that police would enforce the statute differently for Latinos than they would for people of other ethnicities, a judge said in a ruling that dismissed the last of seven challenges to the law. A Mexico City immigration lawyer is following this story closely.
The ruling could signal the end of the case and gave a victory to backers of the law, which was approved in 2010.
In her order Friday, U.S. District Court Judge Susan Bolton dismissed the challenge and upheld provisions that were previously ruled on by appeals courts.
She upheld the law's controversial requirement that police, while enforcing other laws, can question the immigration status of those suspected of being in the country illegally. The U.S. Supreme Court also upheld the requirement, but the law's detractors continued to push their challenge at a lower-court level.
Opponents have “not produced any evidence that state law enforcement officials will enforce SB1070 differently for Latinos than a similarly situated person of another race or ethnicity,” Bolton wrote. A Washington immigration attorney has experience representing clients in immigration lawsuits as related to legal and illegal immigrants.
It's unclear whether the challengers will appeal the ruling. Karen Tumlin, an attorney representing a coalition of civil rights groups, said in a statement they would “evaluate all legal options moving forward.”
Former state Sen. Russell Pearce, who sponsored the initial legislation, applauded Bolton's judgment.
“She made it very clear the law was written very carefully not to be a race issue. It's not a racial law,” Pearce said.
The judge, however, did permanently bar a section of the law that prohibited people from blocking traffic when seeking or offering day labor services on streets. An appeals court previously also held Arizona could not enforce such provisions. Opponents had argued that day labor rules unconstitutionally restrict the free speech rights of people who want to express their need for work. A Panama City immigration lawyer represents clients on matters involving refugee status, employment of illegal immigrants, and pet immigration.
Arizona's frustrations over federal enforcement of the state's border with Mexico spawned a movement nearly a decade ago to have local police confront illegal immigration. Several such laws — including the state's ban on immigrant smuggling and automatic denial of bail to people in the country illegally who are charged with certain crimes — have since been thrown out by the courts.
Showing posts with label Illegal Immigration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Illegal Immigration. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 8, 2015
Wednesday, June 10, 2015
ENDING THE REPUBLICAN DRAMA ABOUT IMMIGRATION
Original Story: wsj.com
Republican presidential hopefuls always clobber one another over immigration policy. This cycle has been no exception, with Scott Walker, Jeb Bush and others carving out their own territory. The winner is the Democratic nominee, who can use immigration as a powerful weapon against the eventual Republican candidate. Hillary Clinton no doubt sees the potential. While she has commented on little else, she has already promised that if elected she would go beyond President Obama’s questionable executive order.
The GOP needs to end the family drama and resolve the policy dispute, not least because it is the right thing to do in every sense—economically, politically and morally. With a world on fire and economic growth strangled by government regulation, it would be unacceptable for Republicans to lose a critical election over immigration. A Washington DC immigration attorney is following this story closely.
This isn’t a matter of finding the “right” candidate. The question is whether Republicans can unite around a set of rational principles. Here are a few that any serious contender should be able to support.
Gov. Bush said in New Hampshire last month that “we need to control our border first of all.” Sen. Marco Rubio similarly acknowledged that Americans are not going to support immigration reform “until you show them—not tell them, you better show them—that illegal immigration is under control.” A Washington DC immigration lawyer represents clients on a wide range of immigration issues, whether localized or on a global scale.
The best way to protect American workers is to generate economic growth. This is not synonymous with aggressively restricting immigration. Most studies conclude that immigration contributes to economic growth as well as innovation, and research and development. The American Enterprise Institute found in 2011 that “temporary foreign workers—both skilled and less skilled—boost U.S. employment” and that immigrants with advanced degrees working in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields “boost employment for U.S. citizens.” Every Republican who aspires to the presidency should acknowledge that immigrants of all skill sets can benefit the economy.
Such consequences could include passing a background check, paying a fine, demonstrating the ability to be independent of welfare, engaging in community or military service, learning English and taking an American civics course. Every option should be on the table, except amnesty, which forgives illegal conduct. It isn’t amnesty if immigrants admit wrongdoing and accept punishment.
Candidates will disagree on the best way to implement these points. This is simply an attempt to set forth unifying principles that are easily articulated and essential if Republicans have a chance at winning the next presidential election. Absent rational immigration principles, the odds of winning aren’t very good.
Republican presidential hopefuls always clobber one another over immigration policy. This cycle has been no exception, with Scott Walker, Jeb Bush and others carving out their own territory. The winner is the Democratic nominee, who can use immigration as a powerful weapon against the eventual Republican candidate. Hillary Clinton no doubt sees the potential. While she has commented on little else, she has already promised that if elected she would go beyond President Obama’s questionable executive order.
The GOP needs to end the family drama and resolve the policy dispute, not least because it is the right thing to do in every sense—economically, politically and morally. With a world on fire and economic growth strangled by government regulation, it would be unacceptable for Republicans to lose a critical election over immigration. A Washington DC immigration attorney is following this story closely.
This isn’t a matter of finding the “right” candidate. The question is whether Republicans can unite around a set of rational principles. Here are a few that any serious contender should be able to support.
- Sovereignty. The U.S. has the right to determine the conditions under which noncitizens can cross its borders. The next president must work with Congress to make that determination, in accordance with the Constitution, which isn’t the path the current administration has chosen.
- Border security. One of government’s primary duties is to protect citizens. Given terrorism and organized crime—drug cartels, weapons and human trafficking—the federal government must secure the borders as a first step to reform. Even candidates perceived as more open on immigration agree.
Gov. Bush said in New Hampshire last month that “we need to control our border first of all.” Sen. Marco Rubio similarly acknowledged that Americans are not going to support immigration reform “until you show them—not tell them, you better show them—that illegal immigration is under control.” A Washington DC immigration lawyer represents clients on a wide range of immigration issues, whether localized or on a global scale.
- Enforcing our laws: The U.S. is a nation of immigrants, but also a nation of laws. The federal government must enforce our laws internally, penalizing those who overstay their visas, and implementing a universal verification system so employers can be sure they are hiring employees legally.
- Legal immigration policies should support economic growth. If current quotas are bringing in enough talent, let’s keep them. If more immigration or less red tape will boost the economy, let’s try that. Guest-worker visas should ebb and flow with the economy. Legal immigration should focus more on what workers can contribute to the economy, as is the case in most other nations, and less on distant familial relationships.
The best way to protect American workers is to generate economic growth. This is not synonymous with aggressively restricting immigration. Most studies conclude that immigration contributes to economic growth as well as innovation, and research and development. The American Enterprise Institute found in 2011 that “temporary foreign workers—both skilled and less skilled—boost U.S. employment” and that immigrants with advanced degrees working in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields “boost employment for U.S. citizens.” Every Republican who aspires to the presidency should acknowledge that immigrants of all skill sets can benefit the economy.
- Addressing the illegal population. The next president will need to work with Congress to establish consequences for violating our laws that are harsh enough to be meaningful but also reasonable. But with some 11 million people living in the U.S. illegally, every candidate should support a path to legal status—short of citizenship—for illegal immigrants willing to accept responsibility for their actions and take the consequences.
Such consequences could include passing a background check, paying a fine, demonstrating the ability to be independent of welfare, engaging in community or military service, learning English and taking an American civics course. Every option should be on the table, except amnesty, which forgives illegal conduct. It isn’t amnesty if immigrants admit wrongdoing and accept punishment.
- Citizenship. American citizenship is a privilege, not a right. Whether candidates support requiring people who are here illegally to return to their home countries to become citizens, or whether they propose allowing immigrants to remain in the U.S. and go through an arduous naturalization process, the privilege of citizenship is something worth protecting. A Washington DC immigration attorney provides comprehensive guidance to business clients with respect to their foreign national workforce, including short and long-term strategy and planning.
Candidates will disagree on the best way to implement these points. This is simply an attempt to set forth unifying principles that are easily articulated and essential if Republicans have a chance at winning the next presidential election. Absent rational immigration principles, the odds of winning aren’t very good.
Thursday, February 26, 2015
WHITE HOUSE STRUGGLES ON IMMIGRATION RULING
Original Story:nytimes.com
WASHINGTON — President Obama’s lawyers, facing what could be months of delay on the White House’s immigration efforts, are struggling for a response to a Texas judge’s ruling that has imperiled one of the president’s potential legacy achievements.
A top administration official said Wednesday it was unclear whether the Department of Justice would seek an emergency order that would allow the president’s immigration programs to go into effect while an appeal proceeds. A spokeswoman for the Justice Department said that no decision had been made on an emergency application to an appeals court, but she pledged to fight all challenges to the president’s actions. A Washington immigration lawyer is experienced in the effective resolution of immigration lawsuits as related to legal and illegal immigrants.
Monday’s late-night 123-page ruling by Judge Andrew S. Hanen forced Mr. Obama to halt plans to protect millions of undocumented immigrants. White House supporters attacked the judge’s ruling as “shaky.” Conservative legal critics hailed it as a powerful argument.
Regardless of which side prevails, the Texas ruling did show how deft Mr. Obama’s adversaries had become in their efforts to delay — if not derail — a program that immigration advocates have been intensely clamoring for. A Washington DC immigration attorney is following this story closely.
In the meantime, the clock on Mr. Obama’s presidency is ticking.
“I think it’s a significant threat,” said David E. Bernstein, a law professor at George Mason University. “My guess is that this reflects some real concern that’s out there.”
Monday’s ruling from Judge Hanen had none of the hallmarks of a legal blockbuster. Its language did not appear to be aimed at reshaping the power of the presidency or changing the constitutional framework for future occupants of the Oval Office. Indeed, the judge acknowledged vast presidential power in his ruling.
Instead, Judge Hanen wrote, Mr. Obama had gone astray by failing to seek public comment before implementing the program. That, the judge said, probably violated the Administrative Procedure Act, which lays out the steps that must be completed before some changes in federal agencies’ policies can go into force.
Eric Posner, a law professor at the University of Chicago, said Judge Hanen’s holding was, in a sense, “trivial.”
Indeed, a ruling focused on administrative law may seem an unlikely roadblock for a consequential program. Even on its own terms, Mr. Posner said, Judge Hanen’s opinion was flawed. Under the president’s directive, immigration officials would retain discretion to reject candidates for the protection program, he said, so the requirement of public comments does not actually apply.
But other scholars said that the legal arguments made by the judge would be difficult for the administration to counter.
“I have always thought that the administration and their supporters were greatly underestimating the likelihood that this would all get struck down in court,” said Michael McConnell, a law professor at Stanford University.
Judge Hanen’s opinion was certainly skeptical of the administration’s approach. “The court finds that the government’s failure to secure the border has exacerbated illegal immigration into this country,” he wrote. “Further, the record supports the finding that this lack of enforcement, combined with this country’s high rate of illegal immigration, significantly drains the states’ resources.” A Washington DC immigration lawyer represents clients in a variety of immigration law matters.
Judge Hanen’s opinion was marked by haste. He repeatedly referred to Justice John Paul Stevens as “Justice Stephens.”
But Walter Dellinger, a former acting solicitor general in the Clinton administration, said the flaws in the opinion went deeper than that.
“He barely mentions the fact that Congress has directed the D.H.S. to set priorities for immigration enforcement,” Mr. Dellinger said.
Judge Hanen did acknowledge that the Department of Homeland Security “has virtually unlimited discretion when prioritizing enforcement objectives and allocating its limited resources.”
But he added that the administration crossed a line when it granted the right to work lawfully to people it chose not to deport. That was not exercising enforcement discretion, the judge said, but conferring a benefit, a change so fundamental it triggered requirements that the administration ignored.
The administration has argued that a shift in enforcement priorities cannot be challenged in court and are not subject to the administrative procedure law.
The ruling confronts the administration with a series of uncomfortable choices. Its decision will be affected by the reality that time is not its friend.
The president could concede the judge’s point about administrative procedures by agreeing to publicly advertise his immigration program and accept public comments. But that would take months, and his adversaries could still mount other legal challenges after that comment period ended.
“In practice,” Mr. Posner said, “notice-and-comment rule making can take years.”
It could ask the federal appeals court in New Orleans, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, for a stay of Judge Hanen’s preliminary injunction. But that could be an uphill fight in a court dominated by Republican appointees.
A stay is ordinarily granted to preserve the status quo. Were the program to move forward, its benefits and protections might be hard to take back. Without his preliminary injunction, Judge Hanen wrote, “There will be no effective way of putting the toothpaste back in the tube.”
Any decision by the appeals court on a stay application would almost certainly be appealed to the Supreme Court.
But the administration may prefer to file an appeal rather than an emergency application, though perhaps on an expedited basis, in an effort to get the merits of the dispute to the Supreme Court as soon as possible.
Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, said the administration’s lawyers were reviewing their legal options and said he expected a decision within a day or two about how they would challenge the judge’s ruling.
Mr. Earnest added that he hoped that the lawyers could “move as quickly as we can through the legal system so that that situation can be resolved.”
In recent decisions, the Supreme Court has generally sided with federal authority in state challenges to immigration policies. In 2012 it upheld one part of a tough 2010 Arizona immigration law even as it endorsed broad federal power over immigration. In 2011, it sustained a different law that imposed harsh penalties on businesses that hired illegal workers.
And in December, the court let stand a ruling requiring Arizona to issue driver’s licenses to young immigrants spared from deportation by Mr. Obama.
WASHINGTON — President Obama’s lawyers, facing what could be months of delay on the White House’s immigration efforts, are struggling for a response to a Texas judge’s ruling that has imperiled one of the president’s potential legacy achievements.
A top administration official said Wednesday it was unclear whether the Department of Justice would seek an emergency order that would allow the president’s immigration programs to go into effect while an appeal proceeds. A spokeswoman for the Justice Department said that no decision had been made on an emergency application to an appeals court, but she pledged to fight all challenges to the president’s actions. A Washington immigration lawyer is experienced in the effective resolution of immigration lawsuits as related to legal and illegal immigrants.
Monday’s late-night 123-page ruling by Judge Andrew S. Hanen forced Mr. Obama to halt plans to protect millions of undocumented immigrants. White House supporters attacked the judge’s ruling as “shaky.” Conservative legal critics hailed it as a powerful argument.
Regardless of which side prevails, the Texas ruling did show how deft Mr. Obama’s adversaries had become in their efforts to delay — if not derail — a program that immigration advocates have been intensely clamoring for. A Washington DC immigration attorney is following this story closely.
In the meantime, the clock on Mr. Obama’s presidency is ticking.
“I think it’s a significant threat,” said David E. Bernstein, a law professor at George Mason University. “My guess is that this reflects some real concern that’s out there.”
Monday’s ruling from Judge Hanen had none of the hallmarks of a legal blockbuster. Its language did not appear to be aimed at reshaping the power of the presidency or changing the constitutional framework for future occupants of the Oval Office. Indeed, the judge acknowledged vast presidential power in his ruling.
Instead, Judge Hanen wrote, Mr. Obama had gone astray by failing to seek public comment before implementing the program. That, the judge said, probably violated the Administrative Procedure Act, which lays out the steps that must be completed before some changes in federal agencies’ policies can go into force.
Eric Posner, a law professor at the University of Chicago, said Judge Hanen’s holding was, in a sense, “trivial.”
Indeed, a ruling focused on administrative law may seem an unlikely roadblock for a consequential program. Even on its own terms, Mr. Posner said, Judge Hanen’s opinion was flawed. Under the president’s directive, immigration officials would retain discretion to reject candidates for the protection program, he said, so the requirement of public comments does not actually apply.
But other scholars said that the legal arguments made by the judge would be difficult for the administration to counter.
“I have always thought that the administration and their supporters were greatly underestimating the likelihood that this would all get struck down in court,” said Michael McConnell, a law professor at Stanford University.
Judge Hanen’s opinion was certainly skeptical of the administration’s approach. “The court finds that the government’s failure to secure the border has exacerbated illegal immigration into this country,” he wrote. “Further, the record supports the finding that this lack of enforcement, combined with this country’s high rate of illegal immigration, significantly drains the states’ resources.” A Washington DC immigration lawyer represents clients in a variety of immigration law matters.
Judge Hanen’s opinion was marked by haste. He repeatedly referred to Justice John Paul Stevens as “Justice Stephens.”
But Walter Dellinger, a former acting solicitor general in the Clinton administration, said the flaws in the opinion went deeper than that.
“He barely mentions the fact that Congress has directed the D.H.S. to set priorities for immigration enforcement,” Mr. Dellinger said.
Judge Hanen did acknowledge that the Department of Homeland Security “has virtually unlimited discretion when prioritizing enforcement objectives and allocating its limited resources.”
But he added that the administration crossed a line when it granted the right to work lawfully to people it chose not to deport. That was not exercising enforcement discretion, the judge said, but conferring a benefit, a change so fundamental it triggered requirements that the administration ignored.
The administration has argued that a shift in enforcement priorities cannot be challenged in court and are not subject to the administrative procedure law.
The ruling confronts the administration with a series of uncomfortable choices. Its decision will be affected by the reality that time is not its friend.
The president could concede the judge’s point about administrative procedures by agreeing to publicly advertise his immigration program and accept public comments. But that would take months, and his adversaries could still mount other legal challenges after that comment period ended.
“In practice,” Mr. Posner said, “notice-and-comment rule making can take years.”
It could ask the federal appeals court in New Orleans, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, for a stay of Judge Hanen’s preliminary injunction. But that could be an uphill fight in a court dominated by Republican appointees.
A stay is ordinarily granted to preserve the status quo. Were the program to move forward, its benefits and protections might be hard to take back. Without his preliminary injunction, Judge Hanen wrote, “There will be no effective way of putting the toothpaste back in the tube.”
Any decision by the appeals court on a stay application would almost certainly be appealed to the Supreme Court.
But the administration may prefer to file an appeal rather than an emergency application, though perhaps on an expedited basis, in an effort to get the merits of the dispute to the Supreme Court as soon as possible.
Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, said the administration’s lawyers were reviewing their legal options and said he expected a decision within a day or two about how they would challenge the judge’s ruling.
Mr. Earnest added that he hoped that the lawyers could “move as quickly as we can through the legal system so that that situation can be resolved.”
In recent decisions, the Supreme Court has generally sided with federal authority in state challenges to immigration policies. In 2012 it upheld one part of a tough 2010 Arizona immigration law even as it endorsed broad federal power over immigration. In 2011, it sustained a different law that imposed harsh penalties on businesses that hired illegal workers.
And in December, the court let stand a ruling requiring Arizona to issue driver’s licenses to young immigrants spared from deportation by Mr. Obama.
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