By SUSAN CARROLL Copyright 2011, HOUSTON CHRONICLE
June 20, 2011, 3:09PM
Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director John Morton issued two new memos dated Friday designed to provide guidance to ICE employees on how and when they should exercise prosecutorial discretion by declining to enforce immigration law...
Read more:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/7618722.html#ixzz1Pr9XUfLc
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Professor Kevin Johnson, Dean of U.C. Davis School of Law, strongly scolds Carol Swain, professor of Political Science and Law at Vanderbilt University, for writing "Why the Supreme Court should uphold S.B. 1070"
ScotusBlog.com -
Supreme Court of the United States Blog -
By Kevin Johnson -
Dean of University of California at Davis School of Law -
Tuesday July 19th, 2011
http://www.scotusblog.com/2011/07/response-to-arizona-v-united-states-symposium-contributors/
Some excerpts :
Although not feeling a need to elaborate on my legal analysis or predictions, I do feel compelled to register disagreement with the rhetorical approach of one of the contributions. Professor Carol Swain (“Why the Court should uphold S.B. 1070”) states that “[c]riticisms of S.B. 1070 seem to be politically motivated and orchestrated by groups and foreign entities that benefit directly or indirectly from lax immigration enforcement.” This blunt accusation unfortunately denigrates the good faith legal concerns with Arizona’s foray into immigration regulation. Indeed, several contributions to the symposium, at least in my estimation, raise valid legal concerns with S.B. 1070 and do not appear to be “orchestrated” by outside agitators.
Professor Swain’s summary defense of S.B. 1070 blames “excessive crime, homelessness, and high employment” on “the uncontrolled influx of illegal aliens across the Southwestern border,” with Arizona’s “capital city of Phoenix dubbed as the `kidnapping capital of America.’” Given the hyperbole, I almost expected a reference to Governor Jan Brewer’s fabricated claim of headless bodies in the Arizona desert as one of the reasons the state needed S.B. 1070.
These strong, unqualified, and charged claims hide the fact that these are deeply contested propositions with which many, probably most, respected immigration scholars would disagree. A quick perusal of the evidence is to the contrary. For example, an in-depth USA Today investigative report last week concludes that, despite the hyperbolic claims by politicians of a border “crime wave,” crime rates in border cities have been decreasing for several years.
And how can one colorably contend that there has been an “uncontrolled influx of illegal aliens” when the undocumented population has decreased by roughly a million people over the last few years?
Despite the fact that the Obama administration has deported more noncitizens than any presidency in U.S. history – close to 400,000 last year, Professor Swain states emphatically that the U.S. immigration laws “are not being enforced by the federal government,” and that the resulting “crisis . . . threatens the sovereignty of the nation.” That is because, in her words, “President Obama, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Homeland Security have sided with interest groups who favor open borders and amnesty.”
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In the immigration debate, inflammatory rhetoric all too often obscures the truth — that the claims about the alleged litany of horribles brought by the “invasion” of immigrants simply are not substantiated by the facts. Unfortunately, this kind of approach is characteristic of far too much of the national debate over immigration and demonstrates the difficulties in having an informed national dialogue on this all-important topic – or apparently even a discussion among lawyers and professors about how the Supreme Court might rule on the constitutionality of Arizona’s S.B. 1070.
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To achieve true immigration reform, what the nation needs is an open and fair discussion, based on the facts, of the issues surrounding U.S. immigration law and its enforcement. It seems to me that academics, policy-makers, and commentators should strive to promote and facilitate such a discussion of the issues, not foment divisions among us through mean-spirited sloganeering. Careful analysis, learning and adhering to the facts, and listening to – not denouncing – people’s concerns are what are necessary.
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