Detroit Free Press: Gov. Snyder talks tough on refugees, flunks social studies

[marmar]

Brian Dickerson, Detroit Free Press Columnist


For the record, I don’t for a minute believe Rick Snyder is an Islamaphobic bigot.

And I assume that somewhere on the way to degrees in law and accounting, Michigan's governor successfully completed a high schools social studies class.

But Snyder and his puffed-up statehouse peers are playing their constituents for fools when they suggest they are hitting the pause button on -- or outright rejecting -- a U.S. initiative to shelter 10,000 Syrian refugees, because no governor has the legal authority to do that.

“States don’t do war and peace. They don’t do diplomacy, and they don’t do immigration,” observes Richard Primus, a professor of constitutional history at the University of Michigan Law School. “In the U.S. constitutional system, that’s the province of the federal government."

.....(snip).....

Once anyone has passed Uncle Sam’s test, they’re as free as any of Southwest Airlines American-born passengers to move about the country, whether their travels take them to Michigan, Alabama or some other state where opportunists aren’t waiting to score cheap political points at their expense. ....................(more)

http://www.freep.com/story/opinion/columnists/brian-dickerson/2015/11/17/snyder-refugees/75936716/