Arizona immigration law: Supreme Court again examines federal power
The Supreme Court will conclude one of its most significant and controversial terms in decades by taking on one more issue that has divided the nation: Arizona’s crackdown on illegal immigrants.
The court’s final oral argument on Wednesday — Arizona v. United States — provides yet another chance for the justices to confront fundamental questions about the power of the federal government...
The court has considered President Obama’s health-care law, has taken its first look at the political redistricting battles being fought across the nation and will decide whether federal regulators still hold the authority to police the nation’s airwaves.
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“As the framers understood, it is the national government that has the ultimate responsibility to regulate the treatment of aliens while on American soil, because it is the nation as a whole — not any single state — that must respond to the international consequences of such treatment,” Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr. told the court in the government’s brief.
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And even as the pace of illegal immigration has slowed, it has left a changed picture of undocumented immigrants in the United States. According to the liberal Center for American Progress, 63 percent of illegal immigrants have been in the country for more than 10 years and more than 16.6 million people in the United States have at least one undocumented family member.
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The case before the court offers a rematch of the lawyers who last month argued the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act: Verrilli for the government and Paul D. Clement, president George W. Bush’s solicitor general, representing Arizona.
Clement’s brief opens with page after page of costs and crimes that have accompanied a wave of illegal immigration across Arizona’s borders: Schools, hospitals and jails are overtaxed. Home invasions related to drug smuggling and human trafficking have soared. “Incredibly,” Clement writes, the federal government has even posted signs warning travelers: “Danger — Public Warning — Travel Not Recommended.” “Active Drug and Human Smuggling Area.” “Visitors May Encounter Armed Criminals and Smuggling Vehicles Traveling at High Rates of Speed.”
full: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/arizona-immigration-law-supreme-court-again-examines-federal-power/2012/04/21/gIQAf78hYT_singlePage.html