The Supreme Court issues a split decision on Arizona’s immigration law

Having grown tired with the federal government’s unwillingness to enforce immigration laws the state of Arizona decided to take matters into its own hands when Jan Brewer signed into law a strict illegal immigration law. There was only one problem with this move: The constitution, in Article 1 Section 8, gives the federal government the authority to regulate the naturalization process and the Supreme Court has already ruled that this clause gives the federal government the right to set immigration policy. This new law was on shaky ground to begin with and it was quickly challenged by the Obama regime, and today the Supreme Court handed down a split decision in the case.

In what came as no surprise to me the Supreme Court, by a 5-3 margin, struck down much of Arizona’s law including three of the most controversial aspects, and I know that this will not sit well with many conservatives but I believe this was the proper decision because if you believe in the supremacy of the constitution you cannot pick and chose which aspects of the constitution you would like to see violated no matter how just you feel the cause may be. While Arizona’s law mirrored the federal law this decision came down to who had the authority to enforce immigration law and the Supreme Court sided with the federal government and Article 1 Section 8 of the constitution.

But this was not a total victory for the federal government because the Supreme Court voted unanimously to uphold a police officer’s right to check the immigration status of a person who has been arrested for another crime if they feel that person may be in the country illegally. The only surprise bigger than the fact this provision was upheld is the fact that even the liberal justices voted in favor of the provision. I felt the entire law would be thrown out but that was not the case, and with the 8-0 ruling on this provision the Supreme Court has taken away an argument that Barack Obama was most likely going to use on the campaign trail: that argument being a radical right, racist, activist Supreme Court legalized racial profiling.

This has led to a somewhat bizarre scenario where nobody can be totally happy with the outcome of this ruling yet everybody is claiming victory at the same time.

The problem with immigration policy in the United States is not with the laws which are on the books, but rather with the federal government’s unwillingness to abide by the laws with which it doesn’t agree, and while I am sympathetic to Arizona’s plight, the proper way to deal with this problem is by holding the federal government accountable at the ballot box by voting out all those who feel it is justified to ignore federal laws with which it disagrees.

Barack Obama has made it clear where he stands on this issue when he issued an executive order which granted de facto amnesty to millions of illegal aliens and followed it up with an executive order implementing the DREAM Act without the approval of the Congress. And just today we learned that Janet Napolitano has basically broken off ties with Arizona and will not help the state when the police run background checks of suspected illegal immigrants in defiance of the Supreme Court ruling.

While the Arizona illegal immigration policy was doomed from the beginning it has helped to bring to light the Obama regime and its willingness to only support the laws with which it agrees and it has brought to the forefront the lawlessness of his regime and now it will be up to the people to decide which side they are on in November, and that is how it should be.