Battleground America

I can’t take a day off from the immigration wars without something important happening.

The state legislatures are gradually coming back into session and there are so many new fronts opening up that it is an injustice to focus on any single one to the exclusion of others.

Let me get you up to speed:

(1) In Rhode Island, Gov. Lincoln Chafee rescinded E-Verify.

(2) In Florida, Gov. Rick Scott acted within 24 hours and signed an executive order mandating E-Verify.

At the state level, that was the status quo as of yesterday, which was Day One of the immigration wars of 2011. We exchanged blows with a loss in Rhode Island and a victory in Florida.

The loss in Rhode Island was the only one that I was expecting. The Republicans in Congress will undoubtedly push a federal E-Verify law through the House this year. Reid and Obama will probably block it though.

(3) In South Carolina, the Arizona-style immigration bill has already cleared the Senate judiciary committee. Critics are blasting this “violation of civil rights.”

(4) South Dakota is about to jump into the fray. More than half the state lawmakers there want to follow Arizona’s lead.

Like Wyoming and Maryland, South Dakota is a state we haven’t heard much about until recently. This is an indicator that the wave of restrictionist laws passed at the state level this year will be larger than expected.

Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, and North Dakota are all pushing for Arizona-style immigration laws. Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho, and Iowa all have similar bills under consideration.

(5) In Kentucky, the Arizona-style immigration bill has cleared the Senate judiciary committee, and now heads to a floor vote where it is certain to pass. The bill faces a much stiffer challenge in the Democratic House.

(6) In Nebraska, State Sen. Janseen and Attorney General Jon Bruning have moved on the Arizona-style immigration law there. This was expected.

(7) Tennessee is about to go after birthright citizenship. The Volunteers have been quietly passing one anti-illegal immigration law after another for several years now.

(8) Florida is taking a shot at the Arizona-style immigration law. I’ve been following this for several months now.

The mainstream media is flush with articles decrying the controversial laws of the “insurrectionists” and threats of Hispanic retaliation against Republicans in the 2012 elections.

Savor the historical moment.

I can’t recall a time when our enemies have so spectacularly miscalculated and incited such a massive backlash. The Arizona boycott flopped and the Justice Department lawsuit paved the road to the defeat of the DREAM Act and gave ammunition to conservatives all across the Heartland to bludgeon progressives in the state legislatures.

They thought Arizona was a disaster.

What are they going to do now? Are they going to sue and boycott almost every state from Pennsylvania to Idaho?

I hope so.

I want Barack Obama and Eric Holder to put a nice smiling multicultural face on federal tyranny. I can’t wait for them to transform the immigration issue into an even more volatile state’s rights issue.

It won’t be long before White people in the Red States start asking themselves whether they need Washington at all and all its bankrupt satraps which will soon come begging to Congress for bailouts.

The cooperative efforts between the states on healthcare and immigration is the first step in the right direction.