Swing states face immigration fight

[Jeanfromfillmore]

Swing states face immigration fight
The legislative war on undocumented immigrants is likely to move soon from deeply conservative South and Southwest to traditional swing states, said the attorney who helped write the restrictive Arizona and Alabama immigration laws.
Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who is widely seen as the nation's pre-eminent lawyer working on behalf of those seeking to crack down on illegal immigration, predicted that politically moderate states like Missouri and Pennsylvania legislatures will be the next battlegrounds.
"It's likely that Missouri will raise its standard up to the Arizona or Alabama level," Kobach told POLITICO. "And there's a good shot that something might pass in Pennsylvania. It's hard to predict too far out in the future, but those are probably the two best bets."
Kobach's comments come just days after Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley last week signed into law the nation's toughest immigration bill, making the state the fourth to enact strict measures in the wake of Arizona's landmark 2010 law.
Like Arizona, Alabama will require police officers to determine the citizenship and immigration status in any lawful "stop, detention or arrest" if there is a "reasonable suspicion" they are illegal. The new law also forbids undocumented immigrants from receiving state or local aid, bars them from public schools and universities, criminalizes hiring or renting to undocumented aliens and prohibits employers from firing an employee who is a legal resident if an illegal one is on the payroll. The law will take effect Sept. 1.
With most state legislatures having completed their annual sessions, it's not likely new laws will turn up in the immediate future but it's likely the battle will be renewed early next year when state lawmakers around the country get back to business.
The exception could be Texas, where Gov. Rick Perry - who is widely reported to be considering seeking the GOP presidential nomination - last week added an Arizona-style immigration bill to the state's special legislative session.
Texas state senate Democrats managed to block a vote on the legislation during the regular session using tools that are not available during a special session, said Nina Perales, the director of litigation at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
Texas lawmakers have until June 29 to pass special session legislation, and Perales said immigrants-rights advocates fear that Perry will push the 19-12 GOP state senate majority to enact the measure to boost his presidential bonafides.
"All of this is draped in presidential politics," Perales said. "People thought it would not be added to the (special session). . It may be some grandstanding by the governor."

Mike Hethmon, the general counsel at the Immigration Reform Law Institute, where Kobach is of counsel, said while politicians seeking election-year spotlight are will be more likely to propose restrictive immigration laws next year, it's less probable anything will pass.

"You see a lot of flashy efforts that are many times more P.R. than anything else," Hethmon said. "Texas is the kind of state, and Florida too, where you tend to see fairly high-profile in terms of the media efforts but we haven't seen the appearance of a legislator who is both willing to focus on the technical issues and keep pushing the issue through multiple sessions."

Omar Jadwat, an ACLU staff attorney at the agency's Immigrants' Rights Project in New York, attributed the failure of most restrictive immigration laws this year to less political interest in the subject.

"That may indicate there is going to be less interest going down that road again," he said. "But obviously well have to wait and see."

In Georgia, where lawmakers enacted an Arizona-style immigration bill that is less restrictive than Alabama's, the state's farm lobby has complained that so many of its migrant laborers have fled the state that the industry faces a severe labor shortage.

With a harsher law passed in Alabama, Georgia's new law has received comparably less play in national news outlets.

"It hasn't gotten the attention that it merits," said Jerry Gonzalez, the executive director of the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials, which opposed the bill. "It wasn't the first, and it didn't go as far as Alabama did."

Georgia's Agriculture Department on Friday sent Gov. Nathan Deal the results of a farm labor survey it conducted. Deal has yet to release the survey. Deal's press office said Monday he is on a business trip in Canada and had not yet studied the survey results.

Kobach, who worked in John Ashcroft's Justice Department and now oversees Kansas elections and business filings, said immigration news this summer and fall will come from federal court cases involving municipalities whose restrictive immigration laws he is defending.

Last week the Supreme Court returned a case involving Hazelton, Penn., to the Third Circuit, and Kobach said he expects decisions soon in a Fifth Circuit case against Farmers Branch, Texas.

Kobach said he writes legal briefs on nights and weekends away from his day job. He drafted the Alabama law, he said, on his laptop while sitting in a turkey blind near Gardiner, Kan.

"Some politicians golf in their spare time," he said. "I spend mine defending American sovereignty."


Read more: http://www.seattlepi.com/national/po...#ixzz1PDLkvsTT