Kris Kobach - In High Court's Immigration Decision, an Ideologue is Repudiated

[deminks]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-potok/in-high-courts-immigratio_b_1624724.html

For the better part of seven years now, Kansas attorney Kris Kobach has been urging municipalities and states to pass the draconian laws he writes that are aimed at so badly punishing undocumented immigrants that they will "self-deport." Even as governments went into debt to pay his fees and the cost of defending his dubious statutes, Kobach insisted that if they hung tough, they would win in the end.

As was made clear by this morning's Supreme Court decision, which invalidated three of the four contested provisions of Arizona's harsh S.B.1070, he was wrong. The high court essentially upheld decades of settled law, saying the federal government, not states or cities, has the right to regulate most immigration law.

Woe to those who believed Kobach's fairy tales. If they quit now, they are out millions of dollars. If they don't, it will probably get even worse for them.

It's not like these places -- Hazleton, Pa., Valley Park, Mo., Farmers Branch, Tex., Fremont, Neb., and states including Arizona, Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, South Carolina and Utah -- weren't warned. As Kobach and others bamboozled these places into trying to solve the immigration problem with unconstitutional laws, it was being widely pointed out what effect the laws were actually having.

One town had to raise property taxes to defend Kobach's law. Another had to cut personnel and special events and even outsource its library. Business centers of several collapsed as Latino immigrants fled. Race relations went south in almost every community where the laws were passed, with racist attacks on Latinos and tensions rising in neighborhood after neighborhood. Latino cooperation with police largely ended. Opponents of the laws reported serious harassment, including one mayor who retired after federal agents warned him of possible attacks.

(end snip)

So, how much did Arizona spend on Kris Kobach rejected law, and why is their gov using the same Kobach speech to cover up the embarrassing SCOTUS slap down? Hey Kobach, look what happened to ALEC.

[pampango]

1. Something tells me Koch and ALEC are not going to stop their fear-based campaign against

"illegals". What else do they have? Sound economic policy? Fact-based campaigns? If you can keep people afraid of the "others" they are likely to look at those of "us" (like those represented by Kobach and ALEC) and figure out who is the real cause of our economic problems.