Justice Anthony Kennedy: Ugly Prospect

Swing Vote Dept: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce coalesced with civil-liberties associations to challenge the LAWA; 13 states supported Arizona. Seven states already have similar laws, according to Globe And Mail. This result was reasonable enough in itself. States can regulate businesses in the interests of their citizens, and should be able to take illegal immigration into account in doing so. But the decision raises the ugly prospect of a United States divided between one group of states that accept or tolerate “undocumented” workers and another group that exclude or persecute them and this is not the notorious Arizona law that encourages police to stop people to check their immigration status, inevitably affecting anybody who looks Mexican including Mexican residents visiting the U.S., as President Felipe Calderon has pointed out ; the constitutional case about that is still in progress. Instead, the LAWA requires businesses to check the status of job applicants through a federal system called E-Verify, and imposes fines, and even licence cancellation, on firms that knowingly hire illegal immigrants. The various judges’ opinions in this case cannot be recommended as good reading; they wrestled with the coexistence of overlapping federal and state laws, rather than engaging the broad policy issues of immigration. Mr. Justice Anthony Kennedy, often the swing vote, sided with the more conservative judges, and the Arizona statute was upheld. As reported in the news.
@t globe and mail, president felipe calderon