Ruling repudiates Kobach's fairy tales on immigration
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.
That’s not all. Kobach, who was elected to his current position as Kansas secretary of state largely on the basis of press he received for his nativist activism, has been working all this time for the legal arm of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), even since taking office. The Southern Poverty Law Center lists FAIR as a hate group because of its white nationalist ideology.
FAIR has spent most of the last three decades, as its founder John Tanton once wrote, trying to preserve “a European-American majority, and a clear one at that.” Although the group is typically less than candid about its real motives, its president, Dan Stein, has sounded similar notes, angrily denouncing President Lyndon B. Johnson’s passage of the 1965 Immigration Act, which ended a racist system of national quotas. Johnson celebrated the demise of the act’s “prejudice.” For Stein, it was a “key mistake” in policy that was forced upon America by people who sought “to retaliate against Anglo-Saxon dominance” and “create chaos.”
Kobach and FAIR exploited the fears of communities and states across America, costing them millions of dollars, peace in their communities, and any sense of decency in their attempts to solve the real problems brought on by unauthorized immigration. They should be ashamed of the damage they have wrought.
Early on, when Kobach tried unsuccessfully to inject his poison into the city of Albertville, Ala., the publisher of the local Sand Mountain Reporter summed up the efforts of the out-of-state interloper nicely. “I fear Mr. Kobach targets towns like ours, and towns like Hazleton, Pa., Valley Park, Mo., and Farmers Branch, Tex., as financial windfalls,” Ben Shurett wrote. “I think he preys on the legitimate concerns, the irrational fears and even some bigoted attitudes to convince cities to hire him to represent their interests in lawsuits that may not be winnable.”
Wise words, and ones that all America ought to heed.
Mark Potok is a senior fellow with the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala.
Robert Copher
11 months agoThanks Mark
Rick Adams
11 months agoKay,
The problem with what Mark wrote isn’t the content.
Its that the content is accurate.
C
mon ... I suspect you are a white spinsterish women, likely not really named “Kay Fox”, who wishes for the good old white bread days. Do you know any “chippers” ?.Mark Hastert
11 months agoKobach ignored the obvious and best way to discourage illegal immigration, take away the jobs. Punish the employers who knowingly and willfully hire illegals. Take away the economic incentives and the illegal flow across the border will cease.
Of course so will the flow of the cheap labor that those same businesses use to undercut American workers and gain an unfair advantage over their law abiding competitors. Seems obvious why that was overlooked eh, Mr. Kobach?
George Hunsucker
Northland
11 months agowhy do these smart progressssssssssssssssssives such as rick always resort to personal attacks on people?
Must be the water these people drink…..
Mark Hastert
11 months ago“why do these smart progressssssssssssssssssives such as rick always resort to personal attacks on people?”
Read more here: http://voices.kansascity.com/entries/ruling-repudiates-kobachs-fairy-tales-immigration/#storylink=cpy
Please note George, that you just did the same thing.
Amy Hammer
11 months agoWell, Mr. Porter, you sort of look like a white guy to me. In other words, you and your people are immigrants - like mine. What are you doing here? Some of my people came here and were given “free” land. I wonder who had it before we came, and whether they had any laws about immigration. Oh, right, we didn’t stop to find out. We just killed 99% of them, put the other 1% in concentration camps, and took their children to be reeducated as defective white people.
Mark Hastert
11 months ago“We have heard all the lame, ludicrous, illogical, left wing, so-called ‘reasons’ illegals should be allowed to come here (or stay here). All we hear is emotional propaganda designed to appeal to the uneducated or unthinking (the same type used by socialist dictators like Castro).”
Read more here: http://voices.kansascity.com/entries/ruling-repudiates-kobachs-fairy-tales-immigration/#storylink=cpy
Nice job, RD put words in others mouths then refute them. I don’t see anyone saying illegal immigration is OK, only that we need a sane logical policy. Conservatives have stood in the way of any discussion that doesn’t involve “round ‘em up and ship ‘em out” which is impractical and impossible. As I wrote before it’s a sham. Business wants the cheap labor.
You guys just can’t resist throwing in a dictator reference can you? You just don’t understand the difference between fascists, communists, and socialists. Please note, though, that it’s conservatives that want to stick their noses into everybody’s bedroom and to foist their religious views on everyone else.
JR Beillenhouser
10 months, 4 weeks ago“Please note, though, that it’s conservatives that want to stick their noses into everybody’s bedroom and to foist their religious views on everyone else.”
No, we just don’t want to pay for it. Do what you want, just leave us and our pocketbooks out of it.