Arizona law will be upheld

The U.S. Supreme Court did not have to commit itself, as it did Monday, to deciding the constitutionality of Arizona's anti-illegal immigration statute, Senate Bill 1070. The justices could have allowed the lower federal courts, which have temporarily enjoined enforcement of portions of the law at the request of the Obama administration, to proceed with a trial on the statute's constitutional merits. Or they could have waited until lower courts ruled on challenges to similar statutes in Alabama, South Carolina, Oklahoma, and Georgia.

The Obama administration had urged the Supreme Court to hold off weighing Arizona's defense of its law even as the administration proceeds with challenges against similar laws of other states. But the Supreme Court refused. It agreed to resolve the ongoing dispute over state and local enforcement of federal immigration laws, and to do so promptly, in the midst of a presidential election campaign.

Both my parents were immigrants. I respect and admire immigrants. But the issue here is numbers. Should there be a limit on immigration or not? It's a binary choice.

For the first hundred years of the republic, we had no such limit. If Congress wanted to, it could declare the borders open and welcome all comers. Instead, it has chosen to allow about a million legal immigrants every year to enter with a clear path to full citizenship - the most generous immigration policy in the world.

To enforce its limitation, Congress authorized deportation of aliens unlawfully present. It established criminal penalties for aliens who enter illegally, or who fail to register with the government, or who fail to have proper documentation in their possession. Criminal penalties have also been enacted by Congress for the knowing employment, transporting, or harboring of illegal aliens.

Arizona wouldn't need S.B. 1070 if the Obama administration was committed to enforcing U.S. immigration law. Unable to get through Congress the amnesty it advocates for illegal aliens, the administration has announced a policy of "prosecutorial discretion" under which the only illegal aliens targeted for removal are those convicted of crimes or deemed a national security threat.