The big news to come out of the President’s first weeks in office is a federal judge enjoining his executive order blocking immigration from 7 nations of concern. The motion by the Trump administration for an emergency stay has been denied by the 9th Circuit, a decision which bodes ill for its ultimate fate, as Andrew McCarthy points out, although the court will hear the challenge later today. There are a number of troubling aspects to this ruling, foremost among them being the idea that a single judge can influence American foreign policy and national security based upon specious legal reasoning. This is a distressingly familiar sight for the patriotic immigration reform movement, which has seen a single judge thwart Proposition 187-consigning California to its current dismal fate-and another obstruct the implementation of SB 1070-the law which inspired this very website.

The biggest threat to President Trump’s immigration agenda, beyond the attempt by the Chamber of Commerce wing of the GOP to undermine it within Congress, is judicial obstruction. Immigration law is just one of many domains usurped by the federal judiciary over the past century, however it is one of the most vital to the survival of our republic. Notwithstanding the media-generated fog, this executive order is critically important, not least because it drastically reduces the number of refugees being resettled in the United States and, to the horror of the ACLU, targets criminal aliens.

The lack of reasoning that went into this decision is transparent. As Byron York points out, this injunction-relying upon a litany of unexamined open borders cliches-has been rebutted by the Justice Department, which described in painstaking detail the plenary power exercised by the Executive Branch with regard to the entry of foreign nationals into the United States. Contrary to the Obama administration, which attempted to confer a panoply of benefits upon illegal aliens without the consent of Congress, this is a measured attempt at maintaining the security of American citizens at minimal cost/inconvenience to foreigners. Even so, the same bureaucratic forces which enabled President Obama to flout the Constitution are intent upon thwarting that very reasonable aim of the current administration.

Josh Blackman has a thorough 2 part exploration of the injunction from a statutory perspective, which I highly recommend reading. These cases will set the precedent for how immigration is dealt with going forward. Therefore, we need to address and refute the myths and exaggerations which have already taken hold in large swathes of the media landscape. We cannot allow lies to dominate the narrative, because immigration is the defining issue of our era.

It’s difficult to gauge the ultimate impact of this past week’s Supreme Court decision invalidating much of Arizona’s landmark immigration enforcement law, with the exception of Section 2(b), i.e. the clause empowering local police to ascertain someone’s immigration status if  “reasonable suspicion” exists when he or she is detained.  Even this seeming bright spot is obscured by Justice Kennedy’s muddled opinion, which seems to invite future litigation by the usual suspects, who will have their cases heard before the same judge who has thwarted the implementation of the bulk of SB 1070 for the past two years.

Heather Mac Donald, of the Manhattan Institute, wrote an incisive analysis of the decision for National Review Online, which merits reading by anyone who marveled at some of the flawed reasoning involved in overruling a state law that mirrors federal law in most regards. Her exploration of Justice Scalia’s bold dissent-which has earned universal scorn among the commentariat-is especially compelling. Because the current administration has invested its political capital in administrative amnesty and abandonment of immigration enforcement, it has fallen upon the states to do the work which the Supreme Court has deemed the exclusive province of the federal government. Since the current POTUS believes he must bribe Hispanic voters-who presumably favor amnesty-in order for he and his party to survive politically, he will use the perquisites of the  imperial presidency in order to thwart states-such as Arizona-which have the temerity to defend the territorial integrity of their borders.

That’s why the prospect of states reasserting their sovereignty-described so eloquently in Justice Scalia’s dissent-is so appealing. I disagree with the suggestion by some in the immigration reform movement that the Supreme Court’s refusal to preempt local and state enforcement constitutes a legal victory. Like Roy Beck, I believe that the most efficacious means of deterring illegal immigration-and of forcing illegal aliens currently living here to repatriate themselves-is cutting off access to jobs. Notwithstanding the majority’s decision to nix that portion of SB 1070 which criminalized illegal aliens seeking work, the fact that  during its last term the Supreme Court decided to uphold the Arizona Legal Workers’ Act indicates that there are tools available to counteract the damage done by the Obama administration’s quest for perpetual supplicants.

Even so, the courts’ decision to vitiate most of Arizona’s enforcement mechanisms leaves the ball in the court of the Obama administration, which has made its intentions with regard to this issue more than clear. Combined with its decision to wage class war against American citizens, the amount of leeway enjoyed by those who would enforce the laws American bureaucrats won’t has been reduced significantly. However, if individual states like Arizona begin to assert their rights under the Constitution-a path advocated by one of today’s most articulate advocates of liberty-then the power exercised by open borders proponents, and consequently, the damage inflicted upon Americans, can be mitigated. Although the prospect of nullification might appear dramatic in nature, it is a response less outrageous than the excesses of an unaccountable federal government with blood on its hands. Plus, the precedent has already been established.

We shouldn’t pin our hopes on an insipid standard-bearer for a national party that has equivocated and vacillated on one of the most important issues of our time. Nor should we  rely upon a federal government that has repeatedly betrayed a beleaguered American public. We need to trust ourselves enough to realize that the solution to this problem, like so many others, rests in our hands and in the wisdom of this country’s founders. A message particularly resonant on the 136th anniversary of the proclamation of the world’s most revolutionary charter of freedom.

One of the most persistent divides between traditional conservatives and their libertarian/anarcho-capitalist counterparts involves a fundamental philosophical disagreement about immigration. While most conservatives view immigration primarily through the lens of preserving American culture by only accepting those immigrants who are assimilable and will tangibly benefit our society in the future, a view expressed repeatedly during debates over illegal immigration in this country, many libertarians view the subject in an altogether different light. For them, the question is not so much whether a particular cohort of immigrants will be an asset to the United States but whether we have any right to prevent them from settling in this country in the first place, which many answer in the negative.

Libertarians extol the primacy of individual rights, which in this case entails the right to emigrate from your country of birth whenever you so desire-something that I don’t think any conservative would take issue with-and to immigrate to whatever country you want to live and/or work in for an extended period of time, which is where the divide between the two camps emerges. Libertarians view the issue as one of freedom of association-and by extension, contract-wherein willing employers, such as large agribusinesses and meatpacking plants, seek out willing employees coming from nations with under-performing economies that can’t meet the personal and financial needs of their citizens. They believe that the nexus between trade and unfettered migration is inextricable, if not completely self-evident, and that the two can not be severed if a nation hopes to grow its economy. While this may well be true as a matter of law, there are numerous holes in this thesis intellectually, which opponents of open borders-even anarcho-capitalists such as Hans-Hermann Hoppe-have exposed through well-researched arguments of their own.

However, underlying the debate over whether immigration and settlement is a natural right is the assumption that all libertarians/anarcho-capitalists agree on the immigration issue, which is not as much of  a given as it would seem on the surface of things. One of the things that I’ve attempted to do with American Rattlesnake is debunk commonly held assumptions about immigration issues, and the assumption that libertarians all subscribe to Gary Johnson’s point of view is one that needs to be reexamined. There are many libertarians and  anarcho-capitalists who recognize both the practical difficulties and existential problems inherent in society based upon unfettered immigration, especially one with the vast social welfare apparatus of the United States. One of the chief exponents of the view that welfare programs need to be curtailed in order to solve the immigration problem is Gary Johnson’s opponent in the Republican presidential race, Congressman Ron Paul. Paul has repeatedly emphasized the need to do away with the generous, taxpayer subsidized social welfare programs that-while not serving as the initial magnet-provide incentives for illegal aliens to extend their stay in this country indefinitely. The population density of legal immigrants is also heavily correlated with the availability of welfare benefits. Even acclaimed economist Milton Friedman, who held a rather benign view of immigration in general, emphasized the incompatibility of a welfare state with unfettered immigration.

The same opinion is held by many libertarians today, including self-professed constitutionalist Andrew Napolitano, who views Arizona’s landmark immigration law primarily through the prism of the Constitution’s supremacy clause and potential violations of the 4th Amendment via racial or ethnic profiling by law enforcement officers. I’m not sure that the Constitutional objection to statewide laws is dispositive, because-as Andrew McCarthy has pointed out repeatedly in National Review-there is no precedent for prohibiting states from enforcing laws that are consistent with federal statutes. Furthermore, if we look to the broader issue of legal immigration, there’s nothing to suggest that the men who drafted the United States Constitution supported the sort of unfettered immigration we have endured since passage of the Hart-Celler Act fundamentally altered this nation’s demographic destiny. This is a concept that is seldom grasped by arm-chair commentators on immigration these days, whose default option is to repeat the platitudinous-not to mention, factually incorrect-bromide that we are a “nation of immigrants.” What they neglect to mention is that most this nation’s founding fathers would have been implacably opposed to the present lassez-faire system of immigration, a fact that Thomas Woods-as anti-statist an individual as you’ll find among academics-expertly limns in this Human Events column published during the height of the amnesty debate in Washington D.C.

Yet, even if we were to concede that there’s no firm historical or Constitutional foundation for this nation’s current open borders policies, can it not be argued that there is a compelling moral case for the views espoused by those at the Wall Street Journal editorial board, Cato Institute, Reasonoids, and other trendy, beltway cosmotarians? You would definitely think so if you took their arguments at face value. The notion that we have no moral basis for barring certain immigrants from entry into the United States is certainly widespread in certain libertarian circles, but I don’t believe that makes the idea, ipso facto, libertarian. Julian Simon, in a 1998 essay published in the Journal of Libertarian Studies, articulated the perspective felt by many that individual autonomy takes precedence over other “public” goods, including our national borders. In an anarcho-capitalist reality, nation-states would not exist, therefore deciding who should or should not be admitted to your nation would be a moot point.

But while it might seem logical that freedom of movement, freedom of association, and freedom of contract-and at its most essential level, the individual him or herself-are all prioritized over the wishes and feelings of citizens who have a vested interested in preserving the character of their nation, there are those that don’t think these competing values are necessarily mutually exclusive. In a persuasive essay written for Lew Rockwell several years ago, N. Stephan Kinsella made a very compelling argument that while the disposition of property in our society is unjust-insofar as the state has no right to expropriate land that rightfully belongs to individuals-so long as that property is entrusted to the state it has a responsibility to act as caretaker for the rightful owners. In this case, it has the responsibility to prevent the ingress of people that citizens do not want to welcome into their country. While those who are opposed to communitarianism in even its most minimal form might reject Kinsella’s public pool analogy, I think he makes a convincing case that some prophylactic measures need to be enforced to prevent the exploitation of your property-even if it’s already been subjected to theft by the state.

There are many cogent arguments against the current trendy libertarian support for open borders, several of them outlined by the first presidential nominee of the Libertarian Party, John Hospers, in paper published by the Journal of Libertarian Studies over a decade ago entitled A Libertarian Argument Against Open Borders. The concluding paragraph of the essay is especially perceptive in its analysis of the problem:

Occasionally, we hear the phrase “limousine liberals” used to describe the members of the liberal establishment who send their children to expensive private schools while consigning all the others to the public school system, which educates these children so little that by the time they finish the eighth grade they can barely read and write or do simple arithmetic, or make correct change in a drug store. It would be equally appropriate, however, to describe some other people as “limousine libertarians” —those who pontificate about open borders while remaining detached from the scenes that their “idealism” generates. They would do well to reflect, in their ivory towers, on whether the freedom they profess for those who are immigrants, if it occurs at all, is to be brought about at the expense of the freedom of those who are not.

This passage describes, in a nut shell, the quintessence of cosmotarianism, and why most Americans-and even some in the libertarian movement-continue to reject it. I could post the most meticulously researched George Borjas journal article, the most statistically devastating backgrounder from the Center for Immigration Studies, or the most irrefutable essay by Mahattan Institute scholar Heather Mac Donald. And although all of these sources are invaluable in the fight to define the terms of this debate, they wouldn’t hold a candle to the self-evident fact that none of the greatest exponents and defenders of open borders, be it Tamar Jacoby, or Jason Riley, or Nick Gillespie, abide by their own exhortations. None of these individuals partake of the glorious mosaic which their unyielding ideology has done so much to create.

You won’t find many Reason Magazine editors or Cato Institute scholars living in Bergenfield, New Jersey, Maywood, California, or Eagle Pass, Texas. Why, you might ask? Because they would rather pass off the tremendous costs of their bankrupt philosophy onto ordinary Americans than to admit that they might just be wrong. These people are insulated from unfettered immigration’s worst effects, including chronic unemployment, violent crime, and environmentally devasting pollution from Arizona to California and throughout the country. They have the luxury of ignoring the impact of this country’s changing demographic profile while promoting the patently absurd notion that our open borders are a boon to all but the small percentage of high school dropouts.

What’s more, they make the equally ludicrous assertion-outlined in the Caplan speech above-that importing millions of unskilled, uneducated immigrants, who will be dependent upon costly government services, from quasi-socialist nations will expand this nation’s economic liberty. Forget the fact that we now enjoy less economic freedom than our northern neighbors, a development concurrent with the greatest expansion of immigration in this country’s history, the entire premise underlying this concept is flawed. You do not build a prosperous, 21st century, post-industrial society around foreigners from countries with low human capital. And the amount of time, energy and economic resources that need to be shifted in order to improve the educational prospects and earning potential of these immigrants, e.g. the billions funneled into ESL programs each year, is so cost prohibitive that it outweighs whatever benefits can be gleaned from such an arrangement.

Another seeming inconsistency in the archetypal libertarian solution to our immigration problem is the reluctance of most libertarians to support any sort of relief for American taxpayers who are tasked with paying for millions of illegal aliens and immigrants who are dependent upon costly social services. Particularly, public schooling and emergency health care. Invoking Friedman’s argument once again, we find that while many libertarians will concede that dependency upon welfare programs is a bad thing they will do nothing to limit access to these programs by illegal aliens or permanent residents. To the contrary, if any such bill-which is immigration neutral-is proffered, they will stalwartly oppose it. Just ask new Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson, who supports the DREAM Act, despite the fact that taxpayers would be subsidizing the in-state tuition discounts of its recipients. Paleolibertarian writer Ilana Mercer deftly skewers  purported libertarians who routinely call for the abolition of the welfare state while adding a proviso that excludes immigrants and illegal aliens from the fiscal demands of their libertopia.

True believers in liberty, like Mercer and the late Murray N. Rothbard, recognize the inherent contradiction in persuading your fellow Americans to reject the embrace of the state while simultaneously welcoming millions of non-Americans into the country who prefer a larger and more intrusive government in almost every respect into our society. They realize that the banal platitudes used to support unfettered immigration are grossly inaccurate, if not transparent lies. They also realize that the interests of the National Association of Manufacturers, the Chamber of Commerce, the Farm Bureau, and the hospitality industry do not necessarily coincide with the interests of the free market, and that to a large extent our current immigration policy is another form of corporate welfare, which putative libertarians would be quick to denounce in any other context. The time-saving, productivity-increasing technological innovations that would normally be welcomed by these same individuals are rejected by those who apparently think pre-industrial stoop labor is the best method of improving  our agricultural production. Finally, they recognize that the  utopian, globalist conception of freedom-where people living in Gabon or the Hadhramaut have just as much say in how we are governed as American citizens living in New York-contravenes the distinctively American, Constitutional, federalist, representative republic designed by this nation’s founding fathers.

In short, the issue before the house is not whether it is an abandonment of principle for libertarians to embrace sensible immigration restrictions, it’s why institutional libertarians representing organizations like the Cato Institute and the Reason Foundation have stifled an honest, open intellectual debate about this subject. Even as the negative repercussions of our government’s devotion to open borders become harder to ignore for all but the most oblivious, the gatekeepers of respectable opinion on this subject continue to narrow the parameters of discussion to their own narrow, ahistorical perspective. I don’t expect that to change any time in the near future, but those of us who want an intellectually honest debate about the most important issue of our time can at least begin to clarify its terms, if for no other reason than to educate those novices interested in how mass immigration has impacted our society who are asking themselves how they should view these changes from a liberty-oriented perspective.

The assault against Secure Communities continues apace, as we learned yesterday from the Los Angeles Times. In a lopsided vote, the Los Angeles City Council decided to make participation in this successful immigration enforcement program purely voluntary; an idea that DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano has already scotched, at least rhetorically.The problem is that despite the seemingly inflexible stance of  the Obama administration, administration officials have not seen fit to punish the states and localities that are openly flouting the guidelines of his Department of Homeland Security. If even a tenth of the energy the White House has expended in order to punish Arizona for having the temerity to enact SB 1070 were directed at cracking down on sanctuary cities, the public debate about illegal immigration would be wholly different.

As Doug McIntyre, the incomparable host of Red Eye Radio, pointed out in his opening monologue today, the craven politicians who enact bills such as the one passed by the L.A. City Council are driven by one thing: votes! They see the masses of illegal aliens and their supporters as a future, inexhaustible supply of votes in future elections, and will do anything it takes, including eroding American sovereignty, imperiling our national security, and harming American citizens, in order to tap into that rich vein of political power. Unfortunately, it seems like Los Angeles-and on a broader scale, the state of California-might be too overwhelmed by the sheer numbers  of aliens to stem this tide.

The good news is that there is still time for those of us living in states like New York, Illinois, and Massachusetts-whose governors have all recently prevented Secure Communities from being implemented-to fight back. I’ll suggest some practical ways to do so in the coming days underneath the activism column of this website.

Covered by this website at the time, this ruling would have defanged some of the most important aspects of Arizona’s landmark immigration law, including the provision that allowed for state and local law enforcement officers to ascertain the immigration status of people who had willfully violated the law. Now, instead of seeking an en banc review of the injunction, Governor Brewer is hoping to appeal directly to the Supreme Court of the United States. 

That’s why Americans who support Governor Brewer and the citizens of Arizona, which includes nearly sixty percent of the U.S. population according to most surveys, need to make their voices heard. And the most efficacious way of doing that at this moment is by supporting the men and women defending SB 1070 in court. I’ve done this before, but considering the enormous legal costs that will be incurred during the appeals process, I’m going to once again link to the website for Arizona’s legal defense, Keep Arizona Safe. 

The people of Arizona are being besieged by our own federal government, which can literally print money-a luxury not available to Governor Brewer and the Arizona State Legislature-so they need all the help they can get. I’m confident that the faithful readers of American Rattlesnake will do their part to ensure that this call does not go unheeded.

Another setback for the people of Arizona-and across the country-who want to maintain the integrity of our borders and our laws, courtesy of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which has affirmed Judge Susan Bolton’s injunction against the enforcement of key provisions of SB 1070.

Its opinion is worth reading in its entirety, although I would pay particular attention to the powerful dissent by Judge Carlos T. Bea, who was himself once a legal immigrant from Cuba by way of Spain.

He eviscerates the majority’s assertion that Congress did not intend for states to have broad statutory power in implementation of federal immigration laws, even laws that specifically alluded to the power of local and state law enforcement to detain illegal aliens. He also rightly challenged the weight given to foreign countries, specifically, the government of Mexico, by the two concurring justices. Perhaps the most galling aspect of this decision isn’t the fact that it thwarts the clearly expressed will of the vast majority of Arizonans-and Americans-but that it does so on behalf of people who are not even American citizens.

While the Obama administration derides the concerns of Americans besieged by illegal aliens, drug cartels, and murderers, it openly encourages foreign governments, particularly Mexico, which is a party to this lawsuit, to help it thwart the implementation of SB 1070.

For those of you who want to see the will of Americans-and America-prevail over the parochial concerns of a corrupt, anti-American government, I suggest you consider helping out Arizona and its citizens in their time of need. You can find out how to do so at Keep Arizona Safe, a fantastic website established to defray the costly legal expenses the state of Arizona has incurred while standing up for American citizens.

It can be argued that, although besieged by illegal immigration from Mexico for decades, and beset with all of the predictable subsidiary problems that stem from that source, e.g. drug trafficking, prostitution, kidnapping, home invasions, as well as assorted drug-related crime, Arizona fired the first shot in the war between the states and the federal government, re: immigration enforcement, when it enacted SB 1070.

However, if the Obama administration’s lawsuit against the state of Arizona could be loosely entitled “The Empire Strikes Back,” then Governor Jan Brewer’s decision to file a counter-suit against the feds for dereliction of duty must be seen as a commensurate response to the assault from the federal government that her state has endured over the past year. 

The lawsuit rests upon a number of different premises that have been examined, and rejected, by lower circuit courts in decisions addressing this issue in the past. For example, the claim that the federal government has continually failed to reimburse Arizona for the costs incurred in incarcerating criminal aliens-a perfectly accurate and valid allegation-was one of the chief reasons that Proposition 187 was enacted through the initiative process in the state of California back in 1994.

Unfortunately, a federal judge nullified that measure before it was ever mplemented, although her specious reasoning left a lot to be desired. Like Judge Bolton, she made the bizarre inference that Congress never intended state or municipal authorities to cooperate with the federal government in enforcing immigration statutes, despite the fact that the law provided for precisely such collaboration in the alien detention and deportation process. 

Whether Arizona’s lawsuit will ultimately be successful is open to question, but it looks increasingly likely that the final determination regarding SB 1070’s constitutionality will rest with the Supreme Court of the United States. However, until the time that that case arrives on the Supreme Court’s docket, we can do our best to support Governor Brewer and the courageous citizens of Arizona. To that end, I’ll be posting a link where you can contribute to their defense in the “activism” tab of this website sometime in the coming days. 

Until then, keep the faith!

The fire sparked by the people of Arizona when SB 1070 was enacted into law has spread all the way to the great state of Kentucky, whose legislature is now considering a bill that “would authorize law enforcement to arrest illegal immigrants on trespassing charges during “lawful contact” where there is “reasonable suspicion.”

The proposed law has, perhaps not surprisingly, elicited the same tiresome calls of bigotry and discrimination that greeted approval of SB 1070 and the introduction of similar law enforcement measures in more than 40 states thus far. However, it does nothing more than empower local law enforcement officers to do the job they were trained to do, i.e. protect the Kentucky populace from threats and aggression from potential criminals.

For a more detailed description of what this bill would entail, you can read this edifying story published in the Courier-Journal when it cleared its first legislative hurdle last month. The fact that this bill is making its way through the Kentucky State Senate is cause for cheer, but it’s also an indication that the premature injunction issued by a hyperpartisan judge against SB 1070 did not stop this country’s laboratories of innovation from continuing to think of ways to stem the influx of illegal aliens.

Kentucky is just one of many, many states looking for ways of emulating the precedent set in the state of Arizona last year. Hopefully, SB 6 will eventually be passed by both houses of the legislature, and serve as an inspiration for other states across the country trying to confront the titanic problem of illegal immigration.

One of the consistent themes of the Obama administration’s immigration policy has been an hostility to states and cities that attempt to deter illegal aliens from residing in or moving to these areas through legislative means. Nothing illustrates this determination to thwart local authorities more than the Department of Justice’s lawsuit against the state of Arizona over its landmark immigration law, SB 1070.

Now, thanks to Judicial Watch, we have evidence that the Obama administration’s lawsuit against Governor Jan Brewer’s state involved extensive collaboration, at least at the field level, with the American Civil Liberties Union, one of the chief antagonists of SB 1070 from the moment it was enacted into law. Worldnetdaily has the whole, sordid story, which belies the administration’s claims that it’s pursuing this lawsuit chiefly to defend federal prerogatives in the realm of immigration law. 

You can see what Judicial Watch has discovered about the relationship between the ACLU and the Department of Justice  for yourself. Whatever you may think of the American Civil Liberties Union, it makes Rep. King’s biting remark about the brief the DOJ filed ever more relevant to this ongoing discussion.

Hat tip: WorldnetDaily

As we mark the end of the old year and the beginning of something new, it’s wise to take a step back and assess the accomplishments and setbacks of our movement. 2010 was probably the most significant year in terms of advancing the debate over immigration enforcement within the body politic of this country in recent memory.

The most notable event, of course, was the decision by Governor Jan Brewer of Arizona to sign into law Senator Russell Pearce’s signature piece of legislation, SB 1070. As a quick reminder, the Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act makes it a misdemeanor to be an illegal alien, requires the enforcement of all relevant federal immigration laws by state and local law enforcement officials during their regular duties, and targets those who hire, shelter, or harbor people living in Arizona illegally.

Although large parts of the law have been enjoined by Judge Susan Bolton, Governor Brewer and the state of Arizona are appealing that injunction. In fact, the likelihood that this law will eventually reach the Supreme Court, as another Arizona law targeting employers of illegal aliens already has, is high. But even more importantly, the decision by President Obama’s Department of Justice, led by Attorney General Eric Holder, to sue the state of Arizona served as a litmus test moment in the broader immigration debate we’ve been engaged in since Californian’s approval of Proposition 187 in 1994.

Taking the side of special interest groups like the National Council of La Raza, LULAC and other opponents of immigration enforcement in the United States, such as the ACLU and the government of Mexico, against the state of Arizona, as well as the vast majority of the American public, told us all where the Obama administration stands on this issue. It also galvanized public support for the stance of Governor Brewer and spurred efforts to enact similar laws in other states, as this New Year’s article by UPI points out.

But SB 1070 wasn’t the only major national development in the world of immigration reform. 2010 also saw the attempt by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and his deputy whip, Senator Dick Durbin, to foist the DREAM Act upon us after being rebuffed repeatedly by Congress in the decade since it was first conceived. Thankfully, opponents of DREAM, led by the indefatigable Senator Sessions and his allies at Numbers USA, were able to defeat their backdoor attempt at amnesty for millions of illegal aliens.

As gratifying as this victory was, it was not the only success we had over the course of the past year. 2010 also saw the widespread adoption of Secure Communities, a program mandating local authorities share the fingerprints of arrestees with ICE, by  states and localities around the country, including ones run by governors with notoriously weak records on this issue, such as Massachusetts and our very own New York State. While perhaps a small step in the right direction, it is an indication that the Obama administration can be prodded into immigration enforcement when it is politically pressured to do so.

Perhaps the single greatest achievement of 2010, though, was the electoral victory of November 2nd, when the forces of immigration enforcement and reform defeated Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s deputies across the nation. And even though there were some blots on an otherwise great score card, the overall results represented a huge shift away from the House of Representatives that passed the DREAM Act in a lame duck session. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, whose comical efforts I’ve chronicled in the past, will be replaced in the new Congress with immigration hawk Steve King, while the former chairman of the Homeland Security Subcommittee, anti-fence, anti-enforcement Rep. Bennie Thompson, will be replaced with a congressman familiar with that territory, Rep. Peter King.

And even though the campaign to unseat amnesty proponent and panderer Harry Reid fell short, we did see the replacement of several dreadful members of the U.S. Senate this year, including the defeat of DREAM Act supporter Bob Bennet, and the retirement of former co-sponsor Sam Brownback-who is now the governor of Kansas. Overall, the November elections marked a huge shift in favor of immigration enforcement and common sense tools like e-Verify, which is a priority of new House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith.

Overall, I think we can look back on the past year with a great degree of pride in our achievements and determination to correct those mistakes that were made in the course of this struggle. The focus of most of our energies over the past year has been in thwarting potentially disastrous legislation on the federal level, such as the DREAM Act and AgJobs, and helping states pick up the slack of the federal government, as was the case with SB 1070. I think 2011 will mark a transition to a focus on the federal government assuming its proper, but long-neglected, role in border security and immigration enforcement. The success of Secure Communities proves that state-federal cooperation can be an effective tool in stemming the flow of illegal immigration.

Rest assured, this website will continue to bring you news of any developments on that front as the year progresses.