Please visit our YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter pages.

1. Obama takes fire at AZ
2. OAS criticizes policies
3. AL gubernatorial hopeful
4. Exodus of Arizona illegals
5. Advocates prepare challenge

1.
Obama criticizes Arizona immigration law
The president, on a swing through the Midwest, says the strict new measure threatens Americans’ ‘core values’ and could inflame the debate. He says his administration is considering how to respond.
By Peter Nicholas
The Los Angeles Times, April 28, 2010

President Obama on Wednesday dismissed Arizona's tough new anti-immigration law as a "shortcut" that will merely inflame the debate "instead of solving the problem."

In an impromptu session with reporters at the back of his plane, Obama described the law as a product of "people's frustrations about the border."

Although the president sympathized in part, saying we now have "hundreds of thousands of people coming in" who are "not playing by the rules," he said Arizona had chosen the wrong approach.

The law, signed last week by Republican Gov. Jan Brewer, makes it a state crime to be in Arizona illegally and requires police to check suspects for immigration paperwork. It also bars people from soliciting work or hiring day laborers off the street, and empowers citizens to sue to force authorities to enforce the law.

"What I think is a mistake is when we start having local law enforcement officials empowered to stop people on the suspicion that they may be undocumented workers, because that carries a great amount of risk that core values that we all care about are breached," the president said.

Asked whether his administration might try to mitigate the Arizona law in some way, Obama said: "We're examining it now."

On Tuesday, Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. called the law "unfortunate" and said he was considering a court challenge.

Obama made the comments as he was returning from a two-day swing through three Midwestern states — Iowa, Illinois and Missouri — where he sought to defend his policies and promote Democratic candidates in November's midterm elections.

Fixing the fractured immigration system will require a comprehensive solution that may not be possible this year, Obama said.

"l know we've gone through a very tough year and I've been working Congress pretty hard," he told reporters. "So I know there may not be an appetite immediately to dive into another controversial issue. There's still work that has to be done on energy.

"I don't want us to do something just for the sake of politics that doesn't solve the problem. I want us to get together, get the best ideas on both sides, work this through. And when it's ready to go, let's move. But I think we need to start a process at least to open up a smarter, better discussion than the one that is raging" now.
. . .
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-obama-midwest-20100...

********
********

2.
OAS head says US citizens damaged by Arizona immigration law
The Associated Press, April 28, 2010

Washington, DC (AP) -- Members of the Organization of American States are complaining about the new immigration law in Arizona.

After listening to complaints from members countries, OAS Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza is calling the law "an issue of concern to all citizens of the Americas, beginning with the citizens of the United States."
. . .
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/politics/wire/sns-ap-us-oas-ariz...

********
********

3.
'This is Alabama; we speak English,' governor candidate says
Yahoo News, April 28, 2010

Amid a national debate over Arizona's tough new immigration law, Republican Alabama gubernatorial candidate Tim James (and son of previous Gov. Fob James) vows in a new campaign ad that if he's elected, he'll give the state driver's license exam only in English, as a cost-saving measure.

"This is Alabama; we speak English," he says in the ad. "If you want to live here, learn it."

It's not clear how James thinks the change would save the state money. Marc Ambinder of the Atlantic says Alabama could actually lose billions of dollars in federal funding if it enacts the measure, and he points to an Alabama political blog that runs down the legal history for why the exams are in multiple languages.
. . .
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/20100428/ts_ynews/ynews_ts1831/print

********
********

4.
Days after Ariz. law passed, some illegal immigrants plan to leave, say work is drying up
By Amanda Lee Myers
The Associated Press, April 28, 2010

Phoenix (AP) -- Many of the cars that once stopped in the Home Depot parking lot to pick up day laborers to hang drywall or do landscaping now just drive on by.

Arizona's sweeping immigration bill allows police to arrest illegal immigrant day laborers seeking work on the street or anyone trying to hire them. It won't take effect until summer but it is already having an effect on the state's underground economy.

"Nobody wants to pick us up," Julio Loyola Diaz says in Spanish as he and dozens of other men wait under the shade of palo verde trees and lean against a low brick wall outside the east Phoenix home improvement store.

Many day laborers like Diaz say they will leave Arizona because of the law, which also makes it a state crime to be in the U.S. illegally and directs police to question people about their immigration status if there is reason to suspect they are illegal immigrants.

Supporters of the law hope it creates jobs for thousands of Americans.

"We want to drive day labor away," says Republican Rep. John Kavanagh, one of the law's sponsors.

An estimated 100,000 illegal immigrants have left Arizona in the past two years as it cracked down on illegal immigration and its economy was especially hard hit by the Great Recession. A Department of Homeland Security report on illegal immigrants estimates Arizona's illegal immigrant population peaked in 2008 at 560,000, and a year later dipped to 460,000.

The law's supporters hope the departure of illegal immigrants will help dismantle part of the underground economy here and create jobs for thousands of legal residents in a state with a 9.6 percent unemployment rate.

Kavanagh says day labor is generally off the books, and that deprives the state of much-needed tax dollars. "We'll never eliminate it, just like laws against street prostitution," he says. "But we can greatly reduce the prevalence."

Day laborers do jobs including construction, landscaping and household work for cash paid under the table. Those jobs have been harder to find since the housing industry collapsed here several years ago.
. . .
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-us-immigratio...

********
********

5.
Arizona immigration fight to move to the courtroom
The ACLU and other groups say the key legal issue is whether the state law interferes with the federal government’s duty to handle immigration, which sunk Proposition 187 in California.
By Teresa Watanabe and Anna Gorman
The Los Angeles Times, April 29, 2010

As the furor over Arizona's strict new immigration law escalates, immigrant advocates are preparing to move the fight to the courtroom, where their legal challenges have successfully sunk other high-profile laws against illegal migrants.

The American Civil Liberties Union, Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the National Immigration Law Center are set to announce in Phoenix on Thursday plans to challenge the measure. U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric Holder said this week that he was considering a possible legal challenge to the law.

The law, which is set to take effect in midsummer, makes it a state crime for illegal migrants to be in Arizona, requires police to check for evidence of legal status and bars people from hiring or soliciting work off the streets.

The key legal issue, according to lawyers on both sides, will be one that also was at the center of the court fight over Proposition 187 in California — whether the state law interferes with the federal government's duty to handle immigration.

The announcement of legal action, one of several expected as attorneys across the country scrutinize the law for weaknesses, comes after days of frantic e-mails, conference calls and lengthy strategy sessions. Attorneys haven't finalized a date when a court challenge would be filed, but said it would be before the law takes effect.

"The entire country has been galvanized," said Marielena Hincapie, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center. "People within the legal community are trying to figure out what we can do…. We have seen an enormous amount of energy responding to this."

Attorneys who successfully challenged laws against illegal immigrants in California, Texas and elsewhere argue that the Arizona law faces a similar fate because of the federal/state issue. Immigrant advocates also argue that the law could violate guarantees of equal protection if selectively enforced against certain ethnic groups.

"The Arizona law is doomed to the dustbin of other unconstitutional efforts by local government to regulate immigration, which is a uniquely federal function," said Peter Schey, a Los Angeles attorney who led successful challenges to the 1975 Texas law denying illegal migrant children free public schooling and the 1994 California initiative that would have barred public services to illegal migrants. Schey said he also planned to file a separate lawsuit.

But the attorney who helped write the Arizona law said he carefully crafted the measure to avoid those constitutional issues.

Kris Kobach, a University of Missouri-Kansas City law professor who handled immigration law and border security under U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft during the Bush administration, said the law does not seek to regulate immigration but merely adds state penalties for what are already federal crimes.

Under the legal doctrine of "concurrent enforcement," he said, states are allowed to ban what is already prohibited by federal law. As an example, he said, the courts have upheld efforts by Arizona, California and other states to enact sanctions against employers who hire illegal migrants.

Kobach, who is running as a Republican candidate for Kansas secretary of state, also dismissed claims that the bill will result in racial profiling. He said he took care to include an explicit ban on using "race, color or national origin" as the sole basis for stopping someone to ask for papers.

"I anticipate that anyone who challenges the law will throw everything but the kitchen sink at this to see if it will stick," Kobach said. "But this is consistent with federal law."
. . .
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-arizona-law-20100429,0,7792968.s...