Immigration Watch International

The Department of Homeland Security this week announced plans to erect about 370 miles of fencing and 200 miles of vehicle barriers along the U.S. border by the end of 2008.

Also during her Thursday trip, Pelosi touted legislation that would make it easier for some illegal immigrants to receive higher education benefits. The legislation, known as the DREAM Act, would eliminate a federal provision that discourages states from providing illegal immigrants with in-state tuition rates. It would also allow permanent residency for illegal immigrants who entered the country as children and have been admitted to an institution of higher education. “It just isn’t fair,” Pelosi said. “Those young people who came to America one way or another … their opportunities are curtailed because of the situation. And it’s not only harmful to them – it’s harmful to the country.”

Pelosi spoke about her plans to add 100,000 new scientists, mathematicians and engineers to the work force by 2010. “Some of the best contributions (to science) have come from the very young,” Pelosi said. “This is an issue of the highest priority and it’s important that we do so involving the children of America.” Pelosi said she supported U.S. Rep. Ruben Hinojosa’s efforts to make college more affordable for children from poor and middle-class families.

President Bush this week signed legislation co-sponsored by Hinojosa, D-Mercedes, that increases grants for the poorest college students and cuts the interest rates by half on federal student loans over the next four years.

This week’s conference drew more than 5,000 area students for activities designed to inspire them to pursue careers in science, mathematics and technology. “The purpose of this conference is to generate interest, momentum, excitement among the young people looking into careers in science and technology,” said Roland S. Arriola, vice president for community engagement at UTPA. “What we are hoping is that if you increase the base, there is going to be more industry coming into the Valley.

As the numbers of nonwhite and non-native-speaking pupils are much higher in primary than in secondary schools, the figures also suggest that the full extent of current demographic changes in England’s schools have yet to make themselves felt.

Damian Green, the Conservative immigration spokesman, said that the changes were putting an extra burden on teachers. What was important, he said, was whether or not these children arrived in school able to speak English. “If they can’t, and they are being taught in overcrowded classrooms, this makes it much harder for teachers to do their job.” The Conservatives have complained that schools do not always intervene early enough to teach pupils English, often preferring to teach them in their own languages initially.

The latest figures, from January 2007, show that more than a fifth of pupils are now of ethnic minority origin. Nationally, 21.9 per cent of primary school children are from ethnic minority backgrounds, up from 20.6 per cent in 2006. There was a similar rise in secondary schools. The figures also show that the number of primary school pupils who do not speak English as their first language increased by about 7 per cent on the 2006 figures to 447,000, or 13.5 per cent of the total. Figures for secondary schools showed a similar rise in the number of pupils not speaking English as their first language, to 342,000 or 10.5 per cent of the total.

The Government has said that English should be the main language of teaching in schools, and children should become fluent as quickly as possible. Research suggests that although pupils who are not native speakers struggle at first, most make up any lost ground by the time they reach secondary school.

Jim Knight, the Schools Minister, said that the Government had put guidance in place to help teachers to support children who have English as an additional language. He said that a new statutory duty on schools to promote community cohesion had focused the minds of head teachers on these issues. “Schools are the building blocks of our communities so it’s vital that they promote tolerance, respect and understanding across society,” Mr Knight said.

Immigrants say the laws have raised fears of workplace raids and deportation. “People now are really frightened and scared because they don’t know what’s going to happen,” says Juliana Stout, an editor at the newspaper El Nacional de Oklahoma. “They’re selling houses. They’re leaving the country.”

Supporters of the laws cheer the departure of illegal immigrants and say the laws are working as intended. Oklahoma state Rep. Randy Terrill, Republican author of his state’s law, says the flight proves it is working. “That was the intended purpose,” he says. “It would be just fine with me if we exported all illegal aliens to the surrounding states.” Most provisions of an Oklahoma law take effect in November. Among other things, it cuts off benefits such as welfare and college financial aid.

There’s no hard demographic data on the trend, partly because it’s hard to track people who are in the USA illegally. But school officials, real estate agents and church leaders say the movement is unmistakable. In Tulsa, schools have seen a drop in Hispanic enrollment…..

Illegal immigrants also are leaving Georgia, where a law requires companies on government contracts with at least 500 employees to check new hires against a federal database to make sure they are legally authorized to work.

Mario Reyes, senior minister at the Tabernacle of Atlanta, says his church lost about 10 families this summer. His daughter, a real estate agent, is helping them sell their homes. Churches across the city report similar losses, says Antonio Mansogo, a board member of the National Coalition of Latino Clergy and Christian Leaders. “There’s tension because you don’t know when immigration (agents) might show up, and a lot of people don’t want to take those chances,” he says.

Real estate agent Guadalupe Sosa in Avondale, Ariz., outside Phoenix, says migration from the state began about three months ago, shortly after Gov. Janet Napolitano, a Democrat, signed a law that will take effect in January. Employers who hire illegal immigrants can lose their business licenses. Of the 10 homes Sosa has on the market, half belong to families that plan to leave because of immigration tensions….

Colorado has approved several immigration measures. One gives employers 20 days to check and photocopy documents such as driver’s licenses and Social Security cards, which new workers present to prove their legal status.

Last week NY Governor Eliot Spitzer(D) announced that the state would no long require proof of citizenship or legal residence to get a drivers license. This week, county clerks who issue the licenses in NY voiced concern as did NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

“Many of us think the whole idea is crazy and ill-fated,” said Rensselaer County Clerk Frank Merola. “I myself will not process any driver’s license renewal or driver’s license verification for someone who cannot prove legal status.”

The Democratic governor’s decision comes as the Department of Homeland Security is pushing all 50 states to tighten their identification standards. Merola said Spitzer’s approach “is going just the opposite way” as the federal government. ….

Bloomberg said Wednesday that the city’s lawyer “does believe that in fact this would make New York’s state driver’s licenses ineligible to be used to get on an airplane. People would need other form of identification, generally a passport, and that would be a very big problem.” “I’m really skeptical that we should be issuing driver’s licenses willy-nilly,” he added Thursday, “because it then leads to lots of other problems in terms of voter registration and other things. But it’s the governor’s call.”

The prospects for immediate Senate action on the DREAM Act, which would grant legal status to hundreds of thousands of young illegal immigrants, disappeared Wednesday amid Republican opposition. But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., pledged that senators would vote on the the measure, which is strongly opposed by anti-illegal immigration groups, before the Senate finishes its work for the year in mid-November. “All who care about this matter should know that we will move to proceed to this matter before we leave here,” he said.

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., had sought to attach the DREAM Act to the defense authorization bill. But Reid announced Wednesday night that Democrats were shelving the effort because of difficulties getting past legislative roadblocks. “Unfortunately, some Republicans are opposed to this proposal and are unwilling to let us move forward on this bill,” Reid said.

Durbin and immigrant rights advocates were dismayed by the setback but vowed to find other means to pass the legislation, which they have sought since 2001. “There is no question that this issue doesn’t stop here,” said Cecilia Muñoz, senior vice president of the National Council of La Raza. “The longer we wait, the more talented young people we close the door of opportunity to.”

The bill — officially the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act — would allow illegal immigrants who entered the U.S. before the age of 16, and who have lived here at least five years, to receive conditional legal status if they have graduated from high school and have a clean record. After six years, they could become permanent legal residents if they serve in the U.S. military for at least two years or complete at least two years of college. As with most green card holders, they could apply for citizenship after five years. The nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute estimates that slightly more than 1 million high school graduates and children still in class could gain legal status under the legislation.

With conservatives being barraged with calls, faxes and e-mails from anti-illegal immigration groups that view the DREAM Act as amnesty, some Republicans who supported the measure in the past have been reluctant to do so now. Durbin needed 60 votes to surmount an expected filibuster. Some Senate Republicans, including Texans Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn, objected to the measure being brought up on a defense bill. “Putting extraneous things on this bill isn’t helpful,” Hutchison said.

Other Republicans aren’t ready to revisit a debate that imploded in June when the Senate scuttled an overhaul endorsed by the White House that would have given most illegal immigrants a chance for legal status. “People, I think, want to let the immigration thing cool off a bit before we jump back in,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions, an Alabama Republican who helped derail the comprehensive immigration bill.

Josh Bernstein, federal policy director for the National Immigration Law Center, predicted DREAM Act supporters eventually will prevail. “The politics is right and the commitment is there,” Bernstein said. “We’re not giving up.”

Six days after the Myers hearing, McCaskill sent a letter formally requesting the information Myers had promised during the hearing. Shortly thereafter, staff at ICE indicated during verbal conversations with McCaskill’s staff that the information would require significant time to obtain. Therefore, McCaskill asked that the committee to delay the vote on Myers’s confirmation until adequate information had been supplied.

McCaskill also asked for the total number of persons charged criminally as a result of ICE workplace enforcement actions at the hearing on September 12th. Myers confirmed at that time that there had been a total of 716 arrests made during fiscal year 2006, including illegal immigrants and any alleged arrests made of employers. Friday, McCaskill requested that Myers turn over the names of those individuals, so McCaskill’s staff could try to determine if any employers had been charged. ICE has yet to provide that basic information as well.

McCaskill continued, “I’ve been more than patient. Information about a case in Missouri was requested this past summer. My staff gave ICE time to come up with statistics about employer arrests before the hearing two weeks ago. We even asked for the names Ms. Myers cited in her hearing so that we could attempt to investigate these cases ourselves. Still, nothing. This is unacceptable.” Specifically, McCaskill has asked for the number of employers who, as a result of ICE’s workplace enforcement actions, were arrested in 2007, served jail time in 2007, or were fined in 2007. She also requested similar statistics for the entire Bush Administration.

HARTFORD, Conn. – Lawyers for 10 Latino men arrested in Danbury in the past year filed a civil rights lawsuit Wednesday, accusing city and federal officials of a plot to harass immigrants through illegal arrests and intimidation. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in New Haven, alleges authorities violated the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights to due process, equal protection, free speech, free association and freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. Nine of the 10 were arrested during a sting targeting day laborers, while the 10th was arrested during an unrelated traffic stop

Professors and students at Yale Law School, who are representing the men, put much of the blame on Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton, who denied the allegations. “The arrival of new Latino immigrants, and the failure of the federal government to address immigration’s local effects, has sparked a backlash from Mayor Boughton’s administration, which has targeted, harassed, and intimidated these new city residents through a number of discriminatory policies,” the lawsuit says.

The plaintiffs say police officers have made civil immigration arrests despite not having the authority to do so. They also say the city has discriminated against Latinos in enforcing city ordinances, shutting down neighborhood volleyball games and encouraging police harassment of day laborers. “These policies aim ultimately to drive unwanted immigrants from Danbury and to deter future immigrants from making Danbury their home,” the lawsuit says.

Nine of the men were day laborers arrested in a sting operation on Sept. 19, 2006. They were waiting at a park and got into a vehicle driven by a man who they thought had hired them to demolish a fence, but who was actually an undercover Danbury police officer, according to the lawsuit. When the men arrived at the purported work site, they were arrested and shipped to detention centers around the country. All nine are free on bond and their immigration cases are pending. The lawsuit says the 10th plaintiff was deported to Ecuador earlier this year after a racially motivated traffic stop by Danbury police.

The plaintiffs say police did not know who the nine laborers were before the sting and had no probable cause or warrants to justify the arrests. All nine were shipped to detention centers as far away as Texas and were denied access to phones to call their families and lawyers, the lawsuit says.

Boughton disputed the allegations Wednesday. He said local police provide support to federal operations and that they comply with the Constitution. “Frankly, we are not going to be bullied by Yale or by anybody else as it relates to the equal application and the neutral applications of the laws of the city of Danbury,” Boughton said at an afternoon news conference. Boughton sparked controversy in 2005 when he proposed deputizing state police as federal immigration agents, but Connecticut’s public safety commissioner rejected the request.

Danbury has been transformed in recent years with waves of new immigrants from Brazil, Ecuador and other countries. Boughton has said that the influx has strained schools, created overcrowded housing and led to other problems such as unlicensed and unregistered drivers. The mayor has called for federal legislation that secures the country’s borders, heightens enforcement and reimburses cities for what they spend on services for immigrants. He also wants a path to citizenship for the nation’s illegal workers.

Lawyers for the 10 Latino plaintiffs declined to say whether they are in the country legally, citing the pending federal immigration cases.

Mike Gilhooly, spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said ICE officials had not seen the lawsuit and could not comment on the allegations. He offered only a general statement. “All enforcement actions undertaken by Immigration and Customs Enforcement are done fully within the law and fully within the policies and procedures,” Gilhooly said.

The lawsuit asks the federal court to declare the actions of Danbury and federal immigration officials unconstitutional. It also seeks compensatory and punitive damages. The 10 plaintiffs are Juan Barrera, Jose Cabrera, Daniel Chavez, Jose Duma, Jose Llibisupa, Isaac Maldonado, Edgar Redrovan, Nicholas Segundo Sanchez, Juan Carlos Simbana and Danilo Brito Vargas. No criminal charges have been filed against any of the nine plaintiffs arrested in September. Barrera, 42, told The Associated Press through an interpreter Wednesday that he supports the lawsuit because he wants to make it clear that he and the other plaintiffs are not criminals. He said he just wants to contribute to society and be able to work. “I was treated poorly,” he said about his arrest and detention in the September sting. “I asked what I did wrong, what did I do. I was just looking for work. They never explained why I was being treated like this.”

Keating said then that when Howard disparaged elites over what he celebrated as the mainstream, he was in fact disparaging cosmopolitan attitudes vis-a-vis the certainties of the old monoculture. There was even a comparison drawn and then withdrawn between Howard’s populist appeal to ordinary Australians and Hitler’s to the German Volk.

In the Labor years it was the role of cosmopolitan elites to keep ordinary, red-necked Australians and their inherent racism on the straight and narrow. It was an era of stifling political correctness, where critics were howled down with cries of racist by the cosmopolitan internationalist elites of the progressive Left. It was also an era of corrupt immigration policies, with family stream migration rorted to provide branch-stacking fodder. It was a time when ordinary Australians had the cosmopolitans’ virulent multiculturalism shoved down their throats, with the result that support for immigration plummeted. This is no right-wing Liberal fantasy. Former Labor finance minister Peter Walsh described immigration policy under Hawke as a process of blow-out and cave in. The immigration program numbers blew out above target, bloated by regular cave-ins to the ethnic lobbyists.

Another former Labor minister, Gary Johns, saw its immigration policy as part of vote buying and branch-stacking. But most telling of all was the findings of the FitzGerald committee inquiry into immigration policy set up by the Hawke government. The committee, headed by Stephen FitzGerald, found a key problem in maintaining support for immigration was a profound distrust by Australians of the policy of multiculturalism. Historian John Hirst wrote in 1994: “Mainstream Australian society was reduced to an ethnic group and given an ethnic name: Anglo-Celt. Its right to primacy was denied; indeed, it became the most suspect of all ethnic groups given its atrocious past.”

The Howard years changed all this and Rudd is unlikely to revert to the excesses of the Hawke years; however, there are signs that are worrying nonetheless. For example, Labor’s platform, where immigration is dealt with in the section on human rights, itself a worrying sign of a return of the Left to policy formulation, speaks of restoring a fairer and more balanced immigration program. At the moment the program is 70per cent skilled migrants, an economic focus that is very much in Australia’s interest. Restoring balance suggest Labor will increase the role of family reunion, an ominous possibility given the record of the Hawke years.

However, the real worry, given Australia will want to continue to run a strong immigration program, is a Labor government’s ability to retain a national consensus in favour of immigration. There is a substantial body of research that shows the ethnic diversity driven by immigration is destructive of social capital. The most comprehensive of these studies is by American political scientist Robert Putnam, best known as the author of Bowling Alone, a book on the breakdown of community in the US. Putnam defines social capital as “social networks and the associated norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness”.

Francis Fukuyama, author of The End of History, told an International Monetary Fund conference on social capital some years ago: “Social capital is important to the efficient functioning of modern economies and is the sine qua non of stable liberal democracy.”

Putnam, himself from the progressive Left, is somewhat embarrassed by his findings that ethnic diversity leads to the breakdown of trust and community networks that are a vital part of any society’s social fabric. While his study is of the US, he says it would apply to other countries such as Australia. Worried about the impact of his research given the increased sensitivity on immigration issues since September 11, he said nothing about it for four or five years, before delivering a paper in Sweden last year. While he is at pains to say that in the long run immigration and ethnic diversity are likely to have important cultural, economic, fiscal and development benefits, his own research doesn’t establish this. What it does show is that over several decades immigration and ethnic diversity lead to mistrust, challenge social solidarity, break down community and are poison to social capital.

This isn’t an argument for stopping immigration or for racial purity, since, as Putnam says, ethnic diversity will inevitably increase in all modern societies. But it is a powerful argument against multicultural policies that encourage ethnic separatism and discourage assimilation. The litmus test for a Rudd government will be what it does in response to the Howard Government’s changes to Australian citizenship laws designed to increase the value immigrants place on citizenship and insist on competent English and an understanding of Australia’s laws, history and culture.

Australian sociologist Katharine Betts and demographer Bob Birrell provide an excellent discussion of the changing approach to citizenship since the Whitlam government in 1973 in the March issue of People & Place. What they show is that under successive Labor governments the value of citizenship was reduced to little better than a certificate you could pull out of a corn flakes packet. They note two very different concepts of citizenship, which they label the procedural position and the patriotic view. The procedural view holds that migrants should have no other commitment to Australia beyond respect for the law and rights of others.

The patriotic position, which surveys show is held by a clear majority of Australians, attaches a strong value to citizenship as a national bond and expects immigrants to live like Australians. This is the position the Howard Government has moved to in recent years. Rudd has yet to declare his attitude to the Government’s citizenship approach, but Labor emphatically rejects any suggestion of assimilation. Yet the strongly adverse effect of immigration and ethnic diversity on social capital suggests a policy that brings Australians together rather than encouraging cultural separation will be essential to sustaining immigration and its long-term benefits.

Brought by the Justice Department on behalf of the Department of Homeland Security, the civil suit is intended to preempt an Illinois state law that bars businesses from using the employee verification program until its databases are faster and more accurate. The suit is also intended to send a clear message to other states and cities about the way they handle immigration enforcement. The Illinois law “is a direct assault on the federal law,” Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Monday in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. “This is about as bold an anti-enforcement measure as I’ve ever seen.”

As Congress has struggled and failed to pass broad immigration reform, state and local governments have taken up the challenge, introducing record-breaking numbers of bills concerning immigration in the first half of 2007. Most have toughened their own enforcement laws; some have put in place protections for the immigrants in their communities or moved to make their lives easier.

Because immigration law falls exclusively under federal jurisdiction, many states have struggled with the issue. On Monday, Chertoff made it clear that his agency will not countenance interference from states, and he blamed interest groups for trying to impede his department with lawsuits. He told a House committee this month that he would take action against any city that hampered his ability to enforce the law. On Monday, he said: “I’m living up to my promises.”

Advocates cited the Illinois lawsuit as yet another blow to immigrants — along with an increase in work-site raids and high-profile deportations — in the aftermath of the Senate’s failure to pass a comprehensive immigration law. They argued that the suit was meant to stifle states that take a more protective stance toward immigrants and that Homeland Security was applying its legal argument inconsistently.

But supporters of tighter controls said the suit was good news. “It’s an indication that the federal government is finally stepping up to the plate and accepting its responsibilities in the field of immigration,” said Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington public policy center that favors restrictions on immigration.

Illinois officials defended the law, one of two related bills that passed with veto-proof majorities in both chambers. State lawmakers introduced the bill and Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich signed it into law Aug. 13 “to protect employees from unfair treatment under the federal government’s flawed program,” Abby Ottenhoff, a spokeswoman for the governor, said of the employee verification system.

Illinois has the fourth-largest illegal immigrant population in the nation; out of the state’s 12 million people, about 500,000 are thought to be in the country without papers. Blagojevich, the son of a Serbian immigrant who in speeches often draws on his father’s experiences, has a strong track record of supporting pro-immigrant initiatives.

The worker verification program — once known as Basic Pilot and renamed E-Verify — is a voluntary Internet-based system that allows employers to check workers’ eligibility through databases at Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration. If a discrepancy cannot be resolved within eight business days, an employer has to fire the employee or face possible Homeland Security sanctions.

As of Aug. 31, 22,205 businesses had agreed to participate in the program, 750 of them in Illinois. Homeland Security estimates that 800 employers are signing up each week and that 2.9 million firms have made inquiries about the program this fiscal year. But Social Security officials estimate that about 17.8 million, or 4.1%, of their records contain inaccuracies related to names, dates of birth and citizenship. Almost 13 million of those records belong to U.S. citizens.

The accuracy of those databases is at the center of another court fight over Homeland Security enforcement measures. A California court is expected to rule on Monday whether the department can go forward with an aggressive plan that would push employers to fire workers if discrepancies in their Social Security information cannot be resolved. Advocates who helped write the Illinois law say the Social Security inaccuracies mean that many legal employees could be hurt by E-Verify, the use of which would have been mandatory nationwide under the failed Senate immigration bill.

The Illinois law, effective Jan. 1, prohibits employers from using the system until its databases can settle 99% of problematic records within three days. Current law requires E-Verify to respond to employers within 10 days. Chertoff, saying that inputting data and figuring out mistakes takes time, called the three-day standard “for all intents impossible to meet.”

Christopher Williams, a lawyer who helped draft the Illinois law, objected to Chertoff’s claim that the state was obstructing federal law. “Nothing could be farther from the truth,” Williams said. He said that the law provided an exemption for businesses that were required to use E-Verify, including those that have been investigated for hiring illegal immigrants, and that the state Chamber of Commerce backed the legislation. “The fundamental issue is are we going to require a flawed database as a means of enforcing immigration law,” Williams said.

Immigration lawyers questioned the department’s consistency, pointing out that Homeland Security was not taking action against Arizona, which in July adopted a law requiring all employers to use E-Verify or have their business licenses suspended or revoked. “The question is: Is this going to be an equal opportunity litigation campaign, or are they only going to file against states that are trying to be more protective of their immigrant communities?” said Marshall Fitz of the American Immigration Lawyers Assn.

Chertoff said Homeland Security was not eyeing other suits at the moment but stressed his intent to end public cynicism about the administration’s commitment to enforcing immigration law. “I’m determined to prove that cynicism is wrong and that there’s a new sheriff in town,” he said. Likening the struggle to the toughest in his career as a prosecutor, Chertoff said he was working with the same persistence and aggressiveness he brought to targeting organized crime. “I have a pretty determined mind about this stuff,” he said.

Over the past three weeks, a minor skirmish in the battle over illegal immigration has been raging here in Los Angeles. At issue is a provision in the California Vehicle Code that gives police officers the authority to impound cars driven by unlicensed drivers. The Los Angeles Police Department impounds more than 40,000 such cars every year.

But on August 21, under the dubious premise of following the mandates of a two-year-old court case, LAPD Assistant Chief Earl Paysinger issued a memo throughout the department instructing officers to cease making these impounds in most circumstances.

In Miranda v. City of Cornelius, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that a particular seizure of a car in Cornelius, Oregon, was unwarranted. Jorge Miranda, a licensed driver, had been teaching his wife Irene to drive when they were stopped by an officer from the Cornelius Police Department. After discovering that Irene Miranda had no driver’s license, the officer ordered the car to be impounded pursuant to a city ordinance. The case made its way through the courts before coming before a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit, which ruled unanimously that because Irene Miranda had already parked the car in the driveway of their home, and because her husband had a valid license, the seizure of the car could not be justified.

There is scant foundation for the LAPD’s impound moratorium to be found in the Miranda decision. In fact, the decision clearly states that impounding the cars of unlicensed drivers is justified in most circumstances. “The violation of a traffic regulation,” wrote Judge Ronald M. Gould, “justifies impoundment of a vehicle if the driver is unable to remove the vehicle from a public location without continuing its illegal operation.” Most law enforcement agencies in California, including the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department and the California Highway Patrol, have continued impounding cars as the vehicle code prescribes.

Nonetheless, the Miranda case offered the open-borders lobby here in Southern California a ray of hope in their efforts to end the practice of impounding cars driven by unlicensed drivers, a substantial number of whom are presumably illegal aliens. Los Angeles city councilman Jose Huizar, an outspoken advocate for illegal aliens, asked the city attorney and police department to study the matter, but he was less than careful with the truth in doing so. “According to the [Miranda] case, you cannot constitutionally impound a car because the driver does not have a driver’s license,” Huizar told the Los Angeles Times. “So I sought that clarification. I wanted to ensure the city complies with the law.”

We’ll give Councilman Huizar the benefit of the doubt in concluding he was simply misinformed on the Miranda decision and not, as the more cynical among us might suspect, lying through his teeth. In the present controversy Huizar joins a long list of local and state politicians who have sought to grant illegal aliens driving priveleges in California. There have been several legislative attempts to do just that (discussed here, in 2005), but all of them were at some point derailed short of enactment. So, where does one go when the democratic process fails to deliver the goods? Why, to the courts, of course, where even causes soundly rejected by voters and legislators can find new life before sympathetic judges who, by virtue of their exalted positions, are far more enlightened than any group of simpering politicians or the rabbling proles who elected them.