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On July 1, 2010, on the precipice of another July 4th celebration, President Obama told an audience that immigration was, in sum, “broken.” Furthermore, “everybody knows it.”  Yet neither he nor the Democratic leadership in Congress had any expectation of passing an immigration law in 2010.  Into this void, Arizona had months earlier passed its own law aimed at tightening enforcement. The New York Times reported that in his speech in July, Obama “used the opportunity to repeat his opposition to Arizona’s new law requiring law enforcement officers to question the immigration status of anyone they stop for other reasons if they suspect that they are in the country illegally, calling it ‘ill conceived’ and ‘divisive’.” The President said, “We face the prospect that different rules for immigration will apply in different parts of the country, a patchwork of different immigration rules where we all know one clear national standard is needed… . Our task then is to make our national laws actually work, to shape a system that reflects our values as a nation of laws and as a nation of immigrants.”  Different rules sounds like different immigration policies—as in who can enter the US.  If the President meant this, then he had a point. However, if he was arguing that tailoring different enforcement mechanisms to different regions, it could be argued counterwise that e pluribus union in a federal system not only allows for it, but thrives by it. In other words, the empire-scale of the US warrants a diversity of approaches. Furthermore, a federal system enables and indeed is strengthened by it.

Rather than looking at Arizona as a threat to the turf of the US Government, we can look at the state’s effort to enforce the US immigration law as a helping hand.  To be sure, there is a danger in the two governments helping each other out too much, for one of the benefits of federalism is that the state and federal governments operate (ideally) as checks on each other.  So they are not partners.  This is not to say that the state governments cannot act within federal law.  Arizona’s law does not conflict with federal immigration law, as the latter allows for people who are suspected of being in the US illegally to be stopped.  Arizona’s law requires another police matter—which is actually looser than the federal law.  The fear may be that enhanced enforcement would come with costs, and this cannot be denied. If the immigration system is broken as the President said, we ought to be willing to deal with them. Moreover, with the system being admittedly broken, the US Government is in no position to cherry-pick in accepting help.  Ironically, had that government been more focused on domains that cannot be covered by the state governments, it might have done a better job. The person who tries to be a jack of all trades does not do justice to any of them.  The President said that immigration is on his government’s turf, yet is there anything that is not? I contend that his government would be more effective were he to concentrate more on delimiting the enumerated powers rather than fighting for an exclusive right.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/02/us/politics/02obama.html?_r=1&hp