On Wednesday the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments over the constitutionality of the “Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act,” or SB 1070, a bill signed into law by Arizona Republican Gov. Jan Brewer two years ago.
In a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday, New York Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer compared immigration policy to federal tax policy, saying that like taxes, the federal government is better equipped to manage and enforce policies than individual states are. He, along with Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin, stressed that the current immigration policies were “dysfunctional” and “broken,” but should not be in the hands of the states to address.
“You see a model here in Arizona,” GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney said in February when discussing immigration policy. Romney’s campaign later asserted he was not referring to SB 1070, but another piece of immigration-related policy.
The American Civil Liberties Union held a news conference featuring Republican Paul Bridges, the mayor of Uvalda, Ga., who has joined in the ACLU’s class action lawsuit against the state of Georgia for their immigration bill modeled after SB 1070.
Bridges said, “I believe in the Republican Party, and I am a Republican, we should stand up for what’s right.” He also stressed the importance of undocumented immigrants in his agricultural town. He closed his statements saying that, “those that are living here without papers are very much a part of our communities.”