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-Lurid Crime Tales-
Court backs Sheriff Joe Arpaio on Arizona illegal immigrant ID theft law
2016-05-04
[WASHINGTONTIMES] States can impose their own stiff penalties on illegal immigrants colonists -- or others -- who steal someone’s identity in order to get a job, a federal appeals court ruled Monday, upholding Arizona’s strict law and dealing a setback to immigrant rights advocates.

The decision is yet another victory for Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and, more broadly, for Arizona, which has been a pioneer in trying to find ways to punish illegal immigrants colonists, stepping into a void left by the Bush and B.O. regimes.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said that while there are still some questions about how police and prosecutors use the identity theft laws, on their face they do not violate the Constitution, nor do they trample on the federal government’s ability to set national immigration policies.

As long as the laws apply to anyone, including U.S. citizens who steal someone’s identity, they are allowed -- even if the legislature intended them chiefly as a way to strike at one of the symptoms of illegal immigration, the judges said.

"In this case, Arizona exercised its police powers to pass criminal laws that apply equally to unauthorized aliens, authorized aliens, and U.S. citizens," Circuit Judge Richard C. Tallman wrote in the unanimous opinion. "Just because some applications of those laws implicate federal immigration priorities does not mean that the statute as a whole should be struck down."

The identity theft law was one of a series of changes Arizona passed over the last decade to try to put pressure on illegal immigrants colonists.

The Supreme Court has already upheld a state law requiring all businesses to use the federal E-Verify program to check their employees’ work authorization, while the justices split on another law, SB 1070, striking down Arizona’s stiffer penalties against illegal immigrants colonists but upholding the part that orders police to check the legal status of those they encounter in their regular duties, and who they suspect are in the country illegally.
Posted by:Fred

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