If you thought paying people disability benefits for not speaking English in an English speaking country they probably chose to come to was dumb, get a load of this. After today’s ruling states can prosecute identity theft by illegal aliens under state law. They’ve declared it…illegal.
Related: AG William Barr: Filing Multiple Lawsuits Against Illegal Alien Sanctuary Cities and States
Sort, of…
In the old days (since at least Arizona V US) the Federal government insisted that it alone had jurisdiction on immigration matters. This is constitutionally correct to a point but violations of state and local laws are not preempted simply because the perpetrator happens to also be here illegally.
If a US citizen stole your identity, well that’s a crime. But if an “undocumented worker” applied for a job and filled out an I9 (and accompanying documents) with someone else documents, the presumption for the defense was that the state can’t prosecute that as identity theft under state law. Federal law, federal forms.
I’m glossing because the stupid is enormous but not as dangerously stupid as this. In today’s ruling, four of the Court’s nine Justices (all liberal) tried to secure the right of illegals to continue to steal the identities of actual citizens. Five of the Justices, said, uh, no.
You can read the first few pages of the decision to get the gist if you are into that sort of thing. The finer points of law matter but the big picture is what appeals to me.
We were one vote away from making it legal to prosecute citizens under state law for identity theft but illegal to prosecute illegal aliens for identity theft.
There’s a lot of something not right about that.
You can do more reading on this case at SCOTUS Blog here.
| RedState
