OPINION: Immigration law delay is a short-term win for GOP
Eugene Robinson is a nationally syndicated columnist for The Washington Post.
The court decision putting a hold on the worst provisions of Arizona's new anti-immigration law is a gift-wrapped present to those who delight in turning truth, justice and the American way into political liabilities.
As many know by now, U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton issued a preliminary injunction Wednesday blocking the state from enforcing parts of the law that look patently unconstitutional. The political fallout is pretty clear: In the short run, at least, Republicans win and Democrats lose.
Longer term, the impact of the immigration issue on the major parties' prospects is the other way around. But the focus now is on winning in November, and the GOP is licking its chops.
Critics have another weapon to use against the Obama administration, because it was President Barack Obama's Justice Department that filed suit against the Arizona law. It chose a relatively narrow argument: that the measure usurps the federal government's prerogative to establish and enforce immigration laws.
Bolton agreed, and she enjoined the parts of the measure that ventured on to federal turf. The Justice Department did not ask her to address the other big problem with the law, which is that it amounts to a prescription for racial profiling. But Bolton went there anyway.
If local police are ordered to verify the immigration status of anyone they detain or question, there is a "substantial likelihood" that such an indiscriminate dragnet will sweep up legal resident aliens, foreign tourists with valid visas, and even U.S. citizens - in other words, anyone who looks kind of Mexican.
Aside from Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, virtually all prominent law enforcement officials in the state opposed the law. They argued that it would overburden their resources, potentially put their officers in danger and, most important, make it much harder to investigate crimes. Imagine two men in a car who happen to be waiting at a stoplight when a brutal mugging takes place before their eyes. If the new law were in effect, and if one of those witnesses were here illegally, what are the odds they'd stick around to tell police what they saw?
We'll hear no such subtlety from Republicans this fall, though. We'll hear thunderous allegations that the Obama administration conspired with an unelected federal judge to keep the state of Arizona from enforcing a law that seeks only to kick out of the country a bunch of people who have no right to be here.
We'll hear from GOP candidates that Arizona had to act because the federal government refuses to "secure the border." The fact is that Obama has sharply increased border enforcement and deportations; the influx of undocumented immigrants is greatly reduced from what it was during the Bush administration. But there Obama goes again, trying to find a sane, moderate course of action.
Immigration wasn't always a partisan issue, but that's what it has become. This is a huge long-term problem for Republicans, who risk becoming branded as the anti-Latino party - and driving the nation's biggest and fastest-growing minority group into the arms of the Democratic Party for a generation or more.
Smart GOP strategists understand this danger. But they are drowned out by those who demand that authorities somehow track down and expel the estimated 12 million people here without documents, the vast majority of whom are law-abiding and productive. Anything short of an all-out pogrom is labeled "amnesty" - the kind of craven surrender favored by such liberal bleeding-hearts as Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.
"No to illegal immigration" is a simple sound bite that will win votes for some Republican candidates. Democrats find themselves stuck with words that work better as a movie title than a campaign slogan: "Do the right thing."
