Key critics of Arizona immigration law admit not reading it
by Dan Nowicki - May. 19, 2010 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic

President Barack Obama and his administration began blasting Arizona's controversial immigration law the day Gov. Jan Brewer signed it. But over the past week, a growing list of top administration officials, including Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, acknowledged that they haven't read the legislation.

The revelations come as Republicans step up their criticism of the Obama administration's response to the Arizona law, which makes it a state crime to be in the United States without proper documentation and directs local police to pursue, during a lawful stop, detention or arrest, the immigration status of people they reasonably suspect to be illegal immigrants. The law has generated calls for economic boycotts of Arizona and has led to five lawsuits, many filed by civil-rights groups.

On Thursday, Holder, who has a team of Justice Department attorneys reviewing the statute to prepare for a possible legal challenge, told the House Judiciary Committee that he had only "glanced at it."

"I have not read it," he said.

Questions about whether a politician has read a particular piece of legislation are not exclusive to the Arizona law. During the recent health-care-reform debate, for example, opponents on Capitol Hill commonly accused supporters of not having read the long, complicated legislation.

"What's come to light in the past year is one of the great dirty secrets of American politics: Most public officials don't read legislation," said John J. "Jack" Pitney Jr., a government professor at Claremont McKenna College in Southern California.

Administration officials suggested that questions over who has read the Arizona legislation are a distraction that takes nothing away from the detailed, ongoing review of the law.

"The attorney general has been thoroughly briefed on the law, which has already been amended since the initial version passed, and has heard concerns from a range of law enforcement and community officials," Justice Department spokesman Matt Miller said in a written statement. "He and the department will continue to review it in detail to determine what options are available to the federal government."

On Monday, Napolitano told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that she had "not reviewed it (the Arizona law) in detail."

Despite that, Napolitano said she wouldn't have signed it, based on similar legislation she vetoed when she was Arizona governor.

"I believe that it's a bad law-enforcement law," Napolitano said in response to questioning from Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who sits on the homeland-security panel.

On Tuesday, McCain and Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., hammered Michael Posner, the assistant secretary of State overseeing the State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, for bringing up Arizona's immigration law last week during a human-rights dialogue with Chinese officials. Posner said U.S. officials mentioned the Arizona law "as a troubling trend in our society and an indication that we have to deal with issues of discrimination or potential discrimination, and that these are issues very much being debated in our own society."

McCain and Kyl demanded a retraction and an apology from Posner.

"To compare in any way the lawful and democratic act of the government of the state of Arizona with the arbitrary abuses of the unelected Chinese Communist Party is inappropriate and offensive," McCain and Kyl wrote in a letter to Posner.

On Tuesday, P.J. Crowley, assistant secretary of State for public affairs, told Fox News that he hadn't read the Arizona law, either, even though he was on TV to defend Posner's comments. But he told The Arizona Republic later in the day that he subsequently made it a point to read the entire law.

Crowley said the State Department has nothing to apologize for, noting that Arizona's own Sandra Day O'Connor, a former U.S. Supreme Court justice, also talked about the state law during a discussion with the Chinese delegation. O'Connor hosted the delegation at the Supreme Court and mentioned the Arizona law to stress the importance of an independent judiciary, Crowley said.

"We cited it as an example of how contentious issues are addressed within a civil society, in a transparent way, respecting freedom of expression and being resolved within the rule of law," Crowley told The Republic. "We made no attempt to explain what was in the law."



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