WaPo: New Va. Law 'Aims to Make' State 'Unwelcoming' to Illegal Immigrants
By Ken Shepherd (Bio | Archive)
July 28, 2008 - 11:36 ET

A new Virginia law that seeks to uphold the laws and Constitution of the United States is dismissed as "unwelcoming" to illegal immigrants by the Washington Post's Bill Brubaker: http://tinyurl.com/66dhez

The editorial comment comes two paragraphs into his July 28 front page article:

A year after Prince William County launched a crackdown on illegal immigrants, Virginia has implemented a law that requires something similar for every jurisdiction in the state. Jail officials are now required to notify federal authorities of all foreign-born inmates regardless of their immigration status.

The little-noticed law went into effect July 1 and aims to make every corner of the state as unwelcoming as Prince William for illegal immigrants charged with crimes.

Aside from his editorial snark about the motive for the law being to make the Old Dominion "unwelcoming" to persons in the United States illegally, by calling the law "little-noticed," Brubaker paints the legislation as something of a surprise that no one saw coming. Yet the Post has a Richmond bureau and the paper has reporters assigned to the Virginia General Assembly. If the law is "little-noticed," might that be largely the Post's fault for failing to track the development of the legislation?

http://tinyurl.com/65s9l5