Arizona Should Make War on Mexico (and SB1070 Will Be Upheld)

By Michael Bryan

Arizona has suffered enough. Mexico continually violates our State’s sovereignty by encouraging their citizens to invade our state. The government of Mexico is deeply corrupt and in bed with violent criminals that operate black markets across our border, killing our citizens and endangering our communities. Any other nation on earth would consider these provocations acts of war. If the Federal Government won’t do their job by declaring war on Mexico, Arizona must do it for them to protect Arizona’s citizens.

Governor Brewer should seek a resolution from the Arizona Legislature that a state of war exists between Arizona and Mexico. She should then direct the Arizona National Guard to invade Mexico and take and hold territory 100 miles deep to act as a militarized buffer zone to stop the Mexican invasion by Mexican nationals and criminals. The entire buffer zone should be mined, and military checkpoints installed on every access route. Arizona Air National Guard should purchase a fleet of drones and use its existing aircraft to patrol the skies, seeking and destroying any unauthorized movements.

Do you agree with this? If you do, you are clearly bat-shit insane. If you do not, neither can you support Arizona’s SB1070.

You see, the power to make war and the power to control immigration policy are both reserved to the federal government in exactly the same manner, and to exactly the same extent. Both are specifically enumerated and exclusive grants of authority to Congress under Section 8 of Article 1. Our Constitution no more allows the several States a role in controlling immigration policy than it does in declaring war against a foreign nation.

The idea that the Federal Government has failed to ‘fix’ immigration, and therefore the States have a sovereign ‘right’ to control immigration themselves, is every bit as specious as asserting that Arizona has the ‘right’ to declare war on Mexico because the Federal Government won’t.

The original States gave up control of immigration policy and the power to levy war in becoming members of United States. Most States never had such powers to begin with – Arizona among them. Arizona was part of Mexico, then a Federal Territory, and then a member State of the United States. It was never an independent sovereign state with control over its immigration policy or the power to levy war. To claim any state has power over immigration or war, other than whatever desiderata granted it by the Federal Government, is patently absurd.

The Arizona’s GOP-controlled Legislature’s constant flacking of ‘State’s Rights’ as the basis for their constant and embarrassingly ineffectual jeremiads against the authority of the Federal Government in the form of facially unconstitutional legislation is nothing more than empty-headed chest-pounding by frustrated, tin-pot, wanna-be dictators unsatisfied by the modicum of power they currently wield, yet philosophically and intellectually unable to make any legitimate use of those powers to benefit the citizens of Arizona. By prating on about Federal usurpations and failures, they seek to convince the electorate of the extreme right that they are doing something useful and noble with the political authority conferred on them: in reality, they are engaged in a cynical Ponzi scheme of power; exchanging empty gestures for the very real votes – and donations – of benighted and ignorant citizens.

Fortunately, The United States’ Supreme Court will hear arguments this week on the constitutionality of Arizona’s Ponzi-politics scheme, SB1070. I have no doubt whatever that the result will be that any provision that conflicts with the Federal Government’s exclusive control over immigration policy will be struck down by the Court unanimously. Perhaps then the Arizona GOP’s long con will finally be exposed for the political Ponzi scheme it always was. Or the Supreme Court could uphold SB1070 with a bare conservative majority… and Arizona’s legislature will be free to declare war on Mexico.