Forcing Montana Taxpayers to Support Illegals

In one of the more egregious examples of leftist judicial activism, the Montana Supreme Court eviscerated the last remaining provision of a voter-approved Montana law aimed at preventing illegal aliens from living and working in that state. In short, the court unanimously determined that the efforts to deny unemployment benefits, university enrollment and other government services to illegals is unconstitutional.

In 2012, the people of Montana voted a whopping 80% in favor of Legislative Referendum 121. As the law itself stated, “every individual seeking a state service, such as applying for any state licenses, state employment, unemployment or disability benefits, or aid for university students, must provide evidence of U.S. citizenship or lawful alien status, and/or have their status verified through federal databases.” It further noted that state agencies “must notify the U.S. Department of Homeland Security of noncitizens who have unlawfully entered or remained in the U.S. and who have applied for state services.”

The statute was set to take effect on Jan. 1, 2013. Yet in December 2012, a lawsuit was filed by the Montana Immigrant Justice Alliance, a state group that champions the causes of “undocumented immigrants” who they believe have been unjustly targeted because they are “commonly confronted with financial, food and housing insecurity, racial prejudice, language barriers, cultural and political barriers, overt hostility to their presence, and inability to access services.” Apparently the idea that Americans should be hostile to the presence of unlawful invaders in their midst — invaders they now have to support with their hard-earned tax dollars — is anathema to those for whom the fundamental transformation of America is the primary agenda.

The first jurist to abide this agenda was District Judge Jeffrey Sherlock, of Helena. In June 2014, Sherlock ruled that “state agents are unqualified and unauthorized to make independent determinations of immigration status. Such determinations amount to immigration regulation that is pre-empted by the United States Constitution.” The judge further noted that the Immigration and Nationality Act “provides no definition for the term ‘illegal alien’ or the term ‘lawfully present,’” rendering LR121 “unenforceable.”

The Montana Supreme Court not only agreed with that ruling, it went one step further and rejected the single remaining provision that required state workers to notify federal immigration officials if they discovered illegals were applying for the aforementioned services. “The risk of inconsistent and inaccurate judgments issuing from a multitude of state agents untrained in immigration law and unconstrained by any articulated standards is evident,” Justice Patricia Cotter wrote in the opinion.

Every sentient American knows the game being played here. First, the idea that the Immigration and Nationality Act provides no specific definition for the transparently obvious terms “illegal alien” and “unlawfully present” reeks of judicial sophistry aimed at advancing leftist politics in lieu of law. Yet far more important, progressive-dominated state courts — and a 2012 study by a pair of Stanford political science professors revealed Montana’s state Supreme Court is the sixth most liberal court in the country — render decisions that prohibit states from enforcing immigration law, knowing full well the Obama administration has no intention whatsoever of doing so either.

Nothing illustrates this calculated legal vacuum better than the existence of more than 340 sanctuary cities in open defiance of federal immigration law...

CAIRCO Notes

We remember well how the predominantly Democratic Colorado Supreme Court killed the 2006 Defend Colorado Now initiative to assure that non-emergency taxpayer-funded public services go only to those lawfully in Colorado.

On June 12, 2006, the Colorado Supreme Court issued a blatantly political surprise ruling on the DCN initiative saying in effect that they did not want Coloradans to vote on the initiative in November.

The Court, in a 4-2 ruling, stated that the initiative was not a "single subject" as required by statute because it would not only restrict administrative services to illegal aliens, but also would decrease taxpayer expenditures in doing so. (See this legal perspective).

This was the same Court that in 2004 had issued a ruling that said the title of the initiative was indeed a single subject. Why the about-face? Simple - it was clear that the initiative would pass! DCN had rallied thousands of volunteers and tens of thousands of voters on the DCN initiative. Polls showed that voters overwhelmingly wanted illegal immigration stopped. DCN would have had no problem collecting the required number of signatures (we already had nearly 50,000 of the required 68,000 signatures!)

CAIRCO Research

The Defend Colorado Now (DCN) initiative - CAIRCO history

Sanctuary Cities in Colorado and the Sanctuary City of Denver

Terminology history and usage: alien and illegal alien

Article final link:

The above article contains excerpts - we encourage you to read the complete original article

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Forcing Montana Taxpayers to Support Illegals