Minnesota GOPer Backing Arizona-Style Immigration Law

Despite the public backlash against Arizona's new immigration reform law, which requires police to check the immigration status of anyone they suspect could be in the country illegally, conservative lawmakers across the country are trying to duplicate the law in their own states. The latest example is happening in Minnesota, where GOP state Rep. Steve Drazkowski is getting ready to introduce a similar measure.

The interesting thing here is that Drazkowski and other proponents of the Arizona immigration bill say they're merely enforcing federal statutes within their borders. But Drazkowski himself is also a co-author of a proposal to have Minnesota nullify federal laws.

"Well what we're looking at doing is similar to what Arizona did, and essentially codifying the federal immigration law into state law," Drazkowski told TPMDC. His bill was not yet finished as of when I spoke to him Wednesday, but could be ready for formal introduction very soon.

"Really, the first responsibly of any government is to protect the rights, property and lives of its people," Drazkowski told TPMDC. He estimated that Minnesota could have over 100,000 illegal aliens, which he said would cost the state $200 million per year, putting a serious strain on the state budget.

Drazkowski also said there is a danger from some of these people: "We've got about 500 criminal aliens that are felons in our state prisons. Their offenses range everywhere from murder to rape to robbery, drug smuggling, child molestation, human trafficking. Those are all sorts of crimes that those individuals have committed."

I then asked Drazkowski about a separate proposal he has co-authored, which we've already covered: A proposal to nullify all federal laws in Minnesota unless they are approved by a two-thirds vote of the state legislature and signed by the governor. Another co-author is state Rep. Tom Emmer, the Minnesota GOP's endorsed candidate for governor and presumptive nominee.

Drazkowski said that the the Democrats in the legislature have stopped this state-sovereignty measure and similar proposals, as well as efforts to curtail illegal immigration, from coming up for a vote."For some reason, maybe their constituencies seem to want to foster some of these illegal behaviors. So we've struggled to be able to move some of these forward," he said. "Many of those are included or would be covered or somewhat mitigated by the Arizona equivalent law, should that be adopted in a future legislature."

Does Drazkowski think this nullification bill is constitutional?

"You know, I'm not a constitutional lawyer, but we need to find ways as a state to, you know, exert the powers that the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution says that we have -- those powers not enumerated in this Constitution are relegated to the states," said Drazkowski. "And many of these thing,s the government takeover of health care that has come forward, among others, a lot of the health and human services things. We have the federal government telling us how we have to have our traffic laws, seatbelt use, etc, these are things that are supposed to be reserved to the states."

Since Drazkowski said earlier that the purpose of the Arizona law and his own equivalent proposal is to codify federal law, would he not have to gain two-thirds majorities in the legislature under this amendment in order to have the federal immigration law at all -- otherwise, wouldn't Minnesota be a state without federal immigration law?

"Well yeah, exactly," said Drazkowski. "If indeed that bill was adopted into our constitution as it's written, that would mean that the legislature would have to approve the immigration law that we have. The passage of the immigration bill, it would seem it would require a two-thirds vote at that point."

I asked Drazkowski about a quote of his in the liberal City Pages, on the importance of policing against illegal immigration: "If we have people here who don't have a loyalty to their country, we need to be concerned." He did not specifically remember saying it, but did affirm the point: "Certainly I think the whole question of loyalty, I think loyalty to country is one that people are concerned about."

Is there a potential conflict, I asked, between the idea of valuing loyalty to the country, and wanting to nullify all laws from the federal government? "I really don't know, I haven't contemplated that," said Drazkowski.