Kaine’s fed rant ringing hollow

The News Virginian / News Virginian
Published: September 27, 2007

A particularly feisty Gov. Timothy M. Kaine took verbal aim at the federal government Tuesday on the subject of illegal immigration, and he hit the bull's-eye. Almost.

Because of "real bankruptcy at the federal level on this issue," the governor said, state and local governments have been forced to tackle the problem. That's certainly true. An excellent case in point is the state proposal calling for a 1,000-inmate jail for illegal immigrants convicted of crimes and awaiting deportation.

The lockup is necessary because of the crisis festering here as well as elsewhere as a result of America's listless response to illegal immigrantion. The fruit of that languor: Six to 10 percent of inmates in local jails in the commonwealth last fiscal year were illegal immigrants, more than a third of them accused of felonies. Too many of those whom our federal government is charged with keeping out later must be put away.

Kaine and his Republican counterparts — along with us and most of America — concur on his criticism of the feds.  But on the question of how to respond to things as they are now, we disagree with the governor.

He opposes a plan touted by state Attorney General Bob McDonnell to work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to train state police in detaining illegal immigrants and initiating deportation proceedings. Kaine contends state police should not take on the primary enforcement for federal immigration laws.

Surely, the governor knows how specious his argument is. McDonnell calls for "limited state enforcement of federal immigration law concerning illegal aliens who commit serious crimes." That hardly sounds like a primary enforcement role. State and local authorities' lack of knowledge of immigration law leads to many illegals being jailed for other crimes, but escaping deportation. Arming state police with training could fix that problem.

Further, ICE officials lack the manpower to track down the hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants who've slipped inside state boundaries. By sheer mathematics, it stands to reason that the first authorities many illegal immigrants encounter are state or local police. Pulling state police into the enforcement effort is a logical step.

After all, local and state police work with federal authorities to stem the illegal drug trade. Why not on illegal immigration- Questions like those flummox Del. David Albo, R-Fairfax County.

"I agree with the governor that the federal government has done nothing, but you can't just throw up your hands and say we can't do anything about it," Albo said.

Kaine long has been depicted by his political enemies as soft on illegal immigration. Such a perception is especially troublesome for Democrats entering the fall election. They are primed to pick up seats in Richmond, but have a flank exposed on immigration because so many voters are growing restless over the issue.

Heaping blame for the problem on the feds makes good political sense for Kaine and Democrats. The governor's abdicating state responsibility for helping to nab illegals indicates his criticism, however justified, might be based more on potential ramifications at the polls than on genuine concern about the real dangers posed by the feds' failure to secure our borders.