There is a pile of Amicus Briefs filed in support of admission to the California state bar for Sergio Garcia, a 35-year-old undocumented Mexican immigrant who was brought to the US when he was 17 months old, worked his way through law school, and passed the bar on his first try. Garcia’s application for a green card, sponsored by his father, has been pending for 18 years.
According to the LA Times’ Maura Dolan there are only two groups or people who have filed briefs in opposition to Garcia’s admission to the bar. One is a former state bar prosecutor. The other is the U.S. Government.
Dolan has the rest of the story. Here are some clips:
An illegal Mexican immigrant who wants to be licensed to practice law in California has received support from the state’s top law enforcement officer, the State Bar of California, civil rights groups, county bar associations and law professors — but not from the Obama administration.
In a brief to the California Supreme Court, theU.S. Department of Justice said federal law prohibits giving a public benefit, such as a bar license, to an “unlawfully present alien.”
The federal law was “plainly designed to preclude undocumented aliens from receiving commercial and professional licenses issued by states and the federal government,” a lawyer for the Justice Department wrote in a brief requested by the state high court.
The Justice Department’s position surprised and dismayed some supporters of Sergio C. Garcia, 35, the immigrant who has passed the bar examination but cannot be licensed unless the state’s highest court approves.
[BIG SNIP]
Retired California Supreme Court Justice Carlos R. Moreno, who now practices law in Los Angeles with Irell & Manella, said he had expected the Obama administration to take a more neutral position.
“It does seem contrary to recent efforts by the Obama administration to make immigrants like Garcia a low (enforcement) priority,” said Moreno, who wrote a brief in favor of Garcia on behalf of bar associations.
[WLA NOTE: As it happens, Justice Moreno is also on the Jails Commission.]
Moreno said the federal government’s position, if accepted by the state’s top court, could affect licensing for undocumented immigrants for a wide array of jobs, from cosmetology to building contracting. “If you take the broad interpretation they are taking, it could have wide ramifications for cities and counties and hundreds of professions that require some kind of license,” Moreno said.
Jerome Fishkin, Garcia’s lawyer, called the U.S. position “disappointing but not fatal” and described it as based on a “pretty thin” legal analysis.
As mentioned above, Garcia’s father, whom Dolan reports is now a U.S. citizen, sponsored his son for a green card 18 years ago when Garcia was 17.
That application is still pending.
MIDDLE CLASS SCHOLARSHIP ACT, LEGISLATION THAT WOULD GIVE CA COLLEGE STUDENTS A BREAK IN TUITION, PASSES THROUGH STATE ASSEMBLY
Late on Monday, the state legislature passed the so-called Middle Class Scholarship act. The San Francisco Chron has the story. Legislature watchers say that state senate may not be as easy to bring across the line.
Here’s a clip:
WHY HAVE WE TREATED THE SHOOTING RAMPAGE AT THE SIKH TEMPLE IN OAK CREEK, WISCONSIN, SO DIFFERENTLY THAN THE WAY WE TREATED THE SHOOTING RAMPAGE IN AURORA, COLORADO?
The New Yorker’s Naunihal Singh writes about the two recent American shooting tragedies, the difference in how they have been covered by the media and the politicians—and why it is important that we care.
Here’s how it opens:
The media has treated the shootings in Oak Creek very differently from those that happened just two weeks earlier in Aurora. Only one network sent an anchor to report live from Oak Creek, and none of the networks gave the murders in Wisconsin the kind of extensive coverage that the Colorado shootings received. The print media also quickly lost interest, with the story slipping from the front page of the New York Times after Tuesday. If you get all your news from “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report,” you would have had no idea that anything had even happened on August 5th at all.
The tragic events in the Milwaukee suburb were also treated differently by political élites, many fewer of whom issued statements on the matter. While both Presidential candidates at least made public comments, neither visited, nor did they suspend campaigning in the state even for one day, as they did in Colorado. In fact, both candidates were in the vicinity this weekend and failed to appear. Obama hugged his children a little tighter after Aurora, but his remarks after Oak Creek referred to Sikhs as members of the “broader American family,” like some distant relatives. Romney unsurprisingly gaffed, referring on Tuesday to “the people who lost their lives at that sheik temple.”
LONDON 2012: ONE MORE REASON WHY TITLE IX ROCKS
Mother Jones Magazine reports that, if American women were their own country, they would have gotten the 5th highest number of medals of any of the countries competing—behind the U.S., China, Great Britain and Russia, and before Germany—and everybody else but those top four.
Just thought you’d like to know.
OH, YES, AND A VERY NICE MOUNTAIN LION, P-22-HAS JUST BEEN SPOTTED LIVING IN GRIFFITH PARK
The National Park Service says that P-22 seems to be a shy creature with no interest in pouncing on humans.
Martha Groves from the LA Times reports.
I’m not yet convinced I want to pay to get beyond the Times firewall, so I google P-22 and get hundreds of hits on the Walther P22 pistol. No irony there, huh?
How can an attorney become an officer of a court of law after going through law school while knowing that he was in this country illegally and continuing to break the law by staying here?
I have little sympathy for people who adhere to the belief that it’s easier to ask for forgivenes than for permission, or, in this case, maybe sneaking through with a sympathetic and lax administration.
His parents put him in this position, and he kept himself there. I wish him the best of luck back in his home country.
Title IX forced the elimination of a lot of men’s athletic programs in the name of “fairness” and to achieve balance. Think of those deserving men who were cheated of participating in their sports and who did not have any chance to win a medal because of the broad regulations put together from a simply worded law. That doesn’t sound like anything that “rocks.”
Thank goodness the ERA was rejected by this nation, because we can only take so much expansion of reverse discrimination that eliminates opportunities for “the wrong kind.”
Oh, when I was at a football game with 90,000 people, the P.A. announcer said that the women’s soccer team would be playing later, there was no charge to attend, and they would be giving away free candy. There was no mention of an equalizing tupperware party being thrown for men.
Why have we treated the shooting rampage at Ft. Hood by an Islamic terrorist differently?