It may be the best known — and most controversial state statute — in years.
The Arizona law that permits local and state police officers to check out the immigration status of individuals they believe might be undocumented has been criticized by President Barack Obama, civil rights groups and immigrants’ advocates from all around the country. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has ordered his employees not to travel to Arizona on business. The Mexican government has warned its citizens to steer clear of Arizona if possible.
One law professor proudly takes credit for helping formulate the statute — Dr. Kris Kobach, an archconservative, political operative who teaches at the University of Missouri- Kansas City.
The Arizona statute is just one of a long string of anti-illegal immigration activism by Kobach, the former chair of the Kansas State Republican Party who has become one of the nation’s leading voices and activists of anti-illegal immigration. Civil rights leaders say he’s involved with organizations that promote discriminatory policies, with one advocate calling him “a chauffeur for a racist cause.”
Traveling around the country to undo laws benefiting undocumented immigrants, Kobach, 43, is to the in-state tuition for undocumented student movement what Ward Connerly is to affirmative action in college admissions. Kobach is the plaintiffs’ attorney for a lawsuit filed in January against the state of Nebraska and the University of Nebraska to repeal a law that allows undocumented immigrants to pay in-state tuition at public universities and community colleges. The lawsuit mirrors one he was involved with in Kansas from 2004 that was later dismissed at both the trial and appellate levels.
Kobach’s crusade has not been limited to education. He has also gone to court in Texas, Nebraska and Pennsylvania to try to uphold ordinances that would forbid landlords from renting to undocumented immigrants.
Kobach, who holds bachelor’s, doctoral and law degrees from Harvard, Oxford and Yale universities, respectively, is an attorney for Immigration Law Reform Institute (ILRI), a Washington, D.C. public interest law firm that specializes in attacking illegal immigration and — in the opinion of many civil rights leaders —undocumented immigrants.
