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As the Supreme Court considers the constitutionality of Arizona’s immigration law today, it’s a reminder of President Obama’s leadership failure on the immigration issue.  We have a broken immigration system, and the President has failed to keep his promise to lead an effort to fix it. This is despite the fact that his party controlled Congress during his first two years in the White House.  His inaction and the federal government’s failure to reform our broken immigration system has left states like Arizona no choice but to fend for themselves as they’ve faced increased drug and human trafficking-related crime and violence spilling across the border.

As I have said consistently, states like Arizona have a constitutional right to pass laws to address the public safety emergency they face. But while they have this right, I still believe the best way to handle the immigration issue is at the federal level.  Rather than have fifty different states enact their own unique immigration enforcement or guest worker program laws, Washington should get its act together to secure our border, implement a workable employment verification system, modernize our antiquated visa system, and responsibly address the situation faced by a limited number of young people who were brought here by their parents as children and now find themselves without any legal status in the United States.

Sadly, some Senate Democrats seem to be more fixated on immigration politics than immigration policy. This week, there are new reports that Senate Democrats are preparing for yet another show vote on this immigration issue.  In doing so, they are increasingly turning what’s supposed to be the “world’s greatest deliberative body” into nothing more than an arm of President Obama’s reelection campaign.