Bay Buchanan
February 24, 2009 at 7:00pm in Harrelson 113 at NC State
The Courts vs. The People: How Activist Judges have Overturned Common Sense Measures against Illegal Immigration and how the American People are fighting back.
In the last few year A new movement has emerged where states and localities are taking on illegal immigration by passing laws and ballot initiatives and state sense measures welfare to illegal immigration, help local law enforcement, and other common sense measures.
Activist judges have overturned many of these laws based on very questionable 14th Amendment and Commerce Clause grounds with lawsuits from groups like the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund and the ACLU. More frustrating is that the Governors and State Attorney Generals whose duty it is to defend these laws will often intentionally not put in the resources to defend them and refuse to appeal lower court rulings.
The speech will talk about the big money left wing and ethnic lobbies that conservatives must overcome to win on this issue, and how to make it happen. In recent years, small conservative legal organizations working with grassroots activists and local politicians have successfully defended many key laws against organizations with budgets in some cases literally over 100 times higher.
A final note of warning is that while federal immigration law is rarely challenged in the courts, Georgetown Law Dean and Obama's transition leader on immigration Alexander Aleinikoff has long advocated this unprecedented encroachment of judicial control over immigration policy. This speech will not focus on the mundane legal details of these laws, but much more on how the dynamics of how the courts have thwarted the will of the people on immigration, and how to successfully fight back.
Bay Buchanan is president of the American Cause, chairman of Team America PAC, and a commentator for CNN. She served as treasurer for Ronald Reagan's '76 and '80 presidential campaigns. She then became the youngest U.S. Treasurer in American history during President Reagan's first administration. Mrs. Buchanan chaired all three of her brother Pat's presidential campaigns. This election cycle she was a senior adviser to Tom Tancredo and then Mitt Romney. Her first book, The Extreme Makeover of Hillary Clinton was published in 2008.
She has an honorary J.D. from Cumberland School of Law. For the last decade she has been a leader in the immigration reform movement, and is focusing her energies on promoting and defending statewide immigration measures working closely with the Immigration Reform Law Institute.