New York Times Profile on Kris Kobach Misses Crucial Facts

This New York Times article paints Kris Kobach as a all-American vigilante lawyer, fighting for truth and justice against the scary ‘illegal aliens.’

Of course, they brush over his ties to right-wing anti-immigrant hate-groups such as FAIR:

The Southern Poverty Law Center, a group in Alabama that favors legalization measures, has named FAIR a hate group, claiming a history of “associating with white nationalists” by its founder, John Tanton. The center has produced no evidence of bigotry by Mr. Kobach.

Sadly, the article is poorly researched and doesn’t even mention half his credentials that I am more than happy to pull up for everyone.

One doesn’t need to look too far to find bigotry and corruption. Kris Kobach was the GOP politician that sent out emails boasting about voter caging–an ILLEGAL tactic employed by the Republican Party to purge likely-Democrat voters from the polls. I thought ‘illegal was illegal.’ Where is the law enforcement when you need it? And now he is running for Secretary of State, a position that would once again allow him to disenfranchise minority voters.

One of his forays into federal policy included the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS) program post-911. NSEERS mandated that men from certain Arab and Muslim nations be photographed and fingerprinted when they arrived in the United States. Due to the program, hundreds of people who had voluntarily appeared to register were arrested and detained without reasonable justification and 14,000 put into deportation proceedings–none of them charged with terrorism.

Of course, Kobach turns around today and argues that our immigration courts and USCIS are too overburdened to process amnesty applications. We wonder why.

Kobach also seemingly buys into the right-wing birther movement controversy surrounding Obama’s birth-certificate. Recently, he ‘joked’ that “President Obama and God had something in common — the lack of a birth certificate.” Of course, Kobach rushed to rectify his joke and once again try and disassociate himself from the extremist elements of his party.

For the past five years, Kobach has been trying (mostly unsuccessfully) to overturn in-state tuition for undocumented students in several states regardless of whether their parents are fully documented or have yet received citizenship. The United States Supreme Court turned him down. He lost miserably in Kansas before coming to California, rounding up fake plaintiffs, and making a case that is now in front of the California Supreme Court. If California does end up taking away AB-540, more U.S. citizen students would be losing the in-state tuition benefit than undocumented students. Bravo–so much for fighting ‘illegal immigration.’

His recent testimony to the Senate included a long commentary on ‘terrorist aliens’ and the creation of ‘breeder documents’ to forge new identities–Thanks for giving new ideas to terrorists. Kobach’s only solution to the problem of 11.8 million undocumented immigrants is that they ‘go back home’ and wait in line. That’s a right-wing extremist pipe-dream and non-solution. It isn’t about to happen. Next.