Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine on Tuesday attacked the federal government for failing to craft an enforceable immigration policy but also criticized the handful of local governments undertaking their own crackdowns on illegal aliens.
“It’s an outrage that the federal government has basically had a consensus that the existing immigration laws don’t work, but they won’t enforce them and they won’t come up with a new set of laws they are willing to enforce,” the governor said Tuesday on WTOP’s “Ask The Governor” program. “The federal government is just dumping this responsibility, that is just as pure a federal responsibility as there is, onto state and local governments.”
But Kaine also had harsh words for counties and towns throughout the commonwealth that have begun to adopt their own initiatives designed to drive out illegal immigrants.
“I worry as I look at some aspects of these proposals, one county’s doing X and the next-door neighbor’s doing Y, there’s going to be all kinds of odd consequences to that,” the governor said.
Those local initiatives include pressing federal law enforcement to speed deportation of illegals convicted of crimes, establishing English as an official language and studying how to deny services to illegals.
Proponents of local crackdowns have taken aim at the state government for inaction on the issue. In apparent response to those charges, Kaine on Tuesday pointed to the deployment of the Virginia National Guard to the Mexico border and the cooperation between state police and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. Critics, however, are not swayed.
“He ought to take the leadership at the state level,” said Prince William County Board of Supervisors Chairman Corey Stewart. “If he’s concerned about all these localities taking different approaches to crackdown on this problem, that’s because he’s failed to do anything to coordinate any type of action on the state level.”
