Kansas City Political Grandstanding

A resolution leaked to Tony's Kansas City suggests that the Kansas City Council is primed to vote on a measure condemning Arizona SB 1070 as soon as this Thursday. Apparently having finished resolving every issue important to Kansas City taxpayers, the Council is apparently now dedicating its efforts to other states where it has no influence. 

We expect this measure to be just as effective and meaningful if the Phoenix City Council decided to condemn a piece of legislation in Missouri. Is Kansas City, which is on the tail end of a charge of meaningless resolutions led by twenty other city and local governments, supposed to tip the scale? We don't think so.

This is political grandstanding and nothing more. The resolution includes a list of names for the City Clerk to distribute it to, and most of those are in Missouri which, as we all know, isn't where Arizona Senate bills are drafted. That should say something about the local ambitions of this supposedly national resolution - or perhaps the carelessness of the drafter, who doesn't even bother with sending the resolution to Arizona's state legislatures. Presumably they will hear about it in the Kansas City local news?

The resolution also calls for the involvement of the National Conference of State Legislatures (which already has publicly adopted positions on immigration), but the writer of the preliminary measure might have paid more attention to NCSL's recent report on immigration, which shows that state legislatures have introduced more than 5,000 bills relating to immigration in the past four years. So when the resolution claims that Congress has "the exclusive power over immigration matters," a specious over-simplification, it may very well be biting off more than it can chew.

The resolution asks third parties to help Arizona to create an alternative that "recognizes the need for federal level reform", which entirely misses the point of Arizona trying to bypass the problem of an immigration-incapacitated Federal government. Even if Arizona was inclined to outsource its leadership to the Kansas City Council, this resolution isn't proposing any solutions.

If this resolution does ever see the light of day, all it will do is distract from pressing issues here in Kansas City and Missouri.

Comments

[max wyeth]

dont forget, it will also serve to reinforce the notion that these people are idiots to make comment on a bill unread, that resembles california's and the federal statutes in place.
let's have them pass a resolution saying the being next to cleaver is one step closer to grace ( because being cleaver is probably one step further from it)

[RJSciurus]

A condemnation by the Kansas City Council might be the best endorsement Arizona could hope for.

[JSher]

Here is what they don't tell you.
Their own state Missouri has had a law on the books since 2008 which very closely parallels the Arizona law. Its interesting that the Kansas City Missouri city council attempts to fire a shot across the bow of the Arizona, without sinking the Missouri!