OPINION: It’s high time for Idaho to obliterate obsolete and unnecessary laws
Kudos to Idaho House Speaker Mike Moyle for starting a crusade against “outdated, obsolete and unnecessary” laws. Moyle’s House Bill 14 — the “Idaho Code Cleanup Act” — would cleanse Idaho’s statute books of laws that are void, unenforceable and not in the public interest. It is high time to comb through our laws and get rid of those oldies that are no longer relevant. But we should not overlook newer laws that serve no purpose, nor legislative proposals that would just add to the clutter.
The House could do itself a favor by tossing Rep. Jaron Crane’s House Bill 11, which seeks to insert the state into the immigration field. Immigration law is in the legal wheelhouse of the United States government. A Texas law, upon which the bill is modeled, has been blocked from being enforced in Texas for over a year. HB 11 starts off with making it a crime for an alien to enter Idaho “directly from a foreign nation.” According to my recollection of grade school geography, that would only be possible from Canada. And the bill would require Idaho judges to take actions that exceed their authority. HB 11 would certainly qualify for the “unnecessary” category of Moyle’s Code Cleanup bill.
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