Tales from the Trail

The challenge to Arizona’s tough immigration law may have the justices thinking about their own families’ origins and journeys to America. As Reuters reports today, nearly all of them, like their countrymen, descend from people who came looking for a better life (the notable exception is Justice Clarence Thomas whose great-grandmother was a slave).

The justices of the U.S. Supreme Court seen in a October 8, 2010 group portrait. Seated from left to right in front row are: Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Associate Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Standing from left to right in back row are: Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Associate Justice Stephen Breyer, Associate Justice Samuel Alito Jr., and Associate Justice Elena Kagan. REUTERS/Larry Downing

Their ancestral stories may not tell us how they feel about illegal immigration or whether they will rule in favor of Arizona. But they are clearly a point of pride in their biographies and were often cited in nomination hearings.

Take Justice Samuel Alito, who referred to the experience of his own father, brought to the United States from Italy as an infant. It “is typical of a lot of Americans both back in his day and today. And it is a story, as far as I can see it, about the opportunities that our country offers, and also about the need for fairness and about hard work and perseverance and the power of a small good deed.”

Comedian Stephen Colbert’s satirical testimony before Congress last week left some lawmakers cold, and one of them was House Democratic leader Steny Hoyer.

“I think it was inappropriate,” Hoyer said on “Fox News Sunday” when asked about Colbert’s appearance before a House judiciary subcommittee on immigration where he testified on his brief stint as a migrant farm worker.

Hoyer said Colbert’s testimony, delivered in his Comedy Central television character as an over-the-top conservative news commentator, hurt him more than it did lawmakers.

“I think it was an embarrassment for Mr. Colbert more than the House,” Hoyer said. “If he had a position on the issues, he should have given those issues.”

It was all quite funny, but the subject is very serious especially in a sluggish U.S. economy with an unemployment rate stuck at 9.6 percent.

The House Judiciary Committee held a hearing Friday on whether illegal migrant workers take jobs away from Americans. Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert testified in character as a conservative talk show host.

He was there at the invitation of Representative Zoe Lofgren and his testimony was based on the one day he spent for his show “The Colbert Report” laboring in the fields along with migrant farm workers.

Arizona’s state law cracking down on illegal immigrants has inspired similar measures in four other U.S. states, although legislators may await the outcome of pending legal challenges before pressing ahead with them, analysts say.

In late April, Arizona’s Republican-controlled legislature passed a bill  requiring police in the Mexico border state to check the immigration status of anyone they reasonably suspect is in the country illegally, during the course of a traffic stop or similar legal contact.

The law comes into effect on July 29, pending challenges in federal court by plaintiffs including two police officers, faith and civil rights groups that charge the measure is unconstitutional and a mandate for racial profiling.

As her husband made his case for sweeping immigration reform in the White House Rose Garden, first lady Michelle Obama got a first-hand peek at the human face of the debate as she visited an elementary school in Silver Spring, Maryland, with Mexico’s first lady Margarita Zavala.

Obama answered questions from a group of second graders who wanted to know things like what’s the president’s favorite sport and whether her daughters exercise. But one little girl asked about immigration.

The school did not identify the little girl who posed the question. Montgomery County schools spokesman Dana Tofig said schools are barred by law from asking about students’ immigration status or providing such information to others, The Washington Post reported.