Topeka ? Attorney General Steve Six on Wednesday criticized President Barack Obama’s administration for filing a lawsuit seeking to block Arizona’s new immigration law.

“I know I speak for Kansas when I say that we would like to see less litigation by all parties and more effort given to fixing our nation’s broken immigration system,” Six said in a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.

Six, who like Obama is a Democrat, said he was disappointed in the lawsuit filed by the U.S. Justice Department to block the law from taking effect July 29.

“Regardless of your specific policy perspective on this immigration enforcement statute, the federal government must acknowledge states’ rights to enact immigration laws in the absence of federal action on the issue,” Six said.

The Arizona law gives local police the authority to question anyone about their immigration status during enforcement of other laws, if they have a “reasonable suspicion” that the person is an illegal immigrant.

Critics of the law say it will result in racial profiling and that enforcement of immigration laws is the federal government’s job — not specific states. They also say the law establishes new immigration violations not found in federal law.

In its court filing, the federal government stated: “The Constitution and the federal immigration laws do not permit the development of a patchwork of state and local immigration policies throughout the country.”

But Six said the federal government’s failure to enforce and modernize the nation’s immigration laws has forced states “to do most of the heavy lifting on the issue of immigration.”

He added, “The federal government should be our ally, not our adversary, in the fight to control illegal immigration.”

The Arizona law has sparked a national debate and was written by Kris Kobach, a former Kansas Republican Party chairman and a candidate for the GOP nomination for secretary of state.

Some Kansas legislators have expressed an interest in passing a law in Kansas that is similar to the Arizona law.

Gavin Young, a spokesman for Six, said Six would work with the Legislature if it wanted to pass an illegal immigration enforcement law to try to ensure that whatever the Legislature passed would be constitutional.

Asked several times if Six supported the Arizona law, Young said it wasn’t the role of the attorney general to set immigration policy. He said Six supports the right of Arizona to pass the law and that Six doesn’t believe that the Arizona law is an encroachment on federal authority in immigration.