State and Local Attempts to Legislate on Immigration Backfire
Posted Sep 14, 2007
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Anti-immigrant laws and ordinances are being passed by state and local governments in the wake of congressional failure earlier this year to agree upon comprehensive immigration reform. Most of these laws require employers to verify the immigration status their employees and impose harsh sanctions on those who fail to do so. One popular resolution is the English-only requirement, being used, for example, to justify mandatory removal of billboards with bilingual English-and-Spanish advertisements.
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Readers will recall our August 3, 2007 article, Court Strikes Hazleton Municipal Ordinances Against Immigrants and our August 17, 2007 article, States' Regulation of Foreign Workers is Arguably Unconstitutional, concerning federal lawsuits that challenged such ordinances as unconstitutional. In the Hazelton case, the court ruled against the local anti-immigrant ordinance. In fact, many more such lawsuits are already pending or being filed in federal court in further response to the lack of sufficient federal guidance with regard to immigration.
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[For a comprehensive list of state immigration legislation, go to Fair Immigration Reform Movement, a project of the Center for Community Change.]
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Recent Arizona Law Challenged
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Civil rights advocates sued the state of Arizona in federal court on September 4, 2007, asserting that the state's Legal Arizona Worker Act violates the U.S. Constitution and threatens the success of Arizona businesses. The new law revokes business licenses of those employers who fail to verify employment eligibility of their workers through a federal database. While Governor Janet Napolitano agrees that immigration is a federal responsibility, she signed the bill this year explaining that "Congress seemed incapable of comprehensive immigration reform."
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The plaintiffs, who include civil rights groups Chicanos Por La Causa and Somos America, say that the law conflicts not only with the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which ensures due process, but also with federal immigration law. According to the plaintiffs, the law also encourages business owners to discriminate against individuals suspected to be foreign, rather than risk the fines and penalties under the law. They argue that the law violates the core due process principles on which our country is built.
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AILF's IPC Examines New Anti-Immigrant Trends in State Legislatures
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The American Immigration Law Foundation's (AILF's) Immigration Policy Center (IPC) issued a report on August 21, 2007, authored by Walter A. Ewing, entitled Missing the Target : Anti-Immigrant Ordinances Backfire. This IPC report examines the popular arguments used to promote anti-immigrant ordinances. Supporters of anti-immigrant laws often claim to take this stand because Latino immigrants do not want to assimilate into U.S. society. The IPC report provides counterevidence to this popular argument, showing that the children and grandchildren of Latino immigrants speak English as their native language and move up the socioeconomic ladder in much the same way as the progeny of the European immigrants who entered the U.S. a century or more ago.
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Conclusion
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Until Congress acts on the much-anticipated immigration reform, states are likely to continue attempting to regulate immigration through state laws and local ordinances. The new wave of federal lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of these state and local laws will not resolve the problems in the immigration system. Congress should enact federal immigration laws that reflect our core principles and values, as enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.