Immigration

By Gabriel J. Chin and Marc L. Miller. Chin is Professor of Law at the University of California, Davis, School of Law. Miller is Vice Dean and Bilby Professor of Law at the University of Arizona, James E. Rogers College of Law. They authored “The Unconstitutionality of State Regulation of Immigration through Criminal Law,” which recently appeared in the Duke Law Journal and addresses these arguments, and others, in more detail. The views expressed are solely those of the authors.

On August 20, the other shoe dropped. After Arizona’s systematic defeat in Arizona v. United States, rejecting the most important parts of SB1070, the question became how courts would treat the many other state laws on the books dealing with immigrants. If a trio of cases from the Eleventh Circuit is any indication, federal courts will read Arizona v. United States as severely limiting state authority to legislate in the area of immigration.

The three opinions were written by the same panel, and largely affirmed or expanded injunctions issued by district courts. Two cases involved Alabama’s HB56, Hispanic Interest Coalition of Alabama v. Governor of Alabama and United States v. Governor of Alabama. The third case, Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights v. Governor of Georgia, examined Georgia’s HB 87. The laws had some of the same features as SB1070, and the Eleventh Circuit necessarily treated those as did the Supreme Court. The decisions allowed Georgia and Alabama to investigate the immigration status of people stopped or arrested, but, like the Supreme Court, left open the possibility of as-applied challenges based on racial profiling or unlawful seizures. The Eleventh Circuit also struck down Alabama’s prohibitions on undocumented people seeking work or failing to carry immigration documents, just as the Supreme Court had.

By Daniel Kanstroom, Professor of Law at Boston College Law School

Good news: The major U.S. immigration enforcement agency has reported that “The border has been secured.” Bad news: That was in 1955 and nothing similar has been repeated since. Worse news: INS also recognized that “the prevention of illegal entries…is, in the long run, more economical and more humane than the expulsion process.” Worst news: The undocumented population now approximates 12 million. Despite recent Administration initiatives aimed at so-called “Dreamers” (the most innocent and the “best and the brightest” among the undocumented), massive deportation enforcement remains the dominant reality. Most frustrating news: No set of public policy issues is as widely misunderstood and as intractably resistant to rational solution. A virtual consensus among experts in the field as to comprehensive visa reform including work visas that match the realities of the labor market, better border control, some sort of legalization program for those already here, and flexible future enforcement discretion has yielded no legislation.

Meanwhile, the United States continues a radical deportation experiment of unprecedented size and ferocity. The experiment has now continued for more than a decade. It is time to consider what it has accomplished and what it has wrought. The story is grim: deportation has cost much, achieved little, and caused tremendous pain and suffering. It is also widely misunderstood. Few realize, for example, that many deportees are not “illegal aliens.” All over the world, hundreds of thousands -- maybe millions -- of former U.S. legal permanent residents, people with green cards, families, and jobs in the United States find themselves scattered in an odd, unplanned new American diaspora. 

Deportation has developed into a huge, expensive, and dangerous enterprise. If we count deportation events (including various mechanisms for what are technically called “removals” and “returns” through which a person is compelled to leave U.S. soil by government agents) over the last twenty years, the total number is around 25 million. 

How did this experiment begin?