Immigration hodgepodge may be downright illegal

Today's Topic: Getting a handle on immigration

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Congress' inability to reach consensus on immigration reform has been a major source of frustration for Americans this year, and officials in many state and local governments have decided not to wait for Washington.

Feeling the heat from the portion of the public that believes a rising wave of illegal immigrants is out of control, lawmakers enacted 182 new immigration laws in 43 states in the first half of this year, according to figures from the National Conference of State Legislatures. That doesn't include measures taken by local governments.


Most of the laws are intended to clamp down, from banning renting homes to illegal immigrants to (in Oklahoma) making it a felony to "transport" or "harbor" them.

Tennessee is among these states, having revoked driving certificates for illegal immigrants and empowering state and local law-enforcement officers to act as immigration officials.

Some states, however, moved in the other direction. New York extended limited medical coverage to illegal immigrants fighting cancer, and Illinois forbade businesses from using a federal database to check workers' legal status.

Regardless of whether the laws are intended to limit illegal immigrants' rights or expand them, this crazy quilt of codes is likely to prove not only confusing but unable to stand up to legal challenges.

First, the jumble. How is it beneficial, for example, to prohibit businesses from hiring illegal immigrants in one jurisdiction, while in another businesses are prohibited from checking on workers' legal status? And where restrictions on "transporting" immigrants are imposed, how will individuals traveling from another jurisdiction know that? The inequity recalls the way small, speed-trap towns try to ensnare passing motorists.

It also appears some of the new laws were written without a good grasp of the situation. When it revoked "driving certificates," Tennessee replaced them with temporary driver's licenses for immigrants who are in the U.S. legally. But the law was written to say the licenses are only good for the time "of the applicant's authorized stay," and specifies one to five years.

So, some legal immigrants who moved to Tennessee from another state have found that they cannot get a license in Tennessee because they do not have the type of documents the Department of Safety specifies, according to the Chattanooga Times Free Press.

Ultimately, all of these new laws could be struck down, because immigration authority has long been reserved for the federal government. Since the late 19th century, the U.S. Supreme Court has consistently ruled that Congress has full authority over immigration, naturalization and deportation, and that state and local attempts to regulate it violate the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

Thus, while no one may like the way Congress has handled immigration legislation so far, it is still the province of the U.S. House and Senate, and the reason for this is deceptively simple: questions involving individuals from outside the borders of the United States should be treated equally and even-handedly. This cannot be achieved by 50 or more separate authorities, but by one federal authority.

Smaller jurisdictions' end runs around Congress only complicate the problem of illegal immigration for the future. Let your senators and representatives know where you stand on immigration now, or vote to replace them in 2008; limited local immigration laws are not the solution.