A crowd awaits the Supreme Court's ruling on Arizona's controversial immigration law.
Today’s Supreme Court ruling on Arizona’s controversial immigration law (SB1070) is a balanced response to the federal government’s claim that immigration is a federal matter and the states’ pleas for relief on immigration issues.
The Supreme Court struck down some of the most abrasive and overreaching parts of the Arizona law, which made it a state crime to violate federal immigration laws. For example, it was a state crime for illegal immigrants in Arizona to seek work. Such provisions effectively encroached on federal sovereignty over immigration issues that had been in place since the 1880s.
The ruling reaffirmed that the federal government has the sole power to enforce the laws against illegal immigration, and that it is the federal government that must act to resolve the problem of immigration. States that overstep their power and attempt to make it a state crime to violate a federal law will now have to review such provisions or not pass them at all. In this regard, it is fair to say that the Supreme Court has stopped the momentum of the states to interfere on this important issue above and beyond the federal government.
But the Supreme Court also sent a strong message that the federal government must fix the problem of immigration, and allowed some relief for the states. For instance, the high court upheld Arizona’s provision that gives state and local law enforcement agencies the right to ask for immigration documents from someone who is stopped for any another violation, such as a routine traffic stop. This provision, known as the “show me your papers” provision, received much attention because it can lend itself to racial/ethnic profiling. In this sense, the Supreme Court did not side with the Obama administration, but sent a message that the status quo cannot continue. This message is also important because it all but legitimizes the intent behind the law — i.e., that migrants will be so fearful to move about that they will self-deport.
Regardless of whether one side or the other is victorious, it is clear that the Supreme Court issued a ruling that appears balanced overall, and in the process encouraged the U.S. Congress to act. Whether Congress will read it that way is still to be seen.
Texas is not a state particularly affected by the ruling. Whereas Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, South Carolina and Utah are states have laws similar to the one passed in Arizona, Texas legislators seemed to have understood the impossibility of untangling the issue of immigration in a simple law like Arizona’s SB1070; they seem to have preferred to wait for the Supreme Court decision.
Texas may be unique, however, in the sense that the state’s Hispanic population, unhappy with anti-immigrant stands, is quite large and is poised to be a factor in the November election. In addition, Texas border insecurity — mostly understood as the potential spillover of drug-related violence, and not immigration, however entangled these two issues may be — has received most of the attention. At the same time, Texas employers are considerably more amenable to a resolution that will enable them to continue to tap into low-cost labor from Mexico and may have higher influence on Texas legislators, resulting in a more moderate stand toward the issue of undocumented workers. Finally, Texas and Mexico maintain a special relationship — one in which the state’s robust economic relationship with Mexico is topmost in the minds of most Texas politicians, who would prefer a federal solution to the immigration problem.
Tony Payan is the Baker Institute Scholar for Immigration Studies.