States surge ahead with immigration laws
States are taking up the immigration issues in the vacuum left by federal inaction. We've heard that theme before, and yet another iteration is provided in this piece by The New York Times and linked to me by Big Apple of our Fresh Produce Industry Discussion Group.
From the story:
Spurred by rising resentment in the country over illegal immigration and by the collapse of a broad immigration bill in the Senate in June, state legislators nationwide adopted measures to curb employment of unauthorized immigrants and to make it more difficult for them to obtain state identification documents like driver’s licenses.
While the political tide ran generally against illegal immigrants, some states adopted measures to help them by protecting them from exploitation and by extending education and health care to their children. Fifteen states adopted laws intended to punish immigrant smugglers, especially if their victims were foreigners coerced into prostitution or other sexual commerce.
State lawmakers have introduced about two and half times more immigration bills this year than in 2006, and the number that have become law is more than double the 84 bills enacted last year, according to the conference, a nonpartisan organization that includes all the state legislatures.
TK: If anything can spur members of Congress to action, perhaps it is the prideful thought that perhaps the state lawmakers are usurping their authority. The industry won't object to the most unseemly of motives if it can budge the current Congress past the stalemate it is mired in.
Labels: Big Apple, FDA, Fresh Produce Industry Discussion Group, immigration
posted by Tom Karst @ 10:10 AM
1 Comments:
States right with regard to immigration has had a rather sordid and biased path, and the federal response is probably less exemplary.
(From various sources)
In the beginning:
John Bigler (January 8, 1805 – November 29, 1871) was the third Governor of California.
Anti-Chinese laws:
Bigler also set out on a policy to openly target Chinese "coolie" immigrants from entering California. Claiming that the Chinese refused to and could never assimilate into American society, as well as their willingness to work with little pay, Bigler urged Californians to "check this tide of Asiatic immigration." While the previous administration of Governor John McDougall somewhat supported the Chinese presence in the state, Bigler advocated the revival of the 1850 Foreign Miners Tax, originally signed by anti-foreigner Governor Peter Burnett. Whereas the original 1850 law placed a US$20 a month tax on all miners of foreign origin, the Bigler-supported 1852 version of the law placed a US$3 a month tax exclusively for Chinese laborers.
Over the course of his two terms in office, taxes for Chinese steadily increased with ever-harsher bills passing the Legislature and signed into law by Governor Bigler. One law passed by the Legislature and signed by the Governor created a US$50 tax per head for Chinese entering Californian ports that was to be paid within three days. The California Supreme Court later ruled the law unconstitutional.
As Sierra Nevada gold mine output came to a trickle by the early 1850s, followed by local financial panic caused by the discovery of gold in Australia, anger towards hard-working and labor-cheap Chinese grew from economically pressured miners, who desperately sought alternative work in California's cities and ports. While Bigler aligned himself with popular anti-immigrant and anti-Chinese sentiment, these pressure ranks would later split from the Democrats and spill over into the anti-immigrant American Know-Nothing Party.
Chester Alan Arthur (October 5, 1829 – November 18, 1886) was an American politician who served as the twenty-first President of the United States. September 19, 1881 – March 4, 1885. He firmly established federal jurisdiction over state's rights regarding immigration with the Chinese Exclusion Act
The Chinese Exclusion Act was a United States federal law passed on May 6, 1882, following 1880 revisions to the Burlingame Treaty of 1868. Those revisions allowed the U.S. to suspend immigration, and Congress subsequently acted quickly to implement the suspension of Chinese immigration, a ban that lasted over 60 years.
There have been a number of Immigration Acts in the United States.
The Naturalization Act of 1790 established the rules for naturalized citizenship, as per Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution.
[The original United States naturalization law of March 26, 1790 (1 Stat. 103) provided the first rules to be followed by the United States in the granting of national citizenship. This law limited naturalization to aliens who were "free white persons" and thus left out indentured servants, slaves, free African-Americans, and later Asian Americans.
The 1790 Act also limited naturalization to persons of "good moral character"; the law required a set period of residence in the United States prior to naturalization, specifically two years in the country and one year in the state of residence when applying for citizenship. When those requirements were met, an immigrant could file a Petition for Naturalization with "any common law court of record" having jurisdiction over his residence asking to be naturalized. Once convinced of the applicant’s good moral character, the court would administer an oath of allegiance to support the Constitution of the United States. The clerk of court was to make a record of these proceedings, and "thereupon such person shall be considered as a citizen of the United States."]
The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was the first (and only) explicitly race-based immigration act.
The Emergency Quota Act of 1921 established national quotas on immigration based on the number of foreign-born residents of each nationality who were living in the United States as of the 1910 census.
The Immigration Act of 1924 aimed at freezing the current ethnic distribution in response to rising immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe, as well as Asia.
The National Origins Formula was established with the Immigration act of 1924. Total annual immigration was capped at 150,000. Immigrants fit into two categories: those from quota-nations and those from non-quota nations. Immigrant visas from quota-nations were restricted to the same ratio of residents from the country of origin out of 150,000 as the ratio of foreign-born nationals in the United States. The percentage out of 150,000 was the relative number of visas a particular nation received. Non-quota nations, notably those contiguous to the United States only had to prove an immigrant's residence in that country of origin for at least two years prior to emigration to the U.S. Laborers from Asiatic nations were excluded but exceptions existed for professionals, clergy and students to obtain visas.
The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (or McCarran-Walter Act) somewhat liberalized immigration from Asia, but increased the power of the government to deport illegal immigrants suspected of Communist sympathies.
The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 discontinued quotas based on national origin, while preference given to those who have U.S. relatives. For the first time Mexican immigration was restricted.
The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 granted amnesty to illegal immigrants who had been in the United States before 1982 but made it a crime to hire an illegal immigrant.
The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 made drastic changes to asylum law, immigration detention, criminal-based immigration, and many forms of immigration relief.
The Real ID Act of 2005 created more restrictions on political asylum, severely curtailed habeas corpus relief for immigrants, increased immigration enforcement mechanisms, altered judicial review, and imposed federal restrictions on the issuance of state driver's licenses to immigrants and others.
(My guess is that sooner or later these state's immigration laws will be litigated. The Feds don't give up jurisdiction so easily.)
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