Congress failed yet again in 2007 to pass any kind of comprehensive immigration reform bill. Meanwhile, with estimates of 12 to 15 million illegal aliens now living in the United States, the consequences and costs of the country’s immigration status quo are mounting at the state and local level.
Many state legislatures have grown tired of waiting for action at the federal level. In fact, the growing discontent among many voters with the federal government’s refusal to take stronger action against illegal aliens has also created a convenient political issue for many state lawmakers.
The National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), which has been tracking the development of state laws related to immigrants and immigration for several years, reports some astonishing statistics.
- In 2007 alone, over 1,500 separate pieces of legislation related to immigrants or immigration were introduced among the 50 state legislatures.
- Of these, more than 240 became law.
- 46 states enacted immigration-related legislation in 2007.
- The number of state immigration-related bills signed into law nearly tripled in number from 2006 to 2007.
With each passing year, state lawmakers are pulling the issue of immigration law into an increasing number of policy matters. It is now quite common to see immigration law as a subject within state legislative proposals on employment, business licenses, education, public benefits, housing, law enforcement, driver’s licenses, health care and public contracts for services.
This trend is expected to continue in 2008.
State employment-related immigration laws withstand legal challenge.
Immigration law has historically been viewed as one area of public policy exclusively within the domain of the federal government. This view was reinforced in 1986, when Congress wrote the employer sanctions laws (whereby the I-9 employment eligibility verification process got its start) as part of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA). In that legislation, Congress stated that all state laws seeking to penalize businesses for employing illegal aliens were expressly preempted by federal law.
State legislatures obeyed that directive, and at least in the area of employment matters, rarely sought to impose state legal authority over immigration matters. But as the number of illegal aliens grew exponentially in the 20 years since passage of the IRCA, and the public saw no ability at the federal level to abate the problem, state lawmakers decided it was time to craft legislation that might steer clear of federal preemption.
The first significant step into legislating employment-related immigration matters at the state level occurred in Colorado in 2006. There were immediate cries of federal preemption and threats of legal challenges after Colorado enacted an assortment of laws on immigration issues (involving eligibility for public benefits, health, education, public contracts, employment and other matters). But no organization stepped forward to file a legal challenge against any of Colorado’s immigration laws. Two of the Colorado immigration laws stand out for their impact on employers.
In 2007, Arizona, which has one of the highest percentages of illegal alien residents in the country, joined several other states in passing immigration-related legislation that would impact employers. In fact, Arizona’s law includes a sanction that surpasses any other state immigration law initiative—an Arizona employer found to violate the law can have its license to do business in the state revoked.
Business, labor and ethnic groups quickly banded together in Arizona and filed lawsuits to have the state immigration law thrown out (on federal preemption and other grounds). But in December 2007, essentially hours before the law was s