Immigration Federalism

Catalog description

This course explores the historical evolution of local, state, and federal government regulations of immigration, and the ways in which contemporary political conflicts over immigration express themselves as intergovernmental conflicts. Immigration is commonly understood as an exclusively federal area of law, in which the federal government has nearly unchecked power. But while this view of immigration's status in the U.S. federal system remains intuitive, it fails to capture the reality of immigration policymaking both past and present. From the earliest days of immigration regulation, states played a major role in deciding who can enter the country and what rights they hold once they arrive. Even in today's far more centralized immigration system, state and local policy has an important impact-both direct and indirect-on the legal status and daily life of immigrants. In a context where the relationship between state and federal governments is evolving in new directions, immigration federalism is likely to play an outsized role in defining the contours of policy conflicts.