Immigration Newsletter – November 2011
As the political stalemate in immigration reform continues in Washington, D.C., more states address the problems of foreign national presence in the United States without lawful status by enacting their own legislation. The first state to enact such legislation was Arizona. With its enactment of SB 1070 on April 23, 2010, Arizona became the first state to try to deter the entry of foreign nationals without legal status and to detect those that were unlawfully present in the state. SB 1070 contains several harsh provisions. Those provisions include that Arizona law enforcement officials inquire the immigration status of foreign national when they are in “lawful contact”. It imposes criminal and civil liabilities for foreign nationals that fail to present immigration documents and for those that work in the state unlawfully as employees or independent contractors. Most, if not all of the SB 1070 provisions, have already existed in the federal law. Soon after SB 1070 is enacted, the U.S. Department of Justice, the ACLU and other private organizations mounted a legal challenge in the federal courts to challenge the constitutionality of the Arizona law under the preemption doctrine. The federal court did enjoin the harshest provisions of SB 1070, and the state has appealed this matter to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeal. Several states have since then enacted similar legislation by copying Arizona’s law. Those states include Georgia, Alabama, Utah, and South Carolina. A similar legislation was introduced in Texas, but the legislation failed to gain support of businesses and was successfully blocked by Democrats in the Texas Senate.