“New Hampshire joins a growing list of states that mandate some level of local cooperation with federal immigration enforcement,” The Epoch Times tells us.
New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte signed a pair of bills into law that ban so-called “sanctuary” policies designed to keep local police from cooperating with federal immigration authorities.
“There will be no sanctuary cities in New Hampshire,” Ayotte declared at the bill-signing ceremony, flanked by lawmakers and sheriffs from across the state. “Period. End of story.”
At issue are two bill, HB511 and SB62. These curb local governments under the corporate control of the sovereign state from defying federal law on the matter of immigration — that is, “unless expressly prohibited by state or federal law, local governmental entities may not prohibit or impede any state or federal law enforcement agency from complying with federal immigration laws,” etc.
“New Hampshire now joins a growing list of states that have enacted anti-sanctuary laws,” The Epoch Times goes on to explain. “According to legal advocacy group Immigrant Legal Resource Center, more than 20 states, including Alabama, Florida, Texas, and Georgia, have laws mandating at least some level of local cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.”
The idea of the state nullification of federal law — James Madison called it “interposition,” and it was a key idea of the early Jeffersonians — has been on the rise in recent years. (Cannabis legalization is a good example.) This movement of the states to rein in the “sanctuary city” movement goes in the other direction, forcing compliance with the federal government.
4 replies on “No Sanctuary Cities”
Sanctuary cities and their opposition aren’t about “compliance” with the federal government or federal law. They’re about whether those cities should or shouldn’t ASSIST the federal government in enforcing federal law.
Setting aside that all federal immigration laws are void (see Madison v. Marbury) in the first place, if the state governments want city governments to do the federal government’s job, they should at least either provide the funding or require the feds to.
Bad lawyering will undermine your more fundamental objective. Your frequent entanglement and occasional encloaking of your misguided invocation of the Tenth Amendment with a citation of Madison v. Marbury is simply not helpful.
In the past, you have claimed that the Tenth Amendment bars the Federal government from regulating immigration, but others (myself included) have responded that the Federal government has such authority from Article I § 8 Clause 3 and § 9 Clause 1. You’ve always abandoned discussion when we note that immigration is an importation of means of production and otherwise entail commercial acts, and that § 9 Clause 1 does not confine itself to the importation of slaves.
“§ 9 Clause 1 does not confine itself to the importation of slaves”
I’ve never said — nor have I ever come within a country mile of claiming — that it did.
Article I, Section 9 forbade federal regulation of both slave importation and free immigration prior to 1808.
Article V forbade amending the Constitution with respect to either of those restrictions prior to 1808.
After 1808, the international commerce clause sufficed to allow federal regulation of the slave trade. However, as Congress correctly understood until near the end of the 19th century, there was no federal power to regulate immigration and could not be any such power without a constitutional amendment to create one.
Even after an activist SCOTUS miracled that power up entirely out of its imagination in 1875 (Chy Lung v. Freeman), Congress was skeptical enough that it predicated the first federal immigration regulation (the Chinese Exclusion Act) on treaty provisions rather than on that SCOTUS ruling.
After that, Congress proceeded at turns aggressively and cautiously in violating the constitutional prohibition on federal regulation of immigration. It wasn’t until 1947 that Congress dared require a passport for entry to the United States, and then not from Mexico or Canada until after 9/11.
The period of unconstitutional regulation of immigration is, at this point, about as long as the interregnum between Dred Scott (an equally baseless SCOTUS ruling) and Brown v. Board of Education. Unfortunately, so far, without a Plessy v. Ferguson style partial mitigation.
As for “abandoning discussion,” this site doesn’t seem to have any “notify me” function on comments and I don’t come back to the same article over and over just to reply every time you whine that you don’t WAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNNNTTTTTTTTTT the Constitution to say what it says and mean what it means.
Though I raised and explained the significance of Article I § 8 Clause 3 for immigration in general, and not just for the importation of slaves, you are ignoring that significance as if it might thus go away.
Article I § 9 Clause 1 must be understood not as some weird prohibition on an unassigned power included even at a time when Federalists were assuring citizens and legislators that the Federal government would have no unassigned powers, but as a limitation on the power in the previously mentioned § 8 Clause 3. When § 9 Clause 1 prohibitted the Federal regulation of immigration before 1808, it was limiting power otherwise found in § 8 Clause 3.
Congress didn’t “understand” that it had no power to regulate immigration despite Article I § 8 Clause 3, but was divided on the desirability of when and how to exercise such power.
Chy Lung v Freeman et Alii didn’t miraculously create a Federal power to regulate immigration, but thwarted an attempt by the state of California to impose a tariff on this international trade.
You have previously abandoned discussion not just here but on Facebook, which has a notification system. And I’m not whining about what I do or do not want in the Constitution; I am explaining why something is there, regardless of what I want. Try to do better than playground argumentation.