Repatriation and the States
Americans are well aware of the far-reaching powers of the Federal government, the president, his justice department, the Supreme Court, and subsidiary federal courts. However, many Americans remain unaware of their state governments’ power and far-reaching policymaking authority.
State governments administer welfare programs such as unemployment, they determine the licensing for professions, the vast bulk of court proceedings happen in state courts, state legislatures pass tens of thousands of bills each year, compared to a few hundred bills passed by Congress, and state executive agencies are the most common point of citizen contact with any level of government.
White Papers has put together a short list of policy actions that state lawmakers should be taking to curtail immigration wherever possible – since the Federal government clearly refuses to act in the best interest of the American people, regardless of which party currently controls the Oval Office or halls of Congress.
Travel Bans:
Governors have the right to restrict travel at their borders in emergencies, particularly where the health and welfare of their citizens is concerned. This power to close or limit transit across state lines has been upheld twice, first in Jacobsen v. Massachusetts, and for a second time in Zemel v. Rusk.
No states enacted hard border closuresduring the COVID-19 pandemic, but this power was always available to them. Tribal governments took advantage of this recognized power and several completely closed their borders to non-residents for the duration of the crisis.
Governors serious about protecting their states should invoke the specter of COVID-19, Denge, Hemorrhagic fever, and the plethora of serious and deadly diseases present in Central and South America, as recognized by the CDC. States could then put in place reasonable measures (something which the Supreme Court will scrutinize) such as requiring ID, environmental, or wellness checks in order to enter the state. This opportunity can be used to check the legal status of interstate travelers and to ensure that illegals are not being transported into a given state.
Deportations:
In March of 2024, the Supreme Court ruledthat Texas was allowed to enforce a new piece of legislation that gave the state’s police and military authorities the power to arrest, detain, and eventually deport illegal aliens within the state.
While Texas’ law makes it a crime for illegals to cross from Mexico into the state this piece of legislation could easily be copied and expanded by other states, namely to make it illegal for any illegal alien to enter a state through any boundary including those with other states.
E-Verify:
Another step would be for states to require that the E-verify system be mandatory for every employer, public or private, within their borders. Currently, just ten states, the entire deep South plus Arizona, Florida, and Utah, require that E-verify checks be carried out by all employers public and private, thus preventing illegal workers from accessing most types of employment in a given state.
Two states, California and Illinois, have banned the use of E-Verify in their states. California has even gone so far as to levy $10,000 fines against employers who dare to check the legal status of potential or current employees.
Still, in most states, the E-Verify laws already on the books require that the state government use the system to check the legality of any of its own hires and the hires of companies that contract with the state. This indicates fertile ground for expanding E-Verify to all employers in most states as Florida recently did.
And while it is a shame California and Illinois ban employers from utilizing E-Verify this does not mean that sanctions against employers are not a necessity. States must pass legislation that penalizes employers for not using the E-Verify system to hire illegal aliens. Laws such as this are already on the books in one American state.
A 2011 Supreme Court Ruling permitted an Arizona law that punishes business owners for hiring illegal aliens by revoking their business licenses. As far as White Papers can tell Arizona is the only state with such a provision, but nothing is stopping other states from copying and even improving upon Arizona’s law.
These laws are necessary because they play a part in mitigating the damage of the Reagan Amnesty, the 1986 IRCA. This act contains a provision that makes it nearly impossible for prosecutors and Federal officials to take businesses to court that employ illegal immigrants. This section (Section B) should and must be replaced, but the Federal government is clearly unwilling to do so. That does not, however, mean that state governments cannot act.
Limiting the right to reside:
In general state governments are not empowered to restrict legal immigration, but this is not an absolute. Louisiana banned foreigners from buying, renting, and leasing properties when it passed HB 537. More specifically the state of Louisiana banned ‘foreign adversaries’ from buying, renting, or leasing land within 50 miles of a military installation within the state.
Florida has also passed similar legislation that bans the buying or leasing of property by ‘foreign adversaries’ within 10 miles of its critical infrastructure.
This type of land law used to be commonplace in the United States. California, as one example, banned anyone but those of the “White Race or African Descent” from buying land in its 1879 constitution and again it restricted foreign land ownership in a 1913 piece of legislation it has since repealed.
There is no reason that modern bans could not be extended to cover all/nearly all of a state’s land area. There is also no apparent impediment to expanding the list of banned foreign citizens from buying land. States can, seemingly, ban those ranging from subcontinental Indians to Haitians to Mexicans, and many more foreign legal immigrants from buying or renting land.
This would, in effect, ban legal immigrants from being able to take up residence in a state and could serve as a powerful mechanism to protect the demographic makeup of a community and region.
Limiting the right to work:
Another option for limiting the ability of legal immigrants to settle in a given state is to use the state’s power to validate professional licensing and education.
Nevada recently removed the longstanding requirement that those applying for professional licensing in the state be US citizens. In other states specific exceptions are made for immigrant groups, such as DACA recipients, to apply for state professional licensing and academic recognition.
States could, and should, begin to restrict the issuing of professional licenses to non-citizens. States will continue to have the leeway to keep licensing open for certain professionals, such as the rare neurosurgeon, while closing off many licenses to those legal immigrants who undermine the American labor market such as Indian tech workers or Chinese student researchers.
Conclusion:
With a raft of policy options, some tried, some theoretical, state lawmakers could be doing much more to prevent the demographic destruction of their states and communities.
As Americans continue to become ever more averse to mass immigration and demographic change it is going to fall to politicians at increasingly local levels of government to find ways to protect their communities.
Our state lawmakers can and should be doing much more to protect us.
