(Editor's note: This is a twice weekly column written Conor Friedersdorf, who is managing the Daily Bulletin's blog, or special Web site, on immigration issues. The blog is designed to provide a forum for opinions and information on immigration. The blog is at www.beyondbordersblog.com)
America's states, counties and cities -- its "laboratories of democracy" -- are busy these days. After decades of neglect, the U.S. government is still unable or unwilling to do anything about illegal immigration. And state and local governments are filling the vacuum.
At least 30 states have passed in excess of 57 laws, according to a USA Today analysis. Cities like Hazelton, Pa., are attempting hyper-local crackdowns, even as signature-gathering citizens try to qualify various ballot measures for municipal, county or state elections throughout the United States. As Hazelton tries to punish immigrants, Cambridge, Mass., has promised to look the other way as its illegal immigrants break immigration laws. As Colorado's governor demands tough legislation from lawmakers recalled from summer recess, New York's mayor advocates amnesty, insisting before a Congressional hearing that his mighty city would collapse without its illegal immigrants.
These experiments are different in approach.
Yet all are designed to answer the same question: what's the best fix for an immigration system that everyone, from the most conservative Republican to the most liberal Democrat, from the most radical Green to the most doctrinaire Libertarian, believes to be broken?
Now that they've begun, these localized debates and legislative efforts seem quite natural, especially as immigration reform remains the hottest topic of this long, hot summer.
But it's doubtful that the Bush administration anticipated them when it pushed immigration reform to the forefront of the nation's political agenda.
If Congress fails to pass a significant immigration bill, the most significant result of President Bush's focus on immigration might be the state ballot initiatives, county resolutions and municipal ordinances that it provokes.
It's equally doubtful that the immigration advocates who took to the streets this spring appreciated the fact that awakening small town America to the issue of illegal immigration is gravely detrimental to their cause. Local politicians are often far less beholden to ethnic lobbies than national politicians. And a patchwork of city, county and state immigration laws -- some friendly to illegal immigrants and others hostile to them -- prevent illegal immigrants from seeking work in the best market.
In fact, all Americans may live to rue such a patchwork system if it exacerbates the tendency of illegal immigrants to concentrate themselves in ghettoized sanctuary cities, where assimilation is slowed or stopped.
It's hard to predict what will happen if Colorado, Alabama and Arizona become significantly less friendly to illegal immigrants than Illinois, Texas and California. In the short term, more illegal immigrants will leave the unfriendly states for the friendlier ones. But then what?
It's even harder to predict what will happen if San Bernardino, Rancho Cucamonga and Chino Hills become significantly less friendly to illegal immigrants than Ontario, Claremont and Rialto.
Under the right circumstances even traffic patterns might change as illegal immigrants avoid driving through cities that check immigration status during traffic stops.
Of course, state and local laws have their advantages, too.
Lots of laboratories experimenting at once tend to produce a few winning approaches, and those can be replicated all the others. A workplace enforcement method that proves particularly effective in one state might be expanded to a region or the whole nation. Different cities and states are affected illegal immigration in different ways, and local solutions can be tailored to those needs. And local decision-making makes more people happy with the laws that they live under.
Ultimately, however, immigration is one subject even the staunchest federalist concedes as the proper, if not the exclusive, realm of the federal government. The longer varying local laws change expectations and the way people plan for their futures, the more resistance there will be to an eventual federal solution, and the more disruptive that solution will be.
Of course, if 12 million illegal immigrants within our borders, a catastrophic terrorist attack carried out foreigners taking advantage of our lax security when handing out visas, and overwhelming public desire for reduced illegal immigration aren't enough to provoke federal reform satisfactory to the people, one wonders what will do the trick.
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