Okay, a lot of Americans are upset about the presence of so many Mexican citizens in our midst without benefit of proper documents, thus "wet" or, in Spanish, mojado.
So they pass local laws prohibiting the guest workers, as foreign workers, imported labor, are called in Germany, for example. Hazelton, PA is an example of an effort to make the illegals further illegal by prohibiting them from working in town.
This gives rise to a Conlaw issue. U.S. Constitution Article I, Section 8, Clause 4, empowers Congress to make a uniform rule of naturalization. Congress has enacted over the years the Immigration and Nationality Act, Title 8, U.S. Code, and established an immigration and naturalization service, called the I.N.S., a branch of the Department of Justice, until recently following 9-11, when it was renamed and shifted over to the newly created Department of Homeland Security. Now that it and other agencies have been thus reshuffled, La Migra, as the Spanish-speaking call the people who enforce the borders and deport border-jumpers, it is called the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, "ICE" for short. That's the legend on the officers' raid jackets, worn so they know who's who.
Article 6, Sec. 2, provides that federal law (national or Uncle Sam's law) is supreme over state (which includes local law). In some areas, federal power may be shared, but not so far when it comes to aliens (the legal term for non-citizens) and nationality.
Why?
Regulation of aliens runs the risk of angering foreign governments. If we mistreat immigrants, whether legal or illegal, the international implications can be harmful to our nation. We entrust our foreign relations to the State Department, the president, and to Congress, working together. This is one way we avoid conflict and even war.
We don't want the 50 states, and their political subdivisions, the many cities and counties, each formulating a foreign policy of its own. When the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, the governing council, apart from the mayor, enacts foreign policy platforms such as against a war, or favoring amnesty for arrested aliens, we have a conflict with federal law that we don't want; some of us, at least.
The State of Texas enacted a law preventing the children of illegal aliens from obtaining a free public school education there. The U.S. Supreme Court, in Plyler v. Doe (1982) held the regulation unconstitutional. Why? Because throwing the Mexican kids out of school would relegate them to ignorance and backwardness, increasing the likelihood of their turning to crime, adversely impacting their health, and making their status as second-class citizens permanent. The Court, reasoning that many illegals eventually become legalized through marriage, amnesty programs, and the like, felt it wrong to keep such a large portion of our society down. This was bad for the nation. So it held that the children of illegal aliens could attend public school and not only that, but Texas would have to bear the huge cost, not the United States. Regulation of aliens, the Court held, is a matter in the exclusive power of the federal government to control, not the states. We say that federal law has pre-empted state or local law.
Because regulation of aliens is a matter of national power, the Hazelton, PA ordinance was held unconstitutional.
The AP report is below:
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