The Integration of Immigrants into American Society (2015) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
2 Legal and Institutional Context for Immigrant Integration
2 Legal and Institutional Context for Immigrant Integration
Pages 59-92
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From page 59... ...
The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 explicitly barred Chinese immigrants from citizenship through naturalization, and curtailed almost all Chinese migration, while the Immigration Act of 1917 delineated an "Asiatic Barred Zone" from which migration was prohibited. Asian immigrants challenged their ineli 59
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From page 60... ...
Since its inception, the United States has grappled with two sets of competing demands relevant to immigration: first, the conflict between federal and state rights, and second, the needs of immigration enforcement versus immigrant integration. Policy makers, bureaucrats, and immigrants also face laws and policies that are not targeted toward immigration per se but nevertheless have profound implications for immigrant integration.
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From page 61... ...
Next, it examines the proliferation of legal statuses since 1965. Last, it details the current framework for immigration federalism and the tension between two competing trends: increasing enforcement and federal supremacy over exit and entry, and the devolution of decisions about public benefits to states, coupled with the delegation of integration efforts to state and local government and nongovernmental organizations.
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From page 62... ...
. In addition, in 1875 Congress passed the first restrictive federal immigration law, the Page Act, which prohibited the entry of "undesirable" immigrants and targeted Asian migrants both at their ports of departure and at entry into the United States (Peffer, 1986)
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From page 63... ...
Constitution for any person born in the United States 1870 Naturalization Act Broadened naturalization "to aliens of African nativity and to persons of African descent" 1875 Page Act Banned "involuntary" immigration from Asian countries and transportation of women for prostitution; banned immigrants who had committed crime 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act Restricted immigration from China; barred Chinese immigrants from naturalized citizenship 1891 Immigration Act of 1891 Established federal immigration bureaucracy 1906 Naturalization Act Established a federal Naturalization Service to promote uniform naturalization practices 1917 Immigration Act of 1917 Further restricted Asian immigration; excluded various categories of persons based on disability or moral criteria; introduced literacy test 1924 Immigration Act of 1924 Established strict national origin quotas restricting large-scale immigration from eastern and southern Europe and effectively barred Asian immigration 1924 Labor Appropriation Act Created Border Control 1952 Immigration and Nationality Abolished race-based bars of immigration Act and naturalization; allowed limited Asian migration 1965 Hart Celler Act amending the Abolished national origin quotas; established Immigration and Nationality a preference system based primarily on Act family reunification; some provisions for skilled labor and refugees; established first numerical limitation on Western Hemisphere migration, including migration from Mexico continued
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From page 64... ...
64 THE INTEGRATION OF IMMIGRANTS INTO AMERICAN SOCIETY TABLE 2-1 Continued Year Law Major Provisions 1980 Refugee Act Established the criteria for admission of refugees and immigration based on humanitarian relief; created the federal Refugee Resettlement Program 1986 Immigration Reform and Provided path to legalization for many Control Act undocumented persons and created sanctions for employers hiring unauthorized workers 1990 Immigration Act Raised the quota ceiling on family-sponsored visas, created the diversity lottery; enacted new high-skilled visa categories; enacted new Temporary Protected Status designation 1996 Personal Responsibility Restricted legal immigrants' access to social and Work Opportunity welfare benefits, and barred undocumented Reconciliation Act immigrants from most federal and state benefits; devolved authority on qualification for benefits to states 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform Expanded border protections and interior and Immigrant Responsibility enforcement; permitted cooperative Act agreements among federal, state, and local authorities to aid immigration enforcement; expanded grounds for removal; created pilot program for E-Verify 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Made deportation of Lawful Permanent Death Penalty Act Residents convicted of an aggravated felony mandatory; expanded definition of aggravated felony 2001 USA Patriot Act Reorganized federal immigration bureaucracy and created the Department of Homeland Security; expanded border enforcement and grounds for immigrant inadmissibility 2005 REAL ID Act Created national standards for state-issued identification cards 2008 Secure Communities Allowed for data sharing between states and localities and federal government to identify and deport immigrants with criminal convictions
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From page 65... ...
. In cases upholding the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Supreme Court made it clear that the power to enact immigration laws rests solely with the federal government because Congress possesses plenary authority to regulate entry, exit, and the terms of immigrants' presence under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution; state and local laws cannot contradict or undermine federal immigration regulation (Rodriguez, 2014)
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From page 66... ...
. The 1980 Refugee Act established formal criteria and legal statuses for the admission of refugees and migrants of humanitarian concern, including the establishment of an asylum system and the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement, an agency in the Department of Health and Human Services explicitly focused on assisting refugees with integration (see Table 2-1)
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From page 67... ...
Fish & California law denying Law struck down Game Commission, commercial fishing 334 U.S. 410 licenses to noncitizens 1948 Oyama v.
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From page 68... ...
United Arizona law Parts of law struck States, 567 U.S. ___ enforcement down; provision bill targeted at requiring police to undocumented verify the citizenship immigrants status of anyone lawfully detained was upheld 2014 Arizona DREAM ACT Arizona law denying Blocked by lower Coalition v.
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From page 69... ...
The alienage law governing LPR status has been relatively stable for three decades because courts subject the distinctions drawn between citizens and LPRs by state and local governments to heightened review under the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause (Graham v. Richardson, 1971; Rodríguez and Rubio-Marin, 2011)
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From page 70... ...
. Discretionary Statuses The third category of immigration status under federal law is discretionary status: lawful status conferred through Executive discretion.
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From page 71... ...
Notably, deferred action is not intended to result in permanent presence, and the fact that the Executive retains authority to terminate the statuses makes them inherently unstable, a distinction the panel discusses further in Chapter 3. Undocumented Status Undocumented status, also called "unauthorized" or "illegal," is the direct if unintended result of the development of legal statuses over the last century.
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From page 72... ...
Enforcement Federalism As noted in Chapter 1, an important part of the context for immigrant integration today has been the increase in federal immigration enforcement, including the militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border, the increase in interior enforcement, and the unprecedented rise in deportations of noncitizens after 1990 (see Figure 2-1)
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From page 73... ...
. Both developments destabilize LPR status by rendering even long-time residents more easily removable.
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From page 74... ...
However, executive discretion is a limited tool for immigrant integration because Congress has expanded the grounds for removal, and discretionary statuses provide no pathway to lawful permanent residence. Federal and State Enforcement Strategies Although the federal government has continually reasserted its supremacy in immigration enforcement, there have been efforts to leverage state and local encounters with immigrants to assist enforcement strategies.
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From page 75... ...
. In addition, federal law does require the federal government to accept inquiries from state and local police into the immigration status of those in police custody (8 U.S.C.
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From page 76... ...
that constrain the circumstances under which local police may hold persons pursuant to a detainer, usually permitting acquiescence to the federal request only in the case of serious offenses or where an outstanding order of removal exists (National Immigration Law Center, 2012)
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From page 77... ...
. Second, the federal courts have divided over whether laws that require landlords to verify immigration status and prohibit them from renting to unauthorized immigrants are preempted by Arizona v.
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From page 78... ...
Affirmative Integration Programs Unlike other countries with large immigrant populations, the United States has not constructed a centralized immigrant integration system, and "no single federal entity has been designated to lead the creation, implementation, and coordination of a national immigrant integration capability," (U.S. Government Accountability Office, 2011, p.
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From page 79... ...
For most immigrants, however, state and local institutions and the private sector perform the bulk of what would be considered traditional affirmative integration functions, such as language and civics education, job training, and assistance accessing public benefits and institutions. This is in sharp contrast to most other immigrant-receiving countries such as Canada, Australia, and western European countries, which have more comprehensive government-run programs for immigrant integration.12 Even the federal government's own integration policies rely heavily on state and local governments to implement and run these programs.
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From page 80... ...
and its predecessor, the Workforce Investment Act of 1998. The two principal titles of interest here are Title I, which focuses on the provision of employment and training services for adults, and Title II,14 which sets out the law's adult education and literacy programs: specifically adult basic education, adult secondary education, and English as a second language (ESL)
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From page 81... ...
States also vary in terms of the number and shares of adult English learners enrolled in ESL classes and in the access states provide to adult education programs for undocumented immigrants (e.g., Arizona and Georgia ban their enrollment)
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From page 82... ...
By program year 2013-2014, the number had fallen to 667,000 enrollees. ESL enrollees, however, represented a rising share of all adult education students: 42 percent in program year 2013-2014.19 Second, adult education for all adults -- but especially for those with limited English skills -- typically proceeds sequentially from English-language learning to obtaining a secondary-education credential (e.g., passing the General Education Development test)
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From page 83... ...
model. The model, which was created and introduced by the state's technical and community college system, combines adult education and college-level workforce training coursework.
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From page 84... ...
And although Congress, through the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) , made undocumented immigrants ineligible for nonemergency state and local public benefits in 1996, it also authorized states to extend such benefits as long as they adopted laws that "affirmatively" provided for eligibility (Public Law 104-193, 110 State 2105, s.
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From page 85... ...
As a result, in some jurisdictions the driver's licenses issued to undocumented immigrants vary in appearance from the standard license (National Immigration Law Center, 2013, p.
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From page 86... ...
Richardson, the Supreme Court invalidated state welfare schemes that barred certain LPR holders from receiving public benefits, while making it clear that any distinctions drawn between citizens and those with LPR status by state and local governments would be subjected to heightened review under the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause (Gulasekaram and Ramakrishnan, 2015; Rodriguez, 2014)
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From page 87... ...
Undocumented sta tus is inherently unstable because undocumented immigrants are at constant risk of deportation, which poses significant barriers to im migrant integration. In addition, federally supported adult education has proven to be a cornerstone of what can be seen as a rather skeletal federal immigrant integration policy.
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From page 88... ...
Washington, DC: Migration Policy Institute. Available: http://migrationpolicy.org/research/through-immigrant-lens-piaac-assessment competencies-adults-united-states [September 2015]
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From page 89... ...
State and Local Immigration Enforcement. Washington, DC: Migration Policy Institute.
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From page 90... ...
. National Immigration Law Center.
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From page 91... ...
. Office of Career, Technical and Adult Education.
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From page 92... ...
. Washington's Com munity and Technical Colleges Integrated Basic Education and Skills Training (I-BEST)
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