In: Economics
In five hundred words or more explain how intergovernmental relation impacts the immirgration reform policy?
The federal government has a monopoly on immigration law terminology, and it manages the complex immigration enforcement system of the country. Nonetheless, our federalism provides a vital playing field for sharp debates about immigrant status in American life. State and local modes of immigration policy participation are varied, but they fall into two basic categories of mutually dependent and reinforcing policies: federalism compliance and federalism of incorporation. While compliance federalism concerns the degree to which localities must embrace or oppose federal removal policies, integration federalism requires initiatives designed to assist immigrants, irrespective of citizenship, in planting roots and acculturating to life in the United States.
All forms of immigration federalism take shape through a wide variety of intergovernmental partnerships, not only between the federal government on the one hand and states and localities on the other, but also an increasingly important aspect of immigration federalism today between states and cities within them. These relationships have important legal characteristics and they are created and mediated by constitutional and statutory law. But a mixture of philosophy and organizational imperatives can form the essence of any given intergovernmental system just as much. Such elements can either unite in common cause the core and the periphery or create the kind of tension that has made immigration federalism a high-profile problem for decades.
Regardless of the value of compliance opposition, an agenda of federalism should include efforts by all levels of government to establish a realistic balance that reconciles the constitutional and statutory obligations of the federal government to maintain enforcement with regional immigration policies and the realities of immigrant communities. Since both compliance and integration policies require institutional flexibility, statements on the merits of immigration policy should not be confused with structural claims. In other words, when creating conversation-stoping arguments that a certain intergovernmental arrangement is required by law, academics, advocates, or policymakers must practice modesty and circumspection, particularly in a context as charged as immigration policy.