Over the last several years, state legislatures have increasingly sought to enact laws relating to immigration, arguing that the large population of undocumented workers and Congress’ failure to enact comprehensive immigration reform have unduly burdened the states. The State of Arizona has been on the leading edge of this trend. In 2007, it enacted the Legal Arizona Workers Act, which penalizes employers for knowingly or intentionally hiring or employing undocumented foreign nationals and requires all Arizona employers to use the federal E-Verify system to verify whether employees are authorized to work in the United States. Last summer, it enacted the controversial Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act, Senate Bill 1070, a law that sought to criminalize the presence of undocumented foreign nationals in the state and give local law enforcement the broad authority to check the immigration status of individuals where there is a “reasonable suspicion” that they are undocumented, among other provisions.
State and local immigration-related laws raise significant constitutional issues—principally, whether the federal immigration laws preempt state and local attempts to regulate foreign nationals. On Dec. 8, 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court will consider this question when it hears oral argument in Chamber of Commerce v. Whiting, a challenge to the Legal Arizona Workers Act.1 Though the Court will specifically address only the 2007 Arizona law, its decision will have an important impact on the numerous state and local statutes that have been enacted in recent years and will address important questions about the authority of states to be involved in matters related to immigrants. This article will discuss the case now before the court, and will examine the lower court decisions that frame the debate.
State Laws Generally
