Opinion ID: 625909
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Regulation of immigration and preemption

Text: The conclusion that the Ordinance is not a local housing regulation, and instead determines which aliens may reside in Farmers Branch, necessarily compels our conclusion about preemption of the Ordinance as a regulation of immigration contrary to federal authority. Because we conclude that the sole purpose of the Ordinance is to target illegal aliens and effect their removal from the City, we also conclude that the Ordinance is an impermissible regulation of immigration posing an obstacle to federal control of immigration policy. As noted above, the national government is entrusted with significant constitutional power to regulate immigration flowing from, inter alia, its power over foreign affairs. In light of this close relationship between immigration and foreign relations, then, it is necessary that the federal government, rather than individual states, have broad power over the presence of aliens, including the power to determin[e] what aliens shall be admitted to the United States, the period they may remain, regulation of their conduct before naturalization, and the terms and conditions of their naturalization. Takahashi v. Fish & Game Comm'n. [37] Indeed, Congress has exercised its exclusive power by enacting the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), [38] which established a `comprehensive federal statutory scheme for regulation of immigration and naturalization' and set `the terms and conditions of admission to the country and the subsequent treatment of aliens lawfully in the country.' [39] State or local legislation that interferes with or burdens the broad federal power is impermissible, even if local and federal laws share a common goal. [40] For example, in Hines the Supreme Court addressed the validity of a state alien-registration law in light of a subsequently enacted federal law that required similar registration. [41] The subject matter of the state and federal laws was essentially identical, but the Court concluded that the state did not possess equal and concurrent power over alien registration. [42] Of particular importance was the fact that the state law was in a field which affects international relations, the one aspect of our government that from the first has been most generally conceded imperatively to demand broad national authority. [43] Because of this imperative for a uniform national expression of policy, the Court concluded that the state could not enact its own laws that inter alia complement[] the federal law, or enforce additional or auxiliary regulations. [44] The Court so concluded, even though compliance with both the federal and state laws was possible, because the state act was an obstacle to the accomplishment and execution of the full purposes and objectives of Congress. [45] In the instant case, we think that the Ordinance similarly infringes Congress's exclusive authority over the regulation of immigration and treads on foreign relations in a way contrary to the requirement of a national voice on immigration policy. The City argues that the Ordinance does not regulate immigration because it does not make a determination about admittance into the United States or the conditions under which a lawful entrant may remain in this country. The City contends that the Ordinance instead merely defers to federal categories of immigration status and to federal determinations of any particular alien's status. We are unconvinced. The Supreme Court stated in DeCanas that a regulation of immigration . . . is essentially a determination of who should or should not be admitted into the country, and the conditions under which a legal entrant may remain. [46] We recognize that the Ordinance here does not literally control the entry and exit of aliens into and out of Farmers Branch or the United States. However, we do not read the quoted language from DeCanas in the same literal and hyper-technical manner as does the City because we do not read DeCanas as attempting to define an impermissible regulation of immigration. In context, the quoted language merely recognized as impermissible a category of state and local regulation that would be unconstitutional even with explicit Congressional authorization. But as the Court later explained, DeCanas rejected the pre-emption claim not because of an absence of congressional intent to pre-empt, but because Congress intended that the States be allowed, `to the extent consistent with federal law, [to] regulate the employment of illegal aliens.' [47] The Court found specific Congressional authorization for the local law in DeCanas, in an areaemploymentthat also had historic state regulation, and so there was no need to define the outer bounds of what it means to be a regulation of immigration. In this case, however, we believe that the Ordinance does in fact regulate immigration because it seeks to address directly the presence of aliens within the City's borders. We agree with the Third Circuit's view that [i]t is difficult to conceive of a more effective method of ensuring that persons do not enter or remain in a locality than by precluding their ability to live in it. [48] By denying aliens access to rental housing, the Ordinance here effectively forces them to relocate. As noted above, the preamble to the Ordinance expressly states that it is designed to enforce immigration law, and numerous City officials explicitly stated that the ordinance was intended to reduce the number of illegal aliens in Farmers Branch. The undeniable practical effect of the Ordinance is thus to compel the departure of aliens from the City to other cities, states, or foreign countries, thereby setting the City's own policy on immigration and regulating immigration across and outside the City's borders. [49] Moreover, as the district court held, the Ordinance imposes additional burdens on aliens that were not contemplated by Congress. [50] For example, the Ordinance requires illegal aliens to declare themselves to the City Building Inspector, denies them the ability to enter private contracts for shelter, and subjects them to criminal sanctions, all in an effort to exclude them from the City. Because states lack the constitutional power of the federal government when it comes to immigration, however, the Ordinance may neither add to nor take from the conditions lawfully imposed by Congress upon admission, naturalization and residence of aliens in the United States or the several states. [51] Because the Ordinance has no other purpose than to exclude undocumented aliens who are in the city seeking residence, it adds to the serious national federal problem with immigration and the relations of this country with other countries, especially Mexico. Growing evidence of this national problem can be seen in federal court litigation, as numerous state and local governments seek to target problems, real or imagined, with illegal immigrants. As already noted, a Pennsylvania municipality passed an ordinance virtually identical to Farmers Branch's ordinance seeking to condition residence in rental housing on an occupant's lawful immigrations status. [52] Arizona, reacting to a serious problem of unauthorized immigration along the Arizona-Mexico border, enacted legislation creating its own immigration policies and seeking to deter unlawful entry by requiring its police officers to enforce those policies. [53] And the state legislature in Alabama has also sought to discourage illegal immigration by enacting a law creating numerous criminal offenses predicated on immigration status. [54] This increasing treatmentsome might say mis-treatmentof illegal immigrants around the country only reinforces what the Supreme Court has said in explaining why a national policy on immigration unimpeded by the whims of the various states is paramount. As the Court has put it, [i]f th[e] government [of California] should get into a difficulty [because of its treatment of noncitizens] which would lead to war, or to suspension of intercourse, would California alone suffer, or all the Union? [55] Clearly then, the treatment of aliens entails issues of national concern that reach beyond parochial concerns of individual states and includes matters such as trade, treaty obligations, and reciprocal rights agreements. It is imperative that the nation act singularly in conducting matters of foreign relations, particularly the treatment of noncitizens, because the burdening of another country's citizens will undoubtedly affect how this nation's citizens are in turn treated abroad. The Supreme Court has said that [o]ne of the most important and delicate of all international relationships, recognized immemorially as a responsibility of government, has to do with the protection of the just rights of a country's own nationals when those nationals are in another country. Experience has shown that international controversies of the gravest moment, sometimes even leading to war, may arise from real or imagined wrongs to another's subjects inflicted, or permitted, by a government. [56] It is clear to us that the City of Farmers Branch, by enacting the Ordinance, threatens the careful balance that the federal government must maintain in foreign affairs and impedes the federal prerogative for deciding how to treat illegal immigrants, which it achieves through the scheme of the INA. Although the City argues that the Ordinance is consistent with the INA and that Congress explicitly contemplated state regulations addressing the presence of illegal aliens, we are unpersuaded. The INA provisions cited by the City may contemplate cooperation among the federal, state, and local governments in the enforcement of the federal immigration scheme and the arrest of illegal immigrants, [57] but we do not read the INA to contemplate a locality enacting its own scheme of immigration enforcement or its own ordinances to deal with illegal aliens in whatever manner the locality deems fit. [58] The INA provides a comprehensive scheme, with ample provision for the exercise of discretion, for the federal government to determine how best to address or to not address illegal aliens. Whereas the Ordinance precludes an alien's presence in rental housingand by extension within the Citybased solely on the unlawfulness of the alien's immigration status, a similar unlawfulness determination in the federal scheme would merely subject an alien to the process of the INA, under which removal of an alien may not result until after a hearing and an opportunity for the alien to be heard. [59] The federal government has determined that such process is the exclusive means for adjudicating whether a particular alien will be removed. [60] It is no response to say, as the City does, that the Ordinance defers to the federal classification of an alien's immigration status because, although the Ordinance uses some of the same terms as federal immigration law, it seeks to use an alien's immigration status for a purpose different from that intended under the federal scheme. [61] An alien's unlawful status and eligibility for removal does not ipso facto mean that the alien will be removed, as it would under the Ordinance. Instead, the federal government has broad discretion to cancel removal or adjust an alien's status under a variety of circumstances. [62] In light of the discretionary federal power to grant relief from [removal], a State cannot realistically determine that any particular undocumented [alien] will in fact be [removed] until after [removal] proceedings have been completed. [63] Yet, the Ordinance here dispenses with the procedures and discretion of the federal scheme to preclude an alien from residence in the City solely due to a status classification as unlawful even though the same alien might be entitled to relief under the federal process. That is not permissible under the Constitution and the Supremacy Clause.