Immigration is a federal issue because the Constitution assigns the core powers over it to Congress, the Supreme Court has treated control of the nation’s borders as an inherent attribute of sovereignty, and the practical demands of foreign policy and national security make a single national rulebook the only workable option. State governments have real authority over many things that affect immigrants’ lives, but deciding who may enter the country, who may stay, and who must leave belongs to the federal government alone.
The Constitution Puts Immigration With Congress
Three provisions do the work.
Article I, Section 8, Clause 4 gives Congress the power “to establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization.”1Legal Information Institute. Overview of Naturalization Clause The word “uniform” is doing most of the work. If each state could set its own rules for who becomes an American, the country would have fifty different answers to a question that needs one.
The Commerce Clause in the same section lets Congress “regulate Commerce with foreign Nations.” The Supreme Court read that early on to cover people crossing borders, not just goods. In the Passenger Cases of 1849, the Court struck down New York and Massachusetts statutes that taxed arriving foreign passengers, holding that those taxes were regulations of foreign commerce reserved to Congress.2Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Passenger Cases, 48 U.S. 283 (1849)
The Supremacy Clause in Article VI then does the enforcement. Federal law is the “supreme Law of the Land,” so a state statute that conflicts with federal immigration law gives way.3Legal Information Institute. Supremacy Clause This is the preemption doctrine that courts have used to invalidate state immigration laws for roughly 150 years.
Sovereignty and the Plenary Power Doctrine
The Constitution’s text is not the only source of federal authority here. The Supreme Court has long held that controlling who enters and remains in the country is a power that belongs to the national government simply because it is a sovereign nation.
The foundation was the Chinese Exclusion Case of 1889. The Court upheld a federal law barring Chinese laborers from returning to the United States even if they held valid re-entry certificates, reasoning that the power to exclude foreigners “was an incident of sovereignty” that the government could exercise whenever national interests required it.4Constitution.congress.gov. Immigration Jurisprudence (1889-1900) Earlier cases had leaned on the Commerce Clause; this one opened a broader rationale.
Four years later, Fong Yue Ting v. United States extended that logic to deportation. A nation’s right to expel foreigners who had not been naturalized, the Court said, “rests upon the same grounds, and is as absolute and unqualified, as the right to prohibit and prevent their entrance into the country.”4Constitution.congress.gov. Immigration Jurisprudence (1889-1900) Those two decisions together are the roots of what legal scholars call the plenary power doctrine, which gives Congress and the executive branch sweeping, largely unreviewable authority over immigration. Courts have been reluctant to second-guess the political branches on these questions ever since.
Foreign Policy and National Security Need One Voice
Immigration decisions ripple into international relations in ways state governments are not built to manage. Granting asylum to dissidents from a particular country is a diplomatic statement. Restricting visas from certain regions can pressure foreign governments. If individual states could make those calls on their own, the United States would send contradictory signals to the rest of the world.
National security points the same way. Screening at ports of entry, maintaining watchlists, and coordinating intelligence all depend on a centralized system. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 was itself a Cold War product, pulled between a faction that wanted to liberalize admissions to improve America’s image abroad and one that argued for selective admissions to prevent communist infiltration.5Office of the Historian. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (The McCarran-Walter Act) Only the federal government has the tools and authority to balance those competing concerns.
What Federal Control Actually Looks Like
The main body of federal immigration law is the Immigration and Nationality Act, originally passed in 1952 and amended many times since. It is codified principally in Title 8 of the U.S. Code, starting at Section 1101.6Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 8 USC 1101 – Definitions The INA defines who may enter, sets the visa categories for immigrants and nonimmigrants, lists the grounds for removal, lays out the naturalization process, and creates the enforcement structure. Nearly every immigration question traces back to some provision of this one statute.
Three agencies within the Department of Homeland Security handle most of the day-to-day work:
- U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services adjudicates benefit requests, from visa petitions to green card and naturalization applications.7USCIS. Chapter 1 – Purpose and Background
- U.S. Customs and Border Protection screens travelers and goods at ports of entry and patrols the borders in between.
- U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement handles interior enforcement, including removals, smuggling and fraud investigations, and detention.8Homeland Security. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
No state agency has a parallel role. A worker needs federal authorization to work legally anywhere in the country, not a license from the state where the job sits. A lawful permanent resident holds that status nationwide, not state by state.
When States Try to Run Their Own System
The Supreme Court has consistently struck down state attempts to build parallel immigration regimes. Two cases bracket the history.
Chy Lung v. Freeman (1875)
California required ship masters to post a $500 gold bond for passengers deemed “lewd and debauched women.” A state immigration commissioner singled out roughly twenty Chinese women arriving on the steamer Japan and demanded the bond. The Court invalidated the law, warning that letting a state official exercise this kind of power over arriving foreigners could “embroil us in disputes with other nations” and that the authority to regulate immigration belonged solely to Congress.9Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Chy Lung v. Freeman, 92 U.S. 275 (1875) It was one of the earliest clear statements that states cannot freelance on immigration.
Arizona v. United States (2012)
Arizona’s S.B. 1070, enacted in 2010, tried to give state and local police expanded power to deal with unauthorized immigration. The Supreme Court struck down three of the four challenged provisions as preempted by federal law.10Cornell Law Institute. Arizona v. United States
- Section 3 made it a state crime for an immigrant to fail to carry federal registration documents. The Court held that Congress had occupied the entire field of alien registration, leaving no room for state regulation.
- Section 5(C) criminalized working without federal authorization. The Court found this contradicted Congress’s deliberate choice not to impose criminal penalties on unauthorized workers themselves.
- Section 6 allowed state officers to make warrantless arrests based on probable cause that someone was removable. The Court ruled this conflicted with the carefully limited circumstances under which federal law permits state officers to perform immigration functions.
Section 2(B), sometimes called the “show me your papers” provision, survived for the moment. It requires officers during a lawful stop to make reasonable efforts to verify immigration status when they have reasonable suspicion the person is unlawfully present. The Court declined to block it before state courts had a chance to interpret it and left open the possibility of future challenges. The broader message was clear: federal law sets the immigration framework, and states cannot build a parallel enforcement regime on top of it.
Where States Still Have Room
Federal supremacy does not reduce states to zero. The lines are real but more nuanced than “states keep out.”
Anti-Commandeering
The Tenth Amendment prevents the federal government from forcing state officials to carry out federal programs. In Printz v. United States (1997), the Supreme Court struck down a federal law that required state and local law enforcement to conduct background checks on gun buyers, holding that Congress cannot commandeer state officers to administer a federal regulatory scheme.11Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 898 (1997) Applied to immigration, this means the federal government cannot order a state or local police department to enforce immigration law. States can cooperate, but they cannot be drafted.
That is the constitutional backbone of so-called “sanctuary” policies. When a city or state limits its officers’ involvement in federal immigration enforcement, it is exercising a right the anti-commandeering doctrine protects. At the same time, 8 U.S.C. ยง 1373 bars state and local governments from restricting the flow of immigration-status information between their agencies and federal immigration authorities.12Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 8 U.S. Code 1373 – Communication Between Government Agencies and the Immigration and Naturalization Service Where exactly that line falls has produced recurring litigation.
Voluntary Cooperation Under 287(g)
Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act lets ICE delegate specific immigration enforcement functions to state and local officers, but only under ICE’s direction and supervision.13U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Partner With ICE Through the 287(g) Program Participating agencies can identify removable individuals in local jails, exercise limited immigration authority during routine policing, or serve administrative warrants on people already in custody. Officers acting under a 287(g) agreement are performing delegated federal functions, not exercising independent state authority.
State Laws That Shape Immigrants’ Lives
States still legislate on plenty of matters that touch immigrants without regulating immigration itself. Whether to issue driver’s licenses to undocumented residents, whether public universities offer in-state tuition regardless of status, and which state-funded benefits to extend to noncitizens are all decisions states make under their general police and spending powers. Those laws govern access to state resources and services, not who may enter or remain in the country, and that distinction keeps them on the right side of federal preemption.
The result is a divided system that sits comfortably within federalism. The federal government controls the big questions of admission, removal, and status. States shape the day-to-day experience of immigrants within their borders. When states push into enforcement, preemption stops them. When the federal government tries to force states to do the enforcing, anti-commandeering pushes back.