With the failure of an immigration bill to get through the Senate at the Federal level in the United States, local government such as counties have started passing similar legislation. Recently Prince William County and Loudoun County in Virginia have passed laws which deny illegal immigrants services and require police to arrest them if discovered during routine stops and enforcement.
The problem for local lawmakers is we are moving from a nation-state to a market-state. The WaPo Editorial writes:
Illegal immigrants are in Northern Virginia for the same reason that they are in so many other parts of the country: Their labor is in demand. That's not going to change, unless the powers that be in Prince William and Loudoun have discovered a way to defeat market forces.It is easy to write off nativism, nationalism and monoculturalism as driving these laws; but there are some real concerns in neighbourhoods due to over-crowding and some real oddities such as one recent article where a chook pen was kept in a local suburban house. It should be noted where I grew up in the outer-edges of Sydney, the folks over the back of us had a chook pen until they tore their house down and rebuilt it. We lived in a suburban development. Home Owner Associations [HOA] are having a role in this area too as they effectively homogenise suburbs and developments through voluntary agreement. Putting a chook pen in a HOA development will quickly earn a ticket from the board. The argument for banning illegal immigrants from services is that they don't pay taxes as it is assumed they exist in a cash in hand economy. The local county here raises all their revenue from property taxes and business asset taxes. Immigrants by increasing the demand for rental housing and supplying cheap labor indirectly increase the revenues for the county. Since the county does not have income taxes I don't see that as a valid reason at the local government level. The other argument is that they are breaking the law. Which is true. However, nation-states have absurd regulations and bureaucracy in order to enter a country and work. Apparently H1B visas have made it easier for seasonal workers to come to the US in summer, but with the recent crackdowns it has become harder to get the H1Bs. So people enter anyway. The drive to work is greater than the drive to adhere to the bureaucratic regulations. Market forces ... What is a valid policy then? At the local level it is best to pass ordnances to ensure that local communities and developments have recourse for complaint. These exist anyway and most of the issues or horrors of suburbia are dealt with through county and town officials or inspectors. HOAs also provide services in this area - mainly through being exceptionally strict and having a very homogeneous approach to the development, right down to what colour the house can be. I don't think forcing police to check for illegal immigration is a good policy, it is probably best left if the individual is charged and then discovered to be illegal. However, rule of law is the rule of law, but I would not be surprised if discretion is used in this area. Local officials are hampered in their ability to have some kind of local work visa or policy as this is handled at the federal level. The states, counties and towns have no recourse in that area. What is obvious is that the political structures of the nation-state cannot deal with this aspect of economic liberalism. We allow capital and goods to flow unhampered from one nation-state to another. Inevitably labor will seek to do the same. I am personally of the opinion that economic prosperity is incomplete without the free movement of labor. However, like capital and goods, I am comfortable with some degree of regulation - though minimal - inside a wider policy of the free movement of capital, goods and labor between political bodies.
