The Plot Politics Decoded
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The most recent Gallup (July 2015) polls report that immigration is one of the nation’s most important problems yet Democrats and Republicans remain sharply divided on how to address the issue. While Republicans generally support securing the borders in order to stop unauthorized immigration and enforcing against illegal aliens that are already here, Democrats support a more comprehensive reform that includes border control as well as expanding protections for immigrants against deportation, and a pathway to citizenship for some. The disagreement between the parties has produced considerable stalemate in the U.S. Congress over immigration legislation reform.
Underscoring the importance of this issue, since 2005, members of Congress have introduced 1,177 bills. The sheer number of bills sponsored suggests that in the last five congressional sessions, members of Congress have not lost interest in the topic. The bills introduced are nearly evenly divided with 528 proposals that enforce against immigrants and 676 proposals that provide benefits. The type of bills sponsored suggests that members are not any less divided on the topic. Given this division and stalemate at the national level, we have witnessed a growing interest in immigration legislation at the state-level. Since 2005, state legislatures in nearly all 50 states and the District of Columbia have enacted hundreds of laws and resolutions on immigration reform. Republican-controlled legislatures, like Arizona, are enacting legislation enforcing against immigrants and Democratic-controlled legislatures like New York, are enacting laws integrating immigrants. From 2005-2013, there were 1359 laws enacted at the state-level on the issue of immigration. The most active states in the area of immigration policy were California, Virginia, and Colorado. Some of the least active states included Ohio, Nevada, and Mississippi. Since states have long been deemed “laboratories of democracy,” this raises the question of how these state laws are affecting bills being initiated at the national level.
In their paper, “Immigration Reform: The Partisan Divide in the American States and Congress,” Michelle Belco, Jennifer Clark, and Savannah Sipole investigate the effect of state partisanship and policy in a member’s home state on the type of immigration bills members of Congress introduce. In this research they compiled an original data set of the content of all immigration bills introduced in the U.S. Senate and House from 2005–2014. Upon identifying the 1204 immigration bills introduced in the U.S. House and U.S. Senate, they coded each bill for whether it provided a benefit to, or sought to integrate, immigrants or whether it attempted to provide enforcement against immigrants, finding a nearly even split into the two camps with 528 proposals that enforce against immigrants and 676 proposals that provide benefits. Figure 1 shows the distribution of enforcement and benefit bills by members’ home state.
Figure 1. Home States and the Total Immigration Bills Introduced by Members of Congress: 2005-2014
To investigate whether state laws have any effect over members’ sponsorship of immigration bills, they also coded all 1359 immigration bills introduced and enacted in the 99 state legislatures during 2005-2013, finding 767 state laws that enforce against immigrants and 667 state laws that seek to benefit immigrants.[1] Figure 2 shows considerable variation in state lawmaking on immigration, and it also shows that the content of immigration laws need not be overwhelmingly of one type (to benefit or enforce against immigrants). Indeed, California has enacted laws both benefiting and enforcing against immigrants.
Figure 2. Total State Immigration Laws Enacted in 2005-2014
With these data, the authors test 3 hypotheses:
H1: As the political conditions in Congress become more polarized, Republicans will introduce more bills that enforce against immigrants and Democrats will introduce more bills that benefit immigrants.
H2: As the Democratic seat share in a member’s home-state increase (decreases), Democrats will introduce more bills to benefit immigrants and Republicans will introduce more bills to enforce against immigrants.
H3: The number of immigration bills introduced by members of Congress to provide benefits for (enforce against) immigrants should be positively associated with the number of laws enacted to benefit (enforce against) immigrants in a member’s home-state.
Using count models, they find that members have a partisan approach to the type of legislation introduced and also that state partisanship in a member’s home-state has an effect on the type of bill a member of Congress introduces. Indeed, state governments have created their own blend of benefits and enforcement to address the challenges of immigration reform but at the national level, these laws that states have enacted are not as great an influence as partisanship. The significance of this research is that it shows how states, based on their own mixture of immigration laws, are responsive to the need for reform, and it provides a model for members of Congress seeking to achieve the level of compromise we find in the states.
