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It's easy to see the political forces at work in the
current special session of our General Assembly. Neither
party wants to be perceived as soft on illegal
immigrants.
Democrats want to pass some laws so they can tell voters
that We have responded, while Republicans just
postured.
Many Republicans would prefer that nothing passed, so that there can be a red-meat ballot initiative, something at least as provocative as banning gay marriage, that will increase turn-out among the ditto-head portion of our population.
The truth is that there's not a lot that our state
government can do about illegal immigration. It's up to the
federal government to control the nation's borders,
although it's hard to find anything specific about
immigration in the federal constitution. There's no
statement that Congress shall have power to determine
which persons may be admitted to the United States.
Congress does have the power To lay and collect ...
Duties,
and To regulate Commerce with foreign
nations.
It can establish an uniform Rule of
Naturalization.
Immigration is mentioned in one place: The Migration
or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now
existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be
prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand
eight hundred and eight...
In modern English, that means Congress could not prohibit slave imports until 1808. It certainly implies that Congress has the power to regulate immigration from other countries after that date.
What about migration between states? The federal
Congress regulates Commerce ... among the several
states,
which presumably means people going to and fro,
as well as goods. Also, No state shall, without the
Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on
Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary
for executing its inspection Laws.
That doesn't appear to give states a lot of room to
determine who may enter and reside. But Colorado did try it
once, about 70 years ago. The Great Depression was at its
worst and jobs were scarce. The New Deal organized the
Federal Emergency Relief Administration, and it assisted
some people who were not citizens. One Denver man
complained in 1935 that relief recipients are not only
foreigners, but are aliens -- some alien enemies.
Colorado's governor, Edwin Big Ed
Johnson, was a
Democrat who opposed the New Deal. He proposed rounding up
illegal aliens, holding them in a camp near Golden, then
deporting them. But of the first 32 collected and deported,
20 were U.S. citizens, and the U.S. State Department had to
apologize to the Mexican government.
So Big Ed took another tack. On April 18, 1936, he
announced that Colorado was suffering an invasion from
aliens and indigent persons.
He planned to stop it
by proclaiming martial law and ordering the National Guard
to seal Colorado's southern border.
Gen. Neil Kimball responded quickly. By 6 a.m. on April
20, he had set up Camp Johnson near Raton Pass, with
Martial Law
signs that ordered motorists to stop.
Non-citizens and people with little money were to be kept
out. As historian Stephen J. Leonard recounts in Trials
and Triumphs,
a history of Colorado during the
Depression, By the end of the day, 75 people, many with
less than 30 cents, had been turned away.
Guardsmen stopped trains and ordered the hobos to walk back to New Mexico. Kimball sent airplanes up to monitor the border and dispatched spies into New Mexico. Some Coloradans complained loudly, but many supported Big Ed because he was trying to protect the state's workers from low-wage competition.
New Mexico Gov. Clyde Tingley wanted the Colorado spies
to leave his state, and he threatened to prohibit imports
from Colorado. We'll stop every truck bringing shipments
into New Mexico and force truckers to unload.
New
Mexicans began boycotting Colorado products; a potato
farmer complained that I will be dead broke on the
deal
if she couldn't sell tubers in the Land of
Enchantment. A rancher asked Johnson to allow a immigrant
with special skills to enter: If this man can't come in
to shear sheep we are just about up against it.
Before the federal government got involved, Big Ed
called it off. On April 30, he lifted martial law and
announced that Colorado has always been a good neighbor,
and we must not alienate the friendship of our sister
states.
So ended Colorado's previous effort to control illegal immigration. Given how strongly some folks feel about this issue, it's kind of surprising that no one has proposed trying it again.
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