Pro-Immigration Decisions

Here is a listing, roughly in priority, of the leading decisions relied upon, often incorrectly, by promoters of illegal aliens against state efforts to rein in the unlawfulness:

• Arizona v. United States, 567 U.S. 387, 409 (2012), a 5-3 opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy which includes flowery, superficial language:

The federal government should have exclusive control over immigration in order to speak “with one voice” to other nations.

“Immigration policy can affect trade, investment, tourism, and diplomatic relations for the entire Nation, as well as the perceptions and expectations of aliens in this country who seek the full protection of its laws.” Arizona, 567 U.S. at 395.

Even “[p]erceived mistreatment of aliens in the United States may lead to harmful reciprocal treatment of American citizens abroad.” Id.

• Am. Ins. Ass’n v. Garamendi, 539 U.S. 396, 401, 424 (2003) (cited by the government in support of open borders, but actually the decision never mentions immigration. It invalidated California's Holocaust Victim Insurance Relief Act of 1999 for supposedly interfering with the national government's conduct of foreign relations.)

• Crosby v. Nat’l Foreign Trade Council, 530 U.S. 363, 373, 381 (2000) (cited by the government for the doctrine of “obstacle preemption,” which inquires whether a state regulation poses “a sufficient obstacle is a matter of judgment, to be informed by examining the federal statute as a whole and identifying its purpose and intended effects”)