Immigration Policies Through States and Localities: The Case of the United States

Federal systems divide governing responsibilities and powers across administrative tiers.  In the United States, this means there is often attention to relations between the national and the local government, but oddly, not to the state (the provincial level) and the local.  This is odd indeed, since constitutionally, in the American system, cities are “creatures of the state”—that is, they exist only as a result of the charters they receive from the state in which they are located.   How much autonomy do cities have to shape policy?  How much of a difference to states make in setting the context for local policy?  This research addresses these questions by looking at the case of Virginia and Maryland – states which are quite ideologically different, but which share a common metropolitan area.   I argue that as this metro area adapts to large-scale immigration some key immigrant integration policies will in fact depend on the different state context in which policies are implemented—but other policies and practices will not vary by state at all.  Which immigrant policies and practices vary by state, and which do not, helps illuminate relationships across levels of government and how these in turn affect immigrants’ own relationship with government.