The Key Role of Issue Entrepreneurs in Explaining Immigration Federalism

• In Event: (Un)Deserving Migrants: Race and International Migration

Abstract

In this paper, we explore the role of restrictive issue entrepreneurs in immigration federalism in the United States. We define such entrepreneurs as political actors – most often state governors – who promote restrictions on immigration to get votes and enhance their own political advancement. Research has demonstrated that the variables that most strongly predict the passage of immigration-related legislation at the state and local levels are political partisanship in the electorate and the perceived threat posed by immigration-driven ethno-cultural and demographic change. Less understood are the actual mechanisms whereby partisanship and ethnic anxieties are activated and then translated into the legislative and executive action that result in state and local immigration policies. Following Gulasekaram and Ramakrishnan (2015), we argue that restrictive issue entrepreneurs play a key role in activating the political partisanship and cultural anxieties of voters, in creating the environment in which these concerns can proliferate, and then proposing and shepherding these policies through the legislative process. This paper first reviews efforts by state and local-level governments in the United States to enact their own immigration policies, from the 1990s to the present, including modes of collaboration between federal and subnational officials on immigration enforcement. We document and explain the considerable variation in subnational immigration policies. Using a qualitative research design, we then focus on the role of restrictive issue entrepreneurs in furthering immigration federalism, focusing on three state governors: Pete Wilson (CA), Greg Abbott (TX), and Ron DeSantis (FL). California in the mid-1990s provides an example of the nationalization of state-level immigration politics, with Wilson promoting Proposition 187 to send a message to the Federal Government and to provoke Congress into action on comprehensive immigration reform. Abbott and DeSantis represent a new form of restrictive issue entrepreneurship. With Congressional deadlock on immigration reform and deeply polarized politics at the federal level, their state-level immigration policies serve to signal opposition to the federal government, to further their own political ambitions, and to deliberately bring the fight over immigration policy to the courts.

Authors

• Wayne A. Cornelius, University of California-San Diego

• Monica W Varsanyi, CUNY Graduate Center