Since the Paris attacks, thirty
Governors have declared their opposition to resettling Syrian refugees
within their states. New Jersey’s Chris
Christie, Georgia’s Nathan
Deal, Illinois’s Bruce
Rauner, and several others have stated flatly that their states will not
accept new Syrian refugees.
Politically, it’s a winning position with a lot of Americans
right now: as presidential candidates whip up anti-immigrant sentiment, it
plays on voters’ desire to be kept safe from what sounds like a dangerous wave
of potential terrorists.
But legally speaking? The technical constitutional-law term
for these declarations is “bluster.”
Here’s the fact about governors’ plans to block the entry of
refugees or any other immigrants to their states: They can’t do it. The
decision to admit a person to the United States belongs to the federal
government exclusively. Once a person is legally admitted to the United States,
she can live wherever she chooses. States don’t issue visas any more than they
declare war. Indeed, putting foreign affairs under the firm control of one
central government was one of the primary motivations of the Founders in
creating the Constitution in the first place.
The governors probably know that they aren’t in the
international visa business. That’s why some of them, like Michigan’s Rick
Snyder, are taking a more nuanced line, saying not that the doors of their
states are closed but that they want to persuade the federal government to slow
or halt the nation’s acceptance of refugees. And of course bluster does have a
power of its own: state governments are in general among the most powerful and
effective interests groups in the national lawmaking process, and already
yesterday the White
House held a call with 34 Governors to discuss their concerns on this
issue.
That’s not to say governors are totally powerless to shape
the flow of refugees. There are things states can do to make themselves less
attractive destinations. Most refugees need help getting their lives
restarted—housing, language education, employment leads, and other social
services. A fair amount of that resettlement work is run through state
social-service agencies with the support of federal dollars. The states are the
one with the boots on the ground in education, housing, and so forth—and they
could simply decide not to take the federal money and not to provide
resettlement services. Several governors have actually taken this line, saying
that they’ll cease providing resettlement assistance. The problem, even with
that idea, is that a state can’t just decide to discourage a certain kind of
refugee—in this case, Syrians. Once the state starts trying to do that, it's
making foreign policy rather than just delivering education or housing, and
that it can’t do. Any governor who wants to push away Syrians away is going to
have to push away everyone.