S. Karthick Ramakrishnan

Police Practices in Immigrant-Destination Cities Political Control or Bureaucratic Professionalism?

Political incorporation theory suggests that the incorporation of new groups into city electoral politics will precede any improvements in the way that local bureaucracies treat members of those groups. We argue, however, that the logic and sequencing of political incorporation and bureaucratic response do not apply when explaining police practices toward immigrant residents. Drawing on survey evidence and case studies of California cities, we find that police departments are ahead of city councils and other municipal agencies in providing language support and that local elected officials are largely unaware of key practices of their police departments regarding interactions with immigrants. Such findings support the perspective of bureaucratic incorporation of immigrants, in which local bureaucracies proactively develop their own practices, drawing on a professional ethos.

Asian Pacific-American Public Opinion and Political Participation

Studying Asian-American politics with public opinion data is a relatively new phenomenon. Only in the last decade have a number of surveys (collected mostly at the local or regional level) been taken, reflecting expanded interest in the growing Asian-American population and the development of ethnic sampling and interviewing techniques. In this article, the terms “Asian” and “Asian American” are used interchangeably. While most research on Asian-American political behavior focuses on voting, some work examines other forms of political participation. Recent scholarship concerns not only individual characteristics, but also contextual and institutional factors.

“Illegal,” “Undocumented,” or “Unauthorized”: Equivalency Frames, Issue Frames, and Public Opinion on Immigration

Immigration has been a salient and contentious topic in the United States, with a great deal of congressional debate, advocacy efforts, and media coverage. Among conservative and liberal groups, there is a vigorous debate over the terms used to describe this population, such as “undocumented” or “illegal,” as both sides perceive significant consequences to public opinion that flow out of this choice in equivalency frames. These same groups also compete over the ways in which immigration policies are framed. Here, for the first time, we examine the use of both types of frames (of immigrants themselves, and the policies affecting them) in media coverage. Importantly, we also test for whether these various frames affect preferences on three different policies of legalization. Our results suggest that efforts to focus on the terms used to describe immigrants have limited effect, and that efforts to frame policy offer greater promise in swaying public opinion on immigration.

Citizens of California: How the Golden State Went from Worst to First on Immigrant Rights

Abstract California has accomplished a remarkable shift in its historical development on immigrant rights, from pioneering and championing anti-immigrant legislation from the 1850s through the 1990s, to passing robust pro-immigrant rights policies in the last two decades. In this article, we unpack California’s policies and historical shift on immigrant rights, and develop a typology of regressive, restrictive, and progressive variants of state citizenship. We then advance a theory of how California’s progressive state citizenship crystallized in 2014 by cumulating and gaining sufficient strength in particular elements – of rights, benefits, and membership ties – to constitute a durable and meaningful form of state citizenship. Our work builds on, and speaks to, a fast-growing literature on immigration federalism and a robust literature on semi-citizenship and alternative types of citizenship. Situated in federalism, state citizenship operates in parallel to national citizenship, and in some important ways, exceeds the standards of national citizenship. While many states have passed various policies intended to help undocumented immigrants such as state driver licenses, in-state tuition, financial aid, health insurance for children, our concept and theory of state citizenship formation considers how California’s policies took more than a decade to develop and reach a tipping point, transforming in 2014 from integration policies to a more durable crystallized state citizenship.

Setting the Stage for the New Immigration Federalism

Throughout this book, we refer to the most recent (and current) surge in state and local immigration regulation as the “new immigration federalism.” Others have termed the conspicuous increase in state and local laws over the past decade as the “subfederal immigration revolution.” In historical perspective, however, the presence of state and local regulation of immigration is not entirely new, as the mid-1800s saw some important developments in state immigration policies. At the same time, a historical review provides us with an opportunity to detect the ways in which the immigration federalism of yore compares to the new immigration federalism of today, and to consider key legislative and judicial developments that have altered the trajectory of how states and localities have gotten involved. Here, we present an abridged narrative of the political and legal development of immigration federalism in American history. We divide this review into three separate eras, starting with the first century of immigration federalism, spanning the Founding to 1875, the era famously dubbed the “Lost Century” of immigration law by Professor Gerald L. Neuman. Next, we move to the second period of immigration federalism, which we argue constitutes another century with some clear indications of beginning and end points, from 1875 to 1965. Finally, we explore the third era of immigration federalism, from 1965 onward. Here, we summarize the legal developments and state responses that preceded 9/11, and helped set the stage for the new surge in immigration federalism that began after 2004 and continues apace, with various legal and political twists along the way. In Chapters 3, 4, and 5, we draw more detailed attention to these post-9/11 dynamics of political and legal developments, including the Supreme Courts 2012 Arizona v. United States decision and the more recent push toward more pro-integration legislation. During the first century of immigration law, states and localities were virtually the exclusive regulators of immigration. State and local controls on the movement and entry of persons operated as immigration law from 1776 to 1875. Starting in 1875, however, both the politics and legal presumptions regarding state involvement in immigration began to change rapidly.