Criminal Law & Migration Control: Recent History & Future Possibilities

Immigration enforcement in the United States has undergone a revolutionary transformation over the past three decades. Once episodic, border-focused, and generally confined to the efforts of a relatively small federal agency, immigration enforcement is now exceedingly well-funded and integrated deeply into the everyday policing of the interior United States. Not only are federal immigration agents more numerous and ubiquitous in the interior, but immigration enforcement has been integrated into the policing practices of state and local officials who once saw their purview as largely distinct from that of federal immigration enforcement agents. This essay briefly explains these developments, from shortly before the passage of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 through the present day, and assesses their consequences. It includes a brief discussion of the ways states and localities have responded to federal enforcement trends, whether through amplification or constraint.

Conclusion

This chapter concludes by considering the broader welfare implications of city lobbying. The ability to pay for professional advocacy represents a double-edged sword for cities. Lobbying provides an essential tool for local leaders seeking to amplify their voices in the complicated and often hostile world of state politics. This is true for progressive urban areas—but also for high-income suburbs. However, while some states have recently debated measures to restrict local government lobbying, this chapter concludes that these efforts would likely do more harm than good in the absence of reform to the lobbying industry more generally. Otherwise, the influence of corporations and PACs will continue to grow, while local officials would unfairly lose one of the key channels through which they are able to advocate for local interests in state politics.

City vs. State

This chapter considers how city lobbying affects the overall policy environment from the perspective of the state. While results at the city level suggest that there are individual winners and losers from the lobbying process, this chapter shows how aggregate lobbying trends can systematically bias state transfers toward the interests of high-income cities, making them less progressive on average. At the same time, local officials don’t lobby for funding alone. Through a series of short case studies, this chapter also examines how the lobbying efforts of cities are shaping current policy debates in state legislatures, including preemption battles over minimum wage laws. While difficult to quantify the effects of these activities, taking a more holistic view of city lobbying paints a more nuanced and positive picture about its policy consequences.

Cities as Lobbyists

In the United States, state-local relations are characterized by increasing urban-rural polarization, and several states have recently engaged in high-profile preemption efforts that seek to limit local power. But cities aren’t powerless when it comes to shaping the political environment in which they operate. In fact, local governments are among the most active lobbyists in state politics. When and why do some local officials choose to hire lobbyists to represent them in other levels of government? How does this ability to pay for representation influence politics and policymaking? And what are the broader implications for intergovernmental representation? This chapter previews a theory of municipal lobbying that emphasizes political geography and outlines the structure and organization of the book. It also introduces the qualitative and quantitative data from dozens of sources that will be used throughout the book—including newly compiled longitudinal data on lobbying disclosures in all fifty states.

The State of Local Lobbying

Cities are some of the oldest lobbying organizations in the United States. Because states enjoy such high levels of fiscal and administrative authority over their local units, the vast majority of these advocacy efforts are aimed at state governments rather than at the federal level. This chapter draws from original lobbying disclosure data, interviews, city council documents, and other sources to paint a detailed descriptive picture of the current municipal lobbying landscape in the United States. How did city lobbying emerge in its current form? What are local officials hoping to achieve when they lobby, and how do they allocate their efforts? When do cities lobby as individuals as opposed to coalitions? This chapter introduces expansive new data to provide initial answers to these questions.

Black Tribute in the Spanish Americas

From the late 16th to the early 19th centuries, free individuals, families, and corporate groups whose reputations or self-descriptions defined them as Black in the Spanish Americas were subject to a specific tax. The royal tribute tax established the relationship between loyal vassals and a responsive Crown. Under Habsburg rule, tribute circumscribed the freedom of Black subjects but offered a path to privileges for those who provided services to the Crown. Attempts to levy the tax in the 16th and 17th centuries were wide-ranging but yielded comparatively small amounts of revenue. Tribute, nevertheless, affected many regions of the Spanish Americas, either by its collection or via the strategies Black people took to avoid it or contest its imposition. The responses of Black people and local officials to the tax determined how regularly it was enforced and how much revenue it would generate. Even where it failed, debates over tribute and attempts to collect it can reveal what it meant to be Black for colonial officials and ordinary people. Bourbon reforms led to an increasing emphasis on the fiscal potential of Black tribute, much of which became concentrated in the heart of New Spain. Hundreds of thousands of people not only paid tribute but were registered using new methods. The information produced within the tribute regime approximated the density, distribution, and interconnectedness of Black and Indian populations. In addition to the revenue and data its collection yielded, the imposition of Black tribute remains fundamental to understanding the colonial status, sense of identity, and experiences of Black people in the Spanish Empire.

Co-production of knowledge and transformative learning towards a sustainable Asia

In Asia, sustainable development has yet to find its critical mass. Non-state actors have the opportunity to catalyse change by awakening their collective consciousness through mutual learning and shared experiences. Initiated by Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok and the Indonesian Consortium for Religious Studies (ICRS) in Yogyakarta, a civic engagement project—involving partners and networks in Southeast Asia and Japan—was created to capture sustainable development initiatives from the ground, with a view towards strategic policy advocacy for a more sustainable Asia. The project aimed to bridge knowledge gaps by bringing together all relevant state and societal stakeholders to learn from one another and share their experiences, stories and narratives about change and self-transformation. Through a series of workshops, focus group discussions (FGDs), NGO fora and mayors’ symposia since 2015, the project resulted in an accumulation of knowledge that has the potential to galvanise the various efforts to push the sustainable development agenda forward on the ground. The collaboration of many partners and relevant stakeholders overall met its intended outcome by generating an ad hoc centre for the co-production of knowledge on sustainability and a “transformative learning” (Mezirow, 1991) platform. This was achieved by acknowledging the existence of various systems of knowledge, disciplines, and occupations while appreciating the tacit knowledge and unique insights coming from all participating partners, including the mayors, regents and local officials, and their civil society counterparts.

Farmers Markets and Single-Use Plastic: Why Environmentally Conscious Consumers Don’t Bring Reusable Bags

This study looks at the role of Extension in helping local officials reduce plastic bag use at farmers markets in three Lake County, OH communities. We distributed free reusable bags to shoppers and conducted an education and outreach program. We then took observations to determine if the free reusable bags were being used. We also invited shoppers to take a voluntary survey about their environmental attitudes, why or why not they use the reusable bags, and how best to reduce plastic bag use moving forward. Results from the study suggest that supplying free reusable bags at farmer markets is not an effective strategy for Extension professionals attempting to reduce plastic bag use. Instead, we recommend working with local officials to develop financial incentives and disincentives tied to the type of bag option shoppers use, implement plastic bag bans at markets, and conduct locally-focused education and outreach. Although shoppers’ environmental literacy and desire for sustainability is high, it is shown that behavior change is unlikely to occur without financial or policy incentives.

Nutrition Accountability through Sub-National Scorecards in Tanzania – Policy Innovations and Field Realities

Over the past decade, the Government of Tanzania has paid increasing attention to accountability in its nutrition policies. This has coincided with the introduction of truly innovative efforts to advance and monitor government action towards and accountability for nutrition at subnational level. A multisectoral nutrition scorecard (MNS) has been rolled out across all districts in the country, with quarterly updates on district performance. Moreover, a Nutrition Compact instrument was introduced to incentivise senior civil servants within regional and district administrations to advance efforts to promote nutrition. This paper explores how the government has used these initiatives to give accountability a particular form and meaning, pertinent to context. The paper analyses a series of policy documents and complements analysis this with field-based interviews with local officials across five regions. We find that the MNS and Compact are designed predominantly for internal purposes of government. This renders ‘accountability tools’ largely in the service of a centralised state, advancing vertical accountability. Such a narrow framing and design inhibits the potential of these instruments for galvanising social accountability, whereby citizens can hold public service providers and subnational government actors to account directly.

Perceptions of Local Government Fiscal Health and Fiscal Stress: Evidence From Quantile Regressions With Michigan Municipalities and Counties

This study applies insights from open systems theory to explore how the perceptions of local officials can enhance our understanding of local government fiscal health—in particular, to understand differences between healthy and distressed jurisdictions. With a sample of local governments in Michigan from 2013 to 2019, we use quantile regression to investigate associations between subjective financial condition measures and objective indicators. The results show that these relationships are often more muted for lower-stress governments and more pronounced for higher-stress governments, a pattern that is not accounted for by traditional methods of measuring financial condition. The findings demonstrate the utility of open systems theory and quantile regression techniques to improve understanding of the financial condition and suggest that in order to avoid overlooking cases of fiscal distress, policymakers and analysts should incorporate these approaches into methods for diagnosing local fiscal health.