State governments often play a small role in helping to resettle refugees. But despite protests from more than a dozen Republican governors who want to close their states to Syrian refugees, those governors probably have little power to stop them from coming, legal scholars say.
"The one thing I feel very comfortable saying is there is absolutely no constitutional power for a state to exclude anyone from its territories," said Stephen Legomsky, a Washington University of St. Louis law professor and former chief counsel of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in the Obama administration.
A growing number of Republican governors have protested the resettlement of Syrian refugees since the terrorist attacks in Paris last Friday. At least one of the Paris attackers was carrying a Syrian passport — but French officials said Saturday that the passport was a fake.
Still, the Paris attacks have reopened the debate over the Obama administration's decision in September to accept 10,000 Syrian refugees over the next year.
The Republican governors have taken a range of approaches to the issue, but none has explained how they would legally keep Syrian refugees out. Whether states have to actively cooperate those those resettlements is another question, and that's where many of the governors are trying to exert leverage.
More @ USA Today
People who keep shoving things that are reprehensible, asinine, and/or unlawful down other peoples throats, trying to get a reaction, generally get one.
ReplyDeleteHeh.
It just won't be the one they were looking for.
The Law of Unintended Consequences, and all that, you know. :)
Central Alabamaian
You got it! :)
ReplyDeleteGovernors have no power at all, constitutional or otherwise to exclude people from their territory. What they do have is power to lease big buses to carry the new settlers to a big city in a nearby state and drop them off. And they can condemn any properties used to house settlers.
ReplyDeleteFinally, they can look the other way when local citizens burn the immigrants out.
But they won't do any of those things. They will instead bitch and moan and write toothless threats.
They will instead bitch and moan and write toothless threats.
DeleteFor now I agree, but there will be a point, I believe.
We can thank Ted Kennedy and Biden for the 1980 Refugee Act. All the states
ReplyDeletecan do is cut the funding. Scum like Biden do not have to walk among them.
Scum like Biden do not have to walk among them.
DeleteYup and have no intention of doing so, unless for a photo op.