Latin American Countries Protest U.S. States' Tough Immigration Laws

When the Obama administration filed a lawsuit against Arizona’s controversial immigration law, SB 1070, it invoked the argument that the federal government holds the exclusive authority to set immigration policy. “We can’t have 50 different immigration laws around the country,” Obama said on April 27 in an interview with an Atlanta TV station WSB. But the president’s pleas haven’t stopped more states from trying to wrest control of immigration policy and enforcement, sparking ever louder protests from Latin American governments.

Notwithstanding the fact that the federal government and Arizona are locked in a legal battle over SB 1070 that is headed toward the U.S. Supreme Court, 20 state legislatures considered laws emulating Arizona’s in 2011. Utah, Georgia, and Alabama all passed such laws, with Alabama’s taking the harshest approach. The recently passed law instructs police to check the immigration status of people they stop while enforcing other laws, requires public schools to check students’ immigration status, and makes it illegal to give an undocumented immigrant a ride. 

The Mexican government has protested each of the state laws, arguing that such legislations will lead to discrimination against the estimated 11.4 million Mexican nationals in the United States and disrupt the two countries’ bilateral relations. In a speech delivered in San José, California, earlier this month, Mexican President Felipe Calderón implored U.S. policymakers to view immigration as a natural social and economic phenomenon that cannot be stopped with “discriminatory anti-immigrant laws that have so ferociously erupted in some U.S. states.”

The Mexican government has also lodged formal legal complaints against state-level anti-immigration measures. “Mexico has a substantial and compelling interest in ensuring that its bilateral diplomatic relations with the government of the United States of America be transparent, consistent and reliable, and not frustrated by the actions of individual states,” the Mexican government wrote in an amicus curiae brief in support of a lawsuit against Georgia’s immigration law. Echoing concerns raised by U.S. immigration rights activists who say the law cracking down on illegal immigration will lead to racial profiling, the document added that: “Mexico has an interest in protecting its citizens and ensuring that their ethnicity is not used as a basis for state-sanctioned acts of bias and discrimination.”

Mexico isn’t the only foreign country to take issue with the U.S. states’ usurpation of immigration enforcement. Eleven Latin American countries—Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Peru, and Uruguay—joined Mexico’s amicus brief, arguing that Georgia’s HB 87 threatened to undermine the civil and human rights of their citizens as well as Mexico’s. “Mexico and the Governments share a commonality of interests—differing not in substance, but merely in proportionality and degree of impact—with regard to HB 87,” the group of Latin American countries wrote in the brief. “Like Mexico, the Governments are gravely concerned that HB 87 will lead to racial profiling and disparate treatment of its nationals.

Latin American nationals themselves clearly share their governments’ concerns, and the law is reportedly driving immigrants away in large numbers. Georgia’s agricultural industry—the state’s largest—finds itself with a manpower shortage of 11,000 workers and faces the prospect of leaving millions of dollars’ worth of blueberries, onions, and other crops unharvested, according to columnist Jay Bookman at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. 

While U.S. states crack down on undocumented immigration, Mexico has reformed its own immigration policies—largely as a response to widespread violence and extortion committed against northern-bound Central American migrants in Mexican territory by both criminals and state security agents. In May, Mexico passed an immigration reform that decriminalizes illegal immigration and gives migrants—whether documented or not—the right to receive health, education, and legal services. The law also restructured visa categories and created a designation for temporary migrants crossing Mexico on their way to the United States.

Learn more:

• Access the AS/COA Hispanic Immigration Hub.
• View the Mexican government’s amicus curiae brief in the case of Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights, et al. v. Governor Nathan Deal, et al.
• See the other 11 Latin American governments’ amicus curiae brief in the case of Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights et al. v. Governor Nathan Deal, et al.
• Read the Wilson Center report Understanding Mexico’s Changing Immigration Laws, for background on Mexican immigration policy.
• See the text of the complaint for declaratory and injunctive relief in the case of Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights, et al. v. Governor Nathan Deal, et. al. 
• View the Justice Department’s lawsuit against the state of Arizona over SB 1070. 
• Read the text of Alabama’s immigration law, HB 56.
• See the Pew Hispanic Center’s 2009 demographic profile of the U.S. Mexican-origin population. 
• Read the Mexican Secretariat of Foreign Relations’ press releases regarding immigration laws passed in Arizona, Utah, Georgia, and Alabama.