States’ rights was the battle cry of the Dixiecrats.  It was the constitutional argument used by opponents of federal civil rights legislation.  The states’ rights movement has been dormant for years.  No more.  This time, it doens’t have anything to do with race and civil rights.  Or does it?

This almost forgotten movement is making a comeback with the issue of immigration.  This issue is too hot for Congress to handle in an election year, and with neither presidential candidate inclined to meaningfully tackle the too-hot-to-touch issue either, states are tackling it at the movement’s behest.

The movement is clearly anti-immigrant.  It promotes laws in state legislatures across the country to strictly control immigration, toughening the path for legal immigration, sending illegal immigrants packing, making business verification of immigrant status more onerous, banning public aid for illegal immigrants, barring illegal immigrants from colleges, and criminalizing the transport of even one illegal immigrant.  The movement is also working hard to elect like-minded people to state legislatures and to Congress. 

Some undoubtedly think that the federal government’s abdication of the immigration issue to the states is temporary.  Once this election is behind the country, the White House and the Congress will step in with a comprehensive immigration proposal similar to the Civil Rights Act.  That could be wishful thinking.

The old states’ rights movement was limited to the South.  When push finally came to shove, states’ rights advocates were outnumbered.  Southern states couldn’t hold back the national will.  The new states’ rights movement isn’t limited to any area of the country.  This time, there’s not a small group of states fighting the feds.  It’s the feds who may be outnumbered.

It’s too early to know for sure, but it may well be that immigration will be governed by the states, not the federal government.  As amazing as that sounds, the new states’ rights movement has a full head of steam.  It’s composed of people who’re part of the movement for a variety of reasons.  The movement does have something to do with civil rights like the old movement did, but it’s not black and white in any way.  At this point, it appears we’ll end up with a hodgepodge group of state laws, or the Congress will bow to the wishes of this movement and enact a watered-down version of immigration reform.

In either case, employers will have a harder time finding badly needed workers.  We’ll spend billions of dollars to make sure immigrants are captured, detained and deported.  The economy will be dealt another blow.   

Just think.  If Native Americans–American Indians, if you prefer–had figured this out when our ancestors came to the U.S. and wandered freely about, most of us wouldn’t be here.