The Constitution deliberately assigns immigration and naturalization to the national government because membership in the American political community cannot vary from state to state. The Constitution’s language clearly recognized the need for uniformity on such questions by assigning to Congress the power “To establish a uniform Rule of Naturalization … throughout the United States.” 

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The power, and need for uniformity, is contained in analogous provisions as well. California cannot establish its own foreign policy, and Texas cannot negotiate its own treaties, because Article I, Section 10 prohibits individual states from entering into any treaty, alliance, or confederation. Likewise, New York cannot decide who becomes an American citizen, because only Congress has the power to naturalize, and the rules it adopts must be uniform. Likewise, no city should possess the practical ability to nullify national immigration policy.

Some conservatives argue that genuine federalism requires allowing local governments to decline cooperation with federal immigration enforcement. They correctly observe that the anti-commandeering doctrine prevents Congress from simply ordering state officers to administer federal regulatory programs.

That principle serves an important constitutional purpose and keeps accountability where it belongs, with the level of government responsible for its own policy judgments. States and local governments can be induced to cooperate by way of conditions imposed on federal spending they receive, but they cannot simply be ordered to become enforcement agents of federal policy.

But sanctuary jurisdictions increasingly go well beyond passive noncooperation. Many adopt policies specifically designed to impede federal enforcement, conceal information, restrict communication with federal authorities, or frustrate the execution of valid federal law.

That is not federalism. It is obstruction.

The distinction matters because immigration differs fundamentally from most domestic policy disputes. Education, zoning, criminal justice, and transportation involve matters traditionally shared between different levels of government. Immigration concerns the nation’s external sovereignty — its authority to determine who may enter, remain, and ultimately join the American political community.

The framers understood this well. One reason they replaced the Articles of Confederation was that a collection of semi-independent states could not reliably conduct foreign affairs or protect common national interests. Questions affecting the nation as a whole required a national authority.

Immigration belongs squarely within that category.

This does not mean every local police officer must become a federal immigration agent. The Constitution imposes real limits on federal power over state governments, and those limits protect liberty.

But neither should local officials claim a constitutional privilege to undermine federal law simply because they disagree with it politically.

Imagine if a state announced that it would systematically obstruct enforcement of federal sanctions against hostile foreign governments. Or that it would shield individuals violating federal espionage laws because local officials disagreed with national policy. Conservatives would immediately recognize that such actions interfere with powers constitutionally entrusted to the national government.

Immigration raises the same principle.

At stake is not merely border security but democratic self-government. A nation cannot remain a self-governing political community if individual cities effectively decide that national immigration laws will not operate within their jurisdictions. Some states tried that once, back in 1861; it didn’t work out so well.

This brings us back to the larger debate over U.S. identity.

The United States has always welcomed immigrants willing to become Americans. That generous tradition depends upon the prior existence of an American political community possessing the authority to establish the terms on which newcomers are admitted and incorporated.

Sanctuary policies invert that relationship. Rather than reinforcing the nation’s common rules of membership, they encourage each locality to substitute its own conception of citizenship and enforcement for the judgments made through national democratic institutions.

Federalism exists to preserve self-government, not to dissolve it.

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The conservative commitment to federalism, therefore, does not require acquiescing in sanctuary cities. Properly understood, it points in the opposite direction. Local self-government is fully compatible with national sovereignty only when each level of government respects the constitutional responsibilities assigned to the other.

Immigration is one of the responsibilities assigned to the national, rather than state or local governments. Because the people constitute one nation rather than 50 competing political communities, the constitutional authority to determine membership in that nation must ultimately remain national as well.

Dr. John C. Eastman is founding director of the Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence.