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84 Denv. U. L. Rev. 1075 (2006-2007)
Reexamining Immigration: Is It Local or National Issue

handle is hein.journals/denlr84 and id is 1083 raw text is: REEXAMINING IMMIGRATION: Is IT A LOCAL OR NATIONAL ISSUE? MARLIN W. BURKEt INTRODUCTION Immigration, especially illegal immigration, is a subject currently generating intense controversy in American political and social dis- course. To varying degrees, the subject has been controversial over the past one-hundred-eighty years, beginning with attempts by New York and Massachusetts to tax masters of ships who brought aliens into New York and Boston Harbors.' The Chinese Cooley Taxes in California were the first anti-immigration laws that were directed at a specific racial or ethnic group. Since then, the object of public anti-immigrant ire has been aimed, at different times, at the Irish, Italians, Germans, Eastern Europeans, Asians, both Chinese and Japanese, and Mexicans. Since 2000, legal immigrants have entered the United States at a rate of nearly one million per year. Since the late 1990's, undocumented immigration is thought to have equaled and may even have exceeded 2 legal immigration. The federal government appears to receive a net gain from the cost-benefit ratio arising out of dollars expended for services provided to immigrants and taxes paid by immigrants including those who are undocumented.3 Local governments may be suffering a net loss t Marlin W. Burke is an attorney who has been practicing law since 1971. For five years he was a prosecutor for the City of Lakewood, Colorado. After leaving that position, he entered private practice where he enjoyed a civil litigation practice focusing on personal injury, civil rights and employment law. He practiced before all Colorado trial and appellate courts, the Federal District Court of Colorado and the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals. He interrupted his practice for a time to serve as an Administrative Law Judge for the Colorado Department of Administrative Hearings where he heard workers' compensation matters. He authored a work entitled Disabilities, Civil Rights and Workers' Compensation Law in Colorado, 1993, Colorado Legal Publishing Company, Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 93-070635. More recently his practice has focused on immigration law and family law involving immigration and international laws. He lectures fre- quently on immigration law for civic and legal professional organizations. He was the recipient of the 2007 Colorado Adult Education and Colorado Department of Education Volunteer of the Year Award for his many years of teaching of naturalization classes to new immigrants. 1. The first U.S. Supreme Court case dealing with immigration is Smith v. Turner, 48 U.S. 283 (1849). It involved head taxes imposed by the states of New York and Massachusetts on mas- ters of ships bringing aliens into their ports. Id. at 392, 409. The Massachusetts law required the ship's master to post a one-thousand-dollar bond, a very large sum at that time, if on inspection any of the aliens were found to be lunatics or other undesirables. Id. at 409. The Court found that the taxes violated the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution. Id. at 410. 2. See JEFFREY S. PASSEL, PEW HISPANIC CTR., UNAUTHORIZED MIGRANTS: NUMBERS AND CHARACTERISTICS 6 (2005), available at http://pewhispanic.org/files/reports/46.pdf, see also U.S. GEN. ACCOUNTING OFFICE, IMMIGRATION STATISTICS: STATUS OF THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES' RECOMMENDATIONS 3 (1998), available at http://www.gao.gov/archive/1998/gg98119.pdf. 3. See sources cited infra notes 64-72. 1075

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