Black-Box Immigration Federalism
![handle is hein.journals/mlr114 and id is 1031 raw text is: BLACK-BOX IMMIGRATION FEDERALISM
IMMIGRATION OUTSIDE THE LAW. BY Hiroshi Motomura. New York:
Oxford University Press (2014). Pp. xiii, 235. $29.95.
David S. Rubenstein*
INTRODUCTION
In Immigration Outside the Law, Hiroshi Motomura' confronts the three
hardest questions in immigration today: what to do about our undocu-
mented population, who should decide, and by what legal process.
Motomura's treatment is characteristically visionary, analytically rich, and
eminently fair to competing views. The book's intellectual arc begins with its
title: Immigration Outside the Law. As the narrative unfolds, however,
Motomura explains that undocumented immigrants are Americans in wait-
ing, with moral and legal claims to societal integration (pp. 86, 89,
204-05).
Ushering immigration outside the law, inside of it, is no easy feat. The
route is partly obstructed by politics,2 and partly by the Constitution itself.
After all, the Constitution's separation of federal power and finely wrought
lawmaking process makes national solutions elusive.3 Meanwhile, the Con-
stitution's federalist structure provides a platform for state and local resis-
tance to the wide-scale integration of undocumented immigrants that
* Professor of Law, Director of the Center for Law and Government, Washburn
University School of Law. Like so many in the immigration community, I am indebted to
Hiroshi Motomura for his leadership and mentorship. He also provided generous feedback on
an early draft, which helped to clarify my views in relation to his. I am also grateful for the
helpful comments and suggestions provided by Patrick Charles, Erin Delaney, Pratheepan
Gulasekaram, Kevin Johnson, Stephen Lee, Peter Margulies, Juliet Stumpf, and Washburn
colleagues Alex Glashausser and William Rich. I also thank my assistant Penny Fell, and the
Michigan Law Review for outstanding editorial work.
1. Susan Westerberg Prager Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law.
2. See, e.g., Ryan Lizza, Getting to Maybe: Inside the Gang of Eight's Immigration Deal,
NEW YORKER (June 24, 2013), http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/06/24/getting-to-
maybe [http://perma.cc/LBR3-M4AS] (discussing some of the reasons why comprehensive im-
migration efforts have stalled in Congress); Alan K. Simpson & Bruce A. Morrison, Opinion, A
Way Out on Immigration Reform, N.Y. TIMES (Mar. 18, 2015), http://www.nytimes.com/2015/
03/18/opinion/a-way-out-on-immigration-reform.html [http://perma.cc/P323-GDZJ] (The
goal of fixing our broken immigration system is further away than ever.).
3. See U.S. CONST. art. I, § 7; see also INS v. Chadha, 462 U.S. 919, 951 (1983) (holding
that a unicameral legislative veto violated the separation of powers); Texas v. United States, 809
F.3d 134 (5th Cir. 2015) (preliminarily enjoining an executive branch program, called De-
ferred Action for Parents of Americans, that, inter alia, would confer temporary lawful pres-
ence to millions of undocumented immigrants), cert. granted, 2016 WL 207257, (U.S. Jan. 19,
2016) (No. 15-674); President Barack Obama, Remarks by the President on Immigration
(Nov. 21, 2014), http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/11/21/remarks-president-
983](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/mlr114&div=40&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Black-Box Immigration Federalism
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