The current president of the United States, Donald Trump, was outright about immigration during the 2016 presidential campaigns. He vowed to implement tough anti-immigrant laws that would see illegal immigrants deported back to their countries. He even promised to build a wall that would block immigrants from Mexico to America. In Texas, such tough laws have already been enacted. The Republicans in the state enacted an anti-immigrant law that when implemented would threaten police chiefs, sheriffs and other officials with heavy fines and possible deletion from office and even imprisonment should they undertake any step towards impeding immigration officers from questioning the immigration status of those people arrested over illegal immigration. The law was named as SB 4 Bill. The law was to take effect on 1st September this year.
The Texas's State Constitution lacks specific policy preferences. The new laws are passed as a bill, approved by the state Senate and provides for policy implementation (Tausanovitch, Chris, and Warshaw, p. 333). The new immigration policy would be established under the Texas's bill on "Sanctuary Cities." Through a bill, the state is allowed to direct on the distribution of the funds to the local governments (Halter, p. 45). For example, the Texas's bill on "sanctuary cities" would allow the state to withhold funding for local governments that would act contrary to the new law by operating as sanctuary cities. A sanctuary city is one that condones illegal immigrants.
The newly enacted immigration policy of Texas did not, however, take effect from September 1st as was intended. This was because the policy was petitioned in the District Court where Judge Orlando Garcia issued a preliminary injunction against various measures in the policy (Fernandez, p. 67). According to Judge Garcia, the SB 4 law and the resulting policy conflicted with the federal law. He argued that Texas law enforcement officers should not be prohibited from inquiring about the immigration status of the persons during lawful stops or even sharing that information with other federal authorities.
Nevertheless, despite the court's injunction on the new immigration policy in Texas, a majority of the voters in the state back the new provisions in the policy. According to a poll conducted by the University of Texas/ Texas Tribune Poll, 58% of the voters supported the provisions requiring the local police to work with immigration authorities (Ramsey, p. 12). But the voters were divided over the matter along party and ethnic lines. 85% of the Republican voters supported the requirement whereas only 27% of the Democrats supported the policy. This can be explained by the overall support of anti-immigrant policies by the Republican Party right from President Trump. Between the Whites and the Blacks, majority whites supported the requirement with 67% of the voters while only 47% of the Blacks supported the requirement. 48% of the Hispanics reject the policy as compared to 39% who support it. This is because the policy was seen as a discriminative law against the Hispanics who are illegally living the Texas state (Payan, p. 126).
Conclusion
The SB 4 Bill approved by the Texas state Senate is seen as an initiative by the legislators affiliated to the Republican Party to implement party policies that seek to ban illegal immigrants into the United States. This can be confirmed by the public opinions showing that even voters affiliated to the Republic Party actively support the implementation of such anti-immigrant laws.
Work Cited
Fernandez, Manny. Federal Judge Blocks Texas Ban on Sanctuary Cities. The New York Times, The New York Times, 30 Aug. 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/08/30/us/judge-texas-sanctuary-cities.html.
Halter, Gary. Government and Politics of Texas. McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2013.
Payan, Tony. "The Immigration Debate in Texas." Undecided Nation. Springer International Publishing, 2017. 121-137.
Ramsey, Ross. UT/TT Poll: Majority of Texas voters back new immigration provisions. The Texas Tribune, Texas Tribune, 19 June 2017, www.texastribune.org/2017/06/19/uttt-poll-majority-support-new-immigration-laws-voters-are-split/.
Tausanovitch, Chris, and Christopher Warshaw. "Measuring constituent policy preferences in congress, state legislatures, and cities." The Journal of Politics 75.2 (2013): 330-342.
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