The states may not institute their own policies with regard to naturalization and immigration, but THAT IS NOT THE QUESTION HERE. The question is whether within ths immigration and naturalization system the federal government has instituted whether the state has the right to protect it sovereignity and its citizens. The only specification in the Constiution is that states must treat CITIZENS from the several states alike (and the Federal government does have a right to determine citizenship). But the states are SOVEREIGN states (and there is that little thing in the Constitution about powers not expressly granted to the Feds devolve to the states or the people.)
I was starting to agree with the majority decision until I read Scalia's informed, deeply considered and absolute dissent. Some quotes from Scalia:
"The United States is an indivisible “Union of sovereign States.” ... Today’s opinion, approving virtually all of the Ninth Circuit’s injunction against enforcement of the four challenged provisions of Arizona’s law, deprives States of what most would consider the defining characteristic of sovereignty: the power to exclude from the sovereign’s territory people who have no right to be there. Neither the Constitution itself nor even any law passed by Congress supports this result. I dissent.
As a sovereign, Arizona has the inherent power to exclude persons from its territory, subject only to those limitations expressed in the Constitution or constitutionally imposed by Congress. That power to exclude has long been recognized as inherent in sovereignty.
"We are not talking here about a federal law prohibiting the States from regulating bubble-gum advertising, or even the construction of nuclear plants. We are talking about a federal law going to the core of state sovereignty: the power to exclude. Like elimination of the States’ other inherent sovereign power, immunity from suit, elimina. tion of the States’ sovereign power to exclude requires that “Congress . . . unequivocally expres[s] its intent to abrogate,” ... Implicit “field preemption” will not do.
"Even in its international relations, the Federal Government must live with the inconvenient fact that it is a Union of independent States, who have their own sovereign powers. This is not the first time it has found that a nuisance and a bother in the conduct of foreign policy.Four years ago, for example, the Government importuned us to interfere with thoroughly constitutional state judicial procedures in the criminal trial of foreign nationals because the international community, and even an opinion of the International Court of Justice, disapproved them. See Medellín v. Texas, 552 U. S. 491 (2008). We rejected that request, as we should reject the Executive’s invocation of foreign-affairs considerations here. Though it may upset foreign powers—and even when the Federal Government desperately wants to avoid upsetting foreign powers—the States have the right to protect their borders against foreign nationals, just as they have the right to execute foreign nationals for murder.
“[T]he State is not inhibited from making the nationalpurposes its own purposes to the extent of exerting its police power to prevent its own citizens from obstructingthe accomplishment of such purposes.” ... Much more is that so when, as here, the State is protecting its own interest, the integrity of its borders. And we have said that explicitly with regard to illegal immigration: “Despite the exclusive federal control of this Nation’s borders, we cannot conclude that the States are without any power to deter the influx of persons entering the United States against federal law,and whose numbers might have a discernible impact ontraditional state concerns.” Plyler v. Doe, 457 U. S. 202, 228, n. 23 (1982).
"What I do fear—and what Arizona and the States that support it fear—is that “federal policies” of nonenforcement will leave the States helpless before those evileffects of illegal immigration that the Court’s opinion dutifully recites in its prologue (ante, at 6) but leavesunremedied in its disposition.
"The President said at a news conference that the new program is “the right thingto do” in light of Congress’s failure to pass the Administration’s proposed revision of the Immigration Act.7 Perhapsit is, though Arizona may not think so. But to say, as the Court does, that Arizona contradicts federal law by enforcing applications of the Immigration Act that the President declines to enforce boggles the mind."
"Are the sovereign States at themercy of the Federal Executive’s refusal to enforce the Nation’s immigration laws?
A good way of answering that question is to ask: Would the States conceivably have entered into the Union if the Constitution itself contained the Court’s holding? Today’s judgment surely fails that test.
"Now, imagine a provision—perhaps inserted right after Art. I, §8, cl. 4, the Naturalization Clause—which included among the enumerated powers of Congress “To establish Limitations upon Immigration that will be exclusive and that will be enforced only to the extent the President deems appropriate.” The delegates to the Grand Convention would have rushed to the exits.
This court has unconstitutionally struck down the rights of states to protect themselves, even within the confines of federal law. The states must operate within Federal law, but the existence of a federal law SHOULD NOT prohibit the states from defending their sovereignty within the boundaries of federal law. We are moving closer and closer to proving the anti-federalists were right in fearing a central federal government that usurped the rights of the states.