What We Talk About When We Talk About Sanctuary Cities

In this Essay, Professor Michael Kagan asserts when immigrant rights advocates ask their local, state and university leaders to become sanctuary cities, sanctuary states, sanctuary campuses, and so on, they carelessly hurt immigrants in places like Nevada, Texas, and Arizona. And there are a lot of immigrants in those states. People who mean to help immigrants are hurting them. He first sets out assumptions he makes about the semantics and politics of sanctuary debates. These assumptions include setting out the kind of actual policies that are usually under consideration when people invoke the sanctuary label, and a way of understanding voters who may be persuaded to oppose immigrants\u27 interests. With this as a background, he summarizes what both supporters and opponents seem to be talking about when they invoke the sanctuary label - which in both cases is usually an exaggerated conception of the actual policies that a local or state government may adopt. He then explains why these exaggerated conceptions position proimmigrant policies as if they are in opposition to rule of law