The growing role of Sanctuary state and migrant influence mechanisms in the U.S. politics: the case of California

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Diploma Paper

The Growing role of Sanctuary State and Migrant Influence Mechanisms in the U.S. Politics: the Case of California

Introduction

republican immigration senate state

The world population is consistently growing and nowadays we live in a world where a good portion of the world news has a great deal to do with migrants. People constantly immigrate all around the world, and by doing so begin to affect the state to which they migrate in large quantities. This leads to all sorts of questions regarding how they affect the state's economy, social life and political system. As it is, migrants propose a massive state effectiveness question in all the countries where they are present, especially in those where their quantity is consistently growing. There are a lot of discussions about how these communities are good or bad for the given state's economic, political or social lives. And frankly, it all depends on how the state approaches these particular migrant issues at hand, that will define how the state prospers in the future. The United States are no different in this sense.

Now, my choice has fallen upon studying the migrant communities' effects on U.S. politics for many years now. The reason for that being, is that no other state in the world presents such a strong bi-partisan rivalry over the immigration topic. More specifically in the U.S., on the one hand, we have the Democrats, who present themselves as more liberal and who for the most part see how the economy and the country itself can benefit from welcoming newcomers to the U.S. On the other hand we have the Republican party (in this paper will also be referred as the GOP - Grand Old Party), who aim to protect the American economy and businesses and consider more open immigration policies as a threat to the integrity of the United States. However, given my academic interests, I tackle to examine the role that migrant communities play in changing the U.S. political system from within.

Now as the title of this paper suggests, I will be researching the growing role of sanctuary states and migrant influence mechanisms in modern U.S. politics on the case of California. But before getting into some of the main points of why this particular research is necessary and how it will be conducted, I would like to paint a picture of what exactly it is we are dealing with within this research topic. First and foremost, my research is revolved around the immigration policies in modern USA with an emphasis on how the Republican party is affected by it in sanctuary states, and what this could mean for U.S. politics as a whole. The growing role of the GOP ideological partisan disruption is really an evolvement of the past decade, especially as it began to grow stronger after the inauguration of Donald Trump as the 45^th president of the USA in 2016. This has drawn a really clear distinction between those republicans who vote for hardline immigration policies and those who favor slightly softer approaches towards the issue. The reason for researching sanctuary states and migrant influence mechanisms within them is quite straight forward in some sense. These two aspects of study present a very clear research ground on which we can distinguish as to how exactly due to the relationships formed by in house republican officials and migrants at hand, the role of sanctuary states as a whole grows. It would be absurd to expect that republican officials of the state aren't after being reelected, as well as newcomers aren't aimed at being elected in the first place. We are looking at actors aiming to maximize their benefits, while minimizing their costs, in their given circumstances. Due to certain rather obvious demographical reasons in the state, it is hard to stick to the partisan ideas, values of the GOP and continue to support general hardline republican rhetoric on immigration. In their case, they have to adapt to the context at hand in order to succeed at their political ambitions in the state. So what we are really looking at here is rational choice theory. And frankly, we have a very serious research problem at hand, being the conflict of values, ideas and actions, all inside the GOP, and being region specific (state specific). And this conflict has only been growing over the course of the past decade due to the political asymmetrical polarization happening in the United States right now. In other words, Democrats are remaining roughly consistent while the Republicans, as a whole, are becoming more and more conservative, which only widens the value gap between the GOP party and it's representatives in sanctuary states, who are pursuing their own regional goals. If the GOP won't change their general approach towards the issue and will not start supporting local republican state representatives there is a good chance that they will lose the state of California as a whole, with republican office holders losing their spots to democrats. This is why I believe that this research is of great importance to modern U.S. politics which is based on a strong bi-partisan government. Despite having a republican president who is driving hardline immigration policies, trying to cut down the number of illegal and legal migrants in the country, the situation is still far away from being resolved in the way that the republicans envision it. We also have to keep in mind that a state like California is mainly a democratic state, based on the results of previous elections. So initially it is very hard for republican politicians running for office to collect votes. So all in all, we have a lot of topics and issues that republican candidates have to work around in order to attain them. For them it is a path that needs to treaded very carefully in order to both please the party and win the election. And this is where the partisan value disruption comes into play. As the saying goes, you can't kill 2 birds with 1 stone. This leads to my research question, which is: «Why sanctuary states play a growing role in US politics?». We cannot simply ignore the demographical changes that are erupting in sanctuary states nowadays. In my opinion these changes, there growing numbers of illegal newcomers to the country will affect the fundamental GOP values, through the course of the conflict build up between state and party, which we are witnessing now. And the further we go in time, the bigger the conflict.

Now diving deeper into the reason for choosing California is that for this state the topic of illegal immigrants has always been one of the more critical ones. Sharing a border with Mexico and being more welcome to immigrants than it's neighboring eastern states due to being rather very liberal in this sense, California was put on the map as a sanctuary state a long time ago, even though it officially became one recently in 2017. Moreover, California is listed as the biggest sanctuary state in the US. This is why I believe that California will provide the most vivid example of the research problem at hand. So what we are really looking at here in terms of topic and subject matter, is the relation between GOP sanctuary state representatives and the immigrant communities, and diving more specifically into how these relations function. How they are mutually beneficial, what mechanisms of influence are at play from both parties and if this is really worth for some Californian republicans to diverge from GOP's main standpoints. As for the time frame of this study, I have chosen Donald Trump's presidency whereas as I've mentioned before, it marks a more intense strive of the GOP towards a more and more conservative party in all of it's aspects. Moreover, Donald Trump's controversial politics and his whole debatable presidency effectiveness as a whole has only fueled these inner partisan conflicts, which has created more room for regional republicans to operate within.

Before moving on to the methods I will be using and what possible results the research may lead to, I would like to turn your attention to the fact that sanctuary sates have not been researched all that properly quite yet. The approach that I will be taking towards the research problem has not been used before in this context and is somewhat of a novelty considering the specifics of the topic at hand. There have not been many scholar works on sanctuary states, whereas it's not that old of a phenomenon. Let alone California has only become one, more or less, officially in 2017. Before there where sanctuary cities, the first of which was Berkley. Berkeley became the first city in the United States to pass a sanctuary resolution on November 8, 1971. Later there was a massive boom in the 1980's. States came much more later. Now there is a rather modern study around understanding sanctuary cities as a concept, produced by Boston College Law School. Now, the studies of the states are mostly located in California itself, for example there are studies by the University of Santa Barbara which are aimed at providing a more descriptive knowledge to the public of what sanctuary states really are. I find these works really helpful in the sense of being able to conceptualize the term itself. Another study conducted by Rose Cuison Villazor from the Dedman School of Law in Texas from 2008 focuses solely on the word «sanctuary» and what it means in terms of national US politics in the aspect of immigration. So essentially we have works focused on the term itself and what it means on a national level. In a way these researches are purely sociological and demographical, rather than political. This is where I would like to go further and dive deeper into how these sanctuary states affect U.S. politics and how they will possibly transform them in the future.

Now I would like to turn to what method I will be using to conduct this study:

· Content analysis

More specifically the method that I will be using is Grounded Theory. I believe that in this research this specific method will help get a better deductive understanding of how and why the disruption inside the GOP is happening. This method will allow us to break down the statements and speeches of out given politicians into base codes. This way will be able to see what political factors they find most pressing. After that they will be grouped into general categories which will allow us to see a basic breakdown of the topics within which they operate. After that patterns will be formed. Patterns will showcase their general behavior on the matter and the approaches they have in their political activity. In order to do so however, I will need to:

- Take samples (case by case) consisted out of key republican actors running for senator or house representative (this will show us how deviation is spread on different levels on the political hierarchy)

- Conduct analysis on a series of selected fragments of interviews, texts and other statements provided by chosen officials

Moving on to content analysis, which is very closely related to the discourse analysis at hand. It is aimed mainly at texts, such as bills, laws, memorandums, etc. being produced by the corresponding republicans from the samples above. In terms of this particular content analysis, I will be taking into account various news outlets and their corresponding articles regarding this topic. I would like to note that regional newspapers in the United States are typically divided into those that support either party, which is why it would be very helpful to analyze the context they create as well. The tasks at hand here is to understand how they operate(d), what they are/were trying to achieve in the state, how far left or right they actually are/were on the political spectrum as a whole. I will be comparing these bills and laws with similar ones being passed in other states that aren't facing these sort of political partisan GOP disruptions and state issues, and I will be comparing them between each other. This will show us how far certain republican individuals have deviated from general party values in their pursuit of reelection or election.

So all in all, this research does present great value in terms of realizing how general U.S. politics are shifting on behalf of the Republican party in modern USA. Migrants have a great effect on defining how the political system in sanctuary states in formed. This research is aimed to prove that sanctuary states are only a beginning of a somewhat greater change in U.S. politics as a whole in the future. As the migrants spread and grow in their quantity, so will the general partisan rhetoric of the GOP party on the immigration issue deviate from it's standard in order to meet and adjust to the new political situation.

1. Theoretical perspective

1.1 Previous studies on the matter

Now the first word we promptly notice in the title of this paper is «sanctuary». But what does it really mean? Now there have not been may scholar works on sanctuary states, whereas it's not that old of a phenomenon. Let alone California has only become one, more or less, officially in 2017. Before there where sanctuary cities, the first of which was Berkley. Berkeley became the first city in the United States to pass a sanctuary resolution on November 8, 1971. Later there was a massive boom in the 1980's. States came much more later. Now there is a rather modern study around understanding sanctuary cities as a concept, produced by Boston College Law School. Now, the studies of the states are mostly located in California itself, for example there are studies by the University of Santa Barbara which are aimed at providing a more descriptive knowledge to the public of what sanctuary states really are. I find these works really helpful in the sense of being able to conceptualize the term itself. Another study conducted by Rose Cuison Villazor from the Dedman School of Law in Texas from 2008 focuses solely on the word «sanctuary» and what it means in terms of national US politics in the aspect of immigration. Let alone Texas as a state of course also plays a big role, whereas it also shares a border with Mexico. All these articles will really help us understand what it is to be a sanctuary state. We will be able to look into the social aspect of how life is formed there and therefore be able to reveal what kind of potential influence mechanisms could be at play there.

When we speak about the role of immigrants in the politics of United States of America, we need to keep a few things in mind. The first being that immigrant influence has a very strong presence and effect of various election results in the state, especially if the state is a sanctuary one. Even though formally immigrants do not possess all the same political rights, as do the true American citizens, their opinion and their support matters almost the same. When need to understand that coming into the country, especially in large numbers, immigrants reshape everything around them, starting from a cultural aspect and ending with the state's economy. Let alone the fact that they form massive communities and with time some of them become legal citizens. They shape both the material and non-material around them. US citizens in the state begin to re-think their opinions on the immigration matter. And as history shows us this could go both ways. Western and Eastern states tend to generally lean towards a more liberal approach when it comes to immigrants. They show more compassion and sympathy. While Southern states are comfortably sitting where they are with their harsh attitude towards illegal criminals. Which is why it is of no surprise when we see political figures such as Brian Kemp, running for governor of Georgia, post campaign videos on YouTube full of guns and quote on quote «a truck ready to round up illegal criminals and take them home himself». So as we can see, states are very diverse in this sense. But when elections come around in sanctuary states, such as California (the biggest one of it's kind) for the republicans it is very hard to both, maintain a hardline «southern like» immigration policy and get votes from liberal Californians. This is why one of the main aspects of study within this paper would be migrant influence mechanisms. If we want to know how republicans survive in the state of California, and actually managed to secure 24 out of 42 presidential elections, we need to understand what kind of migrant influence mechanisms they are targeting. Now the second thing that we need to address is how exactly the disruption between partisan ideas and values happens when we look at how individual republican actors behave in the political sense of the word in the state of California. Now in reality it is near impossible to measure actual political deviation of specific actors from their party, whereas there have never been any works of this sort that worked or developed this kind of data. But I believe that using grounded theory and discourse analysis we will be able to some sort of a party deviation pyramid that will showcase us how party deviation differs on various level of partisan hierarchy.

Now I've mentioned the term asymmetrical polarization a few times now. But what does it mean really? The problem of the matter is that what is happening in the United States right now can be defined precisely as asymmetrical polarization. In other words the republicans are becoming more and more conservative, while the Democrats remain roughly consistent. This, in it's turn means that the values and idea gap is constantly growing between republican representatives in California and the general GOP party itself. The graph below (Table 1) presents this phenomenon:

Table 1

The phenomena of US one sided polarization is very well described in the works of James E. Cambell in his book: «Polarized: making sense of a divided America». In his works he manages to showcase how both parties have moved away from the center ever since roughly the beginning on the 21^st century, but makes a very distinct accent on how the GOP has progressively widened this gap between the two parties over the course of the last years. This also has a lot to do with the fact that Trump became the president of the United States in 2016. But despite it's great descriptiveness, Cambell's work doesn't cover the period after 2016. However there are studies by the Columbian Journalism Review that prove that even after 2016 the conservatives do carry the heavier burden for political polarization. Now that we have a general supported understanding of how far off parties are, and how far right the GOP has travelled in the past years, we can now move on to individual republican's for whom staying or being elected into office in such heavily inhabited by immigrants states, such as California, is a tough task when it comes to deviating from the party. This is where the rational choice theory (RCT) comes into play. In this work we will be relying on the fact that actors do act out self-interest. They aim to maximize their benefits and attain the most that they can. And RCT comes to play from both sides. Even though we cannot look at immigrants from the formal position of the RCT that Downs described in his works in 1957, where individuals weigh various factors like costs, benefits, likelihood of outcome and how much their voice will decide, we can still apply the general logic of thought to a certain extent on the immigrants. Then again, immigrants always have a chance of becoming citizens, and their relationship with the party and it's representatives is formed from the very beginning. Nevertheless, there are of course to sides to this medallion. When we speak of rational choice among politicians in office, we discuss how it takes whatever it takes to remain in power. On this exact topic there is a very definitive study provided by Martin D. Levine and Mark S. Hyde, «Incumbency and the Theory of political ambition: A rational choice model». This work does a really good job at describing what exactly it takes to be re-elected while in office, if the incumbent decides to run. To a certain extent this can be projected onto newcomers to the office as well, whereas the authors of this study address aspects such as the decisional process of a rational officeholder. The main issue with this work is that it only focuses on whether to stay in office or not, therefore the decisional process is evolved around that. However, I believe that their model can be disassembled and taken as a foundation to establish the main grounds for a building a decision process model suited for our study. Another work by Herbert F. Weisberg on political behavior that can be of interest, because it showcases how current incumbents in office steadily gain small percentages when they run for re-election. He however studies this on the example of the presidential elections, but I believe that the model can withstand it's projection onto lower level office holders.

Now the real difficulty of conducting this study arises from the fact that there is indeed no literature or studies conducted on the topic of inner partisan conflict in the GOP. Here we can only rely on analyzing news articles and such various outlets in order to paint ourselves a picture which we will later examine more thoroughly, relying on the literature and the models within it, some adjusted to our conditions, presented above. However there is indeed a lot of raw material to work with, both on the content side and the discourse side of things, that will hopefully clear up the growing role of sanctuary states, due to inner Republican tensions and migrant influence mechanisms that come into play in this case.

I would like to turn your attention to the rational choice theory in a little more depth. As I've mentioned before, in this work we will be relying on the fact that actors do act out of self-interest. They aim to maximize their benefits and attain the most that they can. And Rational Choice Theory (RCT) comes to play from both sides. Even though we cannot look at immigrants from the formal position of the RCT that Downs described in his works in 1957, where individuals weigh various factors like costs, benefits, likelihood of outcome and how much their voice will decide, we can still apply the general logic of thought to a certain extent on the immigrants. Then again, immigrants always have a chance of becoming citizens, and their relationship with the party and it's representatives is formed from the very beginning. Nevertheless, there are of course two sides to this medallion. When we speak of rational choice among politicians in office, we discuss how it takes whatever it takes to remain in power. On this exact topic there is a very definitive study provided by Martin D. Levine and Mark S. Hyde, «Incumbency and the Theory of political ambition: A rational choice model». This work does a really good job at describing what exactly it takes to be re-elected while in office, if the incumbent decides to run. To a certain extent this can be projected onto newcomers to the office as well, whereas the authors of this study address aspects such as the decisional process of a rational officeholder. The main issue with this work is that it only focuses on whether to stay in office or not, therefore the decisional process is evolved around that. However, I believe that their model can be disassembled and taken as a foundation to establish the main grounds for a building a decision process model suited for our study. Another work by Herbert F. Weisberg on political behavior that can be of interest, because it showcases how current incumbents in office steadily gain small percentages when they run for re-election. He however studies this on the example of the presidential elections, but I believe that the model can withstand it's projection onto lower level office holders.

1.2 Rational Choice Office Holders

Now the idea that underlines this entire research is that when it comes to sanctuary states it doesn't really matter how strong party rhetoric on immigrants is if you can't exactly use it to attract voters' support. In the case of the republican party there are many factors that influence how and why the representatives in-state deviate from the national trajectory. From a research point a view, the time frame chosen for the study of this matter is rather ideal, given how Trump and his administration are dynamically tackling the immigrations reforms in the country. This presents us with a more distinct line that we can draw on may matters between the president's administration and the state GOP representatives.

Now I would like too outline at least several factors that will be coming into play from republican state representatives when it comes to the decision making process. Politicians are not robots, they are not being manufactured at some factory with preset functions to follow party orders in any given state. They are humans. And like any other human their wants and needs, and most importantly their decisions are biased and influenced by their own personal experiences. Their decisions are based on factors like:

- Their ethnicity

- Their social background

- Their family situation

- Their ancestor history

- Their past

- Their personal world views

- State specific (District specific) problems

… and much more.

Trump's policies signal that he is very unlikely to back of some of the pressing immigration issues, whereas they create support for himself his administration on a national level. He is attacking DAPA, DACA, the Dream Act and many other smaller acts on immigration in the states. However he's creating more obstacles for vulnerable republicans in the state of California who are trying to maneuver between harsh GOP immigration rhetoric, heavy Latino population and attacks from the representatives of the Democratic party. This in no doubt causes a massive disrupt inside the GOP party. And as I've mentioned before this lack of support and distortion in the republican party can lead to them losing the little influence they still have left in the state of California. We can already see now that after the midterm elections in November of 2018 most recognizable GOP politicians have already lost their office spots to their rival democrats.

What this could potentially mean in the future is that if sanctuary states continue to appear in U.S. politics, meaning more immigrants will spread to more states which will in turn take on the mantle of a «sanctuary state», this could mean that the Republican party will slowly but surely get washed out of those states, unless they change their approach towards the immigration question at hand. For instance there are republicans in the state of California who are showing support for such things as the Dream Act (one of a few acts that are aimed to protect those known as «dreamers»), whereas they don't really have much choice anymore given that their backs are pressured against a wall and they aim at being reelected.

The problem with the 2018 midterms that still stands strong to this day, is that the president's urge to back of the immigration agenda in the country, which is designed in a way to boost support for his base, it is forcing vulnerable Republican representatives in California to face obstacles they cannot deal with. In other words, not only did they have to win over coastal suburbanites and the Latino heavy portion of the their respective district's population, but they were also facing heavy blows from their democratic opponents whose immigrating politics were a lot less hardline. It was very hard for these GOP representatives to maneuver through these obstacles, especially without the needed support from their party. In the empirical section of this paper the term «support» will be defined more precisely, as to what it meant in each particular case with the candidates.

1.3 The importance of the immigration topic in Sanctuary states

Immigration is certainly a problem for states that are facing large immigrant inflows, even more so for sanctuary states that willingly harbor them in a way. The question is though, is immigration a top priority or a least of the main concerns of the people living in a state. California in this sense would potentially have the most weight when it comes to questions like this, whereas, how I've mentioned above, it is the largest sanctuary state in the U.S. Not only that, but for a long time now California has been considered to be blue (democratic) for the most part because of how common people treat immigrants there. So for most people (a lot of which have immigrant ancestors themselves) the immigration issue in California doesn't mean that the borer should shut down inflow, but rather develop a more humane immigration system that welcomes those who are worth it or that have no other options.

To support my statement on this matter, I would like to provide the results of the PPIC Statewide Survey: Californians and Their Government, conducted by the Public Policy institute of California as early as January 2019. Now the results of their survey have shown that:

· «Most Californians support Governor Newsom's first proposed budget, and overwhelming majorities favor his plans to increase funding for preschool and higher education.

· Californians view immigration as the top issue for state leaders to address in the coming year.

· A majority of Californians are optimistic about the direction of the state, but less than a third are optimistic about where the nation is headed.»

I would like to focus our attention on the second bullet point that concerns immigration. Now we can see below in Table 2, that most adults voted for immigration being the biggest concern:

Table 2

If we take a close look to result table above, taken from that survey, we will see that a whole of 15% of all asked adults considered the immigration system being the biggest problem. That's a 4% lead from the second most voted problem, which is education Now the people who conducted this survey have also come out with a likely voters tab for the same survey, whereas they have also asked the adults if they are likely to vote (shown below in Table 3):

Table 3

Here we can see that a majority of 18% of «likely voters» have voted for the immigration system being their biggest concern. Not only that, but in another January - May PPIC Statewide Survey has shown another few interesting points:

- «85% of Californians and 89% of Los Angeles residents agreed that undocumented immigrants who are living in the US should be allowed to stay legally.

- 46% of Californians and 55% of Los Angeles residents said they are very concerned that increased federal immigration enforcement efforts will impact undocumented students and their families in their local public school districts. More than 6 in 10 (65% Californians, 73% Los Angeles) favored having their local public school district designated as a sanctuary safe zone in order to protect its undocumented students and their families from federal immigration enforcement efforts.

- 30% of Californians and 34% of Los Angeles residents said they worry a lot that someone they know could be deported as a result of increased federal immigration enforcement. About half said that increased federal immigration enforcement will have a negative impact on businesses, jobs, and the economy in their part of California (49% California, 53% Los Angeles).

- when asked about building a wall along the entire Mexico border, more than 7 in 10 were opposed (72% Californians, 76% Los Angeles). In the same survey, about 6 in 10 (58% California, 63% Los Angeles) opposed the president's revised travel ban involving six Muslim countries.»

So as we can clearly see, the topic of immigration should be approached very carefully in a sanctuary state like California, where people are very liberal in the sense of wanting illegal aliens to stay. So the GOP hardline stance on the matter will never succeed with such voters, and something needs to clearly change in how Republicans approach this issue. But more on this in the second part of my work where I showcase how, and mainly why, republicans are steadily losing their support in California.

I believe that the immigration issue will only grow by the year nationwide in the U.S., whereas the immigrant inflow still steadily continues, and year by year these aliens spread out through states more and more. If we were to take a look at some of the findings at Gallup (an American analytics company from Washington, that is well known for it's opinion polls worldwide), we would see that they have conducted a poll nationwide on how many people name immigration the most important problem facing the country:

We can see that the amount of people concerned with the immigration system in the country is only increased on average over the years, having it's ups and downs. But in the year of 2019 has reached it's record high as we can see in the line chart above.

All of these findings only come to show that immigration is indeed a pressing matter in modern U.S. politics. Even more so in states that face large numbers of illegal aliens who are seeking refuge, residency or U.S. citizenship, such being mainly registered Sanctuary state like California. The question is, with such a pressing matter at hand can the Republicans really stick to their hardline immigration policies, or do they have to become more moderate in this sense to win seats in alien heavy states. I believe that the question here digs really deep into the republican ideology, whereas taking a step back on some of the rhetoric that they have been pushing on illegal aliens really undermines some of the more fundamental party values. Because immigrants really affects all aspects of politics, like economy, culture, social and political lives etc.

1.4 Party deviation pyramid

A political party deviation pyramid is a theoretical concept of mine which seeks some of it's proving ground in this particular research. It is not designed to provide answer to a given problem, but rather as a visualization tool. This concept of mine is still raw but I believe it was worth mentioning in this research either way. It is derived from centralized party politics which do not take into consideration various state or district level political, social, economic circumstances and particularities. I believe that the less consideration is put in, the more the deviation will spread. In this particular research the pick has fallen upon the immigration issue. This is all goes well hand in hand with the Rational Choice theory. Republican party officials that are based in sanctuary states are more or less bound to adapt to the reality of the social and political situation in order to succeed at being reelected. This means that they are in way obliged to be more flexible on their immigration stances, in the case of this research. They do so to try and attain voter support, being the rational actors that they are. That is why they move away from republican party values. Of course I believe that this pyramid can be used in a variety of different partisan researches, with different parameters and variables. In terms of visualization, what we're getting looks something like the image below:

Level D presents states that are most sanctuary in their nature, while moving up to A, states are becoming less and less liberal on the immigration matter. I believe that this pyramid presents a good understanding of how political flexibility changes from one level to another. So states like Montana or Alaska would be in group A, while states like California and Texas would be in group D. An easy way to break the states into group for the sake of spreading them out in this pyramid would be to use the findings on U.S. unauthorized immigration population estimates by state provided by the Pew Research Center. I believe that the party deviation pyramid is a universal tool that can be used for many different researches on the topic of party members in office or running for office are deviating for party values in order to accommodate the political environment of the state. In order to do so, one must only change the parameter and variables of the plot above. For example whilst California is facing immigration issues amongst many others, other states such as Montana (a Republican state throughout all four elections; also a state with a lot of American businesses) faces problems like not high enough taxes with people with major income, while people with average or below average income are suffering from high tax rates. So in this case we could categorize states by income tax rates and see how the representatives from the Democratic party are deviating from party values to attain support of large businesses in the state while closing their eyes on lower income citizens. The shape is of a pyramid, whereas it is supposed to have borders. Party representatives, even at the lowest level D cannot be infinitely flexible in their work and policies that they push through. That is why on both sides there will be borders. And as we move to the top, the room for political flexibility naturally narrows down, whereas representatives at higher levels can be more firm in upholding party values. Such would be the states like Montana, where republicans can push through various hardline immigration reforms and the population of Montana wouldn't really care for it, whereas the immigrant share of it is too little to matter in the big picture. And the party administration would be better at backing the representatives in this state on the issue of immigration.

What this research will hopefully suggest, is that for California Republican state representatives, their level of deviation is in fact at a «D» level, compared to other states in that have lower immigrant population count. Meaning we will show that republicans in California do in fact diverge quite far away from party values in their race for office seats. Another thing worth noting for this deviation model is that each republican candidate is going to have a «cornerstone» in this deviation. In other words, this «cornerstone» is stopping a given candidate from dispersing to far out to either side. So for example we can speak of how many moderate republicans, who affiliate themselves strongly with the GOP do in fact support the border wall, that Trump wants to build. This is something that they can't really disagree with if they still wish the party to have their back to some extent. These kind of things act as an anchor for the representatives of the GOP party in sanctuary states in a way that they don't deviate too far out for the general party ideas.

1.5 Immigrants - the second face of power

Now in this theoretical section I would like to turn to Peter Bachrach and Morton S. Baratz study on the «Two Faces of Power». This is important to this research because we need to understand why immigrants are so important. They are not just entities with now will, that have crossed the border and are now simply awaiting deportation. They have become part of the system. Over the years they have integrated themselves deep enough to now possess a certain amount of power within their communities. And that's where the findings of Bachrach and Baratz come into play. Now as we can recall, their theory states that power lies not only within making another political actor do something against his free will, in order to serve the purposes of the one who makes the second actor do something, but also within being able to stop a decision making process and controlling or affecting the agenda: «power is also exercised when A devotes his energies to creating or reinforcing social and political values and institutional practices that limit the scope of the political process to public consideration of only those issues which are comparatively innocuous to A.» In their work they have focused a lot on criticizing Dahl's model for not taking these notions into consideration, and that's why their research mostly revolves around elite and institution discussions. This power can however be in many hands. In our case this power to affect decision-making and setting agendas does lay in the hands of the migrant communities in sanctuary states. This is not to say that this particular face of power can't be found amongst other institutions. Nevertheless I believe that this is in fact very important for what we will be trying to prove later on in this research, as to why immigrants play such big roles in sanctuary states, and why it is impossible to neglect them and their interests.

A good example of what I'm trying to say are migrant protests. One of the more recent ones are those that are against immigration detention centers, imposed by president Trump. Some camps ultimately temporarily have closed down due to being unable to operate effectively when there are thousands of people protesting around it. This is a simple example of the second face of power in motion. They have set an agenda about closing down camps and have somewhat succeeded at it. Not only that, but in this particular case, this agenda has spread nationwide, way beyond just sanctuary states. Now we are able to start painting a general understanding of the severity of the immigration question in sanctuary states, whereas at the end of the day it has an effect on the nation as a whole. Now, these same type of protests can also exercise the power to prevent a decision from being made. For example if there was a project under consideration in Congress, a massive protest against this project could easily result in it being postponed or rejected. Needless to say that when you have more than 10 million immigrants in just one state, and you start to diminish them, it will not go unnoticed by their respective communities. These kind of influence mechanisms determine why and how republicans act in California. In other words, they can't close their eyes on these communities and their needs.

Back in 2006 a very big immigration related protest sparked nationwide, but was most serious in California where it got violent. It is known as the «Great American Boycott». Now while this of course technically doesn't fall into the time frame of this research I believe it is still worth mentioning, because this is where it all started with the most influential immigrant mechanism that the communities have to this day. This boycott was part of a bigger protests revolving around immigrant rights. It happened on May 1 and lasted only one day, but it resonated very heavily. It is also known as the «day without an immigrant», because immigrants all across the country have stopped doing everything: they didn't go to work, they didn't go to school, they didn't go to the store, they literally did nothing for a day and the country felt that instantly. Mainly because immigrants make up the bigger portion of the low end jobs in America. Cashiers, waiters, gas station employees and many more jobs with minimum income rates are usually in the hands of immigrants. So one can imagine how the U.S. felt on that day when people came into stores only to realize that they can't buy anything, because there are no employees running it. This would be the case in states like California. Now, returning to Trump's presidency period, interestingly enough, or more like not surprisingly, his hardline immigration policies have sparked another boycott in 2017, which was meant to the send the same message as the one prior to it 11 years ago. «The movement is a response to President Trump's immigration agenda, which includes a pledge to seal the U.S. border with Mexico and a travel ban on citizens of seven majority-Muslim countries.» This protests has of course also happened in the state in question, California. From Los Angeles, Danielle «Karson reports for our Newscast unit, - Thousands of immigrants are skipping work; not shopping; not eating at restaurants, buying gas, or sending their children to school. LA County Supervisor Hilda Solis says immigrants, regardless of legal status, contribute 40 percent of LA County's gross domestic product: almost $300 billion a year.» Now this passage includes something very important - «regardless of their legal status». This means that this protest was being run not only by those people who were directly affected by the new immigration reforms, but also by those who have already gotten their legal status, but yet showcased massive support for their respective ethnical communities. This is very important to understand, whereas whilst undocumented aliens make a great portion of the population in California, if you combine them with the ones who have attained a legal status, you will be looking easily at more than half the people residing in California as a whole. This effectively means that on days when boycotts like these happen, more than half the state just shuts down, which is never good for the economy, because if you don't fix it fast, the gross domestic losses will be tremendous.

Immigrant influence mechanisms should never be underestimated in sanctuary states. Their communities make a great portion of the states economy. And most days they do in fact has a positive effect on it. The fact that aliens are willing to work for wages that are way below legal minimum wage (because legally they can't dispute it) does put low end Americans in somewhat of an unemployment slump. However closing down borders and flushing out all the immigrants will destabilize the current system way too much. There are not enough Americans that would be willing to take these jobs fast enough for this transition to go by harmlessly. Let alone the fact that there are probably not enough unemployed Americans to fully occupy all the jobs that are currently being held by undocumented aliens.

This is why I find influence migrant mechanisms very interesting in terms of political and economic research. It is not just a face of power that can simply affect decision making and set agendas. It is way more than just that. I believe that in the right hands it is a mechanism that can, if not change the system, then for sure destabilize it severely. Unlike the republicans, the democrats realize what kind of danger and potential is within these communities. They understand how bad the unrest will be if their key principals and interests won't be met. For the GOP leadership, illegal immigrants presents simply a tumor that needs to be cut out. But in reality it is more than that. It is more of a leg on which economy's like California's stand on. Republicans that are representatives in sanctuary states do however understand the severity of this issue and are trying their best to find the best moderate approach to the topic. However, these moderate approaches are not even coming close to what democrats in the state are pushing in terms of making the immigration system more liberal.

2. Empirical findings

2.1 Case #1 - Republican Mimi Walters (45^th congressional district)

Imagine a female republican in the state of California, who is also by chance a mother to her children. Now in 2017 Trumps administration has severely attacked the Obama's era program, known as the DAPA Act (Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents), which ended in U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly signing a memorandum revoking this particular act. The program is aimed at creating a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrant parents whose children are either residents or were born in the United States. However this isn't the only way that the central GOP office is attacking the parents. They are also separating the children from their parents who have crossed the border illegally. This is a very hot topic in modern U.S. politics and has affected GOP representatives in California quite a lot, as you will see later in this paper.

Mimi Walters was a republican House Representative (January 3 2015 - January 3 2019) who has lost the 2018 midterms due to being swamped by the general immigration reforms pushed through by the GOP party as a whole. More specifically she has faced a serious problem when Trump rolled back the DAPA act and started deporting illegal immigrant parents. As she stated in her Twitter account:

«As a mother, I strongly oppose [rebellious act] the separation of children from their parents at the border»

We can see that despite being a republican, Mrs. Walters believed that the policy being pushed through and carried out by the GOP towards immigrants were inhumane. She based her opinion on the fact that she was a mother herself and could not imagine the pain that would come if she were to be separated from her children, being a mother of 4 herself. Let the record also show that California republicans are basically being pressured into supporting liberal immigration acts, by rallying protests outside the office of Mimi Waters.

Not only that, but in an interview with Bloomberg house representative Mimi Walters has made several statements on the matter of the DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) that are of interest to this research:

«We're gonna move forward [progress], we have had discussions [GOP discussions] we've been having on going discussions about giving DACA reform. Listen I am from California [personal experience] this is a very important issue [importance of the issue] in California [state issues], in my district [district issues], I want to make sure that we have a solution [lack of solution] and I want to make sure we have a solution by March 5^th»