Wednesday, September 23, 2009

The Idaho Constitution Gets More & More Curious

The Idaho Constitution Gets More & More Curious

Art. XIII, sec. 1
directs:
Bureau of immigration -- Commissioner. There shall be established a bureau of immigration, labor and statistics, which shall be under the charge of a commissioner of immigration, labor and statistics, who shall be appointed by the governor, by and with the consent of the senate. The commissioner shall hold his office for two years, and until his successor shall have been appointed and qualified, unless sooner removed. The commissioner shall collect information upon the subject of labor, its relation to capital, the hours of labor and the earnings of laboring men and women, and the means of promoting their material, social, intellectual and moral prosperity. The commissioner shall annually make a report in writing to the governor of the state of the information collected and collated by him, and containing such recommendations as he may deem calculated to promote the efficiency of the bureau.
Yet when I search Idaho government pages for information about this "Bureau of Immigration Commissioner," and search the Idaho Code, the only actual reference that I can find is in this report from the Division of Building Safety, which acknowledges that the Bureau of Immigration Labor and Statistics was created in 1899, and eliminated in 1919.

State constitutions tend to accumulate debris over time, as ideas of one era become unfashionable, or get struck down by the courts--but tend not to get removed, since this requires a vote of the people to amend the state constitution. I've read that the infamous "The Chinese" article XIX of the 1879 California Constitution wasn't actually removed until 1952, even though it had been unenforceable for a long time before that. If Idaho Const., Art. XIII, sec. 1 merely granted authority to the legislature to create such a bureau, and the governor to appoint such a commissioner, that would be one thing. But this seems to obligate both to do both. A general cleanup of the Idaho Constitution would seem like a good idea.

I'm pretty sure that Art. XIII, sec. 5 is also no longer enforced:
Aliens not to be employed on public work. No person, not a citizen of the United States, or who has not declared his intention to become such, shall be employed upon, or in connection with, any state or municipal works.
This is probably the more subtle Idaho version of the California Constitution's Art. XIX. It is pretty clearly contrary to the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause, which has been repeatedly recognized to protect the rights of permanent residents.

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