Varied Responsiveness to Immigrant Community Growth among Local Governments: Evidence from the Richmond, Virginia, Metropolitan Area

Immigration policy remains a hotly debated issue nationally in the United States, but the interaction of legislative gridlock on comprehensive reform and the actions of policy entrepreneurs push policy innovation into the arena of state and local governments. This article examines the intersection of immigration and local policy making, examining basic patterns of local responsiveness and apparent factors driving the response. Using the insights of existing research, including Rubaii-Barrett and Brenner, this article highlights political incorporation (e.g., Ramakrishnan and Gulasekaram) and bureaucratic incorporation (e.g., Marrow) as competing explanations in the literature. As an exploratory effort to evaluate the relative claims, this article reports the results of a document analysis of the local government Web sites for seventeen localities in the Richmond, VA, Metropolitan Statistical Area looking first at how localities are responding, second at indications of why and finally assessing whether initiative for responses occurs more at a bureaucratic or elected official level.