Make no mistake, Cesar Adrian Vargas is fully qualified to practice law in the State of New York. He graduated from CUNY Law School and passed the bar exam on his first try. That was in 2011.  Yet, he didn’t get to raise his right hand and take the oath on Monroe Street in Brooklyn.

After considering it for nearly three years, the New York State Supreme Court’s Appellate Division in Brooklyn approved Vargas’ application to the New York State bar. Five judges agreed that Vargas’ immigration status “does not reflect adversely upon his general fitness to practice law.”

Vargas’ “problem” wasn’t any question of his competence, his character or fitness to be a lawyer.  His problem, as reflected in the opinion of the Appellate Division, Second Department, was that he was born in Puebla, Mexico.

His mother brought him and his siblings to the United States when Mr. Vargas was 5½ years old, without lawful documentation to enter or remain in the United States. The family settled in the New York City area, where Mr. Vargas continues to reside today.

Some call him undocumented. Others, illegal.

Federal law prohibits undocumented immigrants from receiving public benefits, including professional licenses, unless state legislatures make specific exceptions. Wednesday’s ruling, however, noted that since Vargas benefits from President Barack Obama’s 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, he is legally present and authorized to work in the United States. DACA exempts qualified undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children from deportation and extends them a temporary, renewable work authorization.

Vargas’ application for admission presents the untenable situation of a young man who has done everything right, nothing wrong, yet is caught in a limbo not of his own making.  It’s not as if he could be blamed for his mother having brought him here without papers.

The Appellate Division did something here that was at one time expected of the courts of New York, but has since been neglected and forgotten. They put on their big boy robes and held up New York’s principles rather than meekly deferring to the feds.

The mere fact that the state government decision here involves undocumented immigrants, whose presence in the United States is governed by federal immigration laws and the discretionary policy of DHS, does not and cannot, consistent with the core principles of state sovereignty guaranteed by the Tenth Amendment, vest in the federal government the right to take away from the state its authority to determine which coequal branch of government should exercise the power of the sovereign where the federal legislation has left to the states the ultimate policy determination whether to extend public benefits to such undocumented immigrants.

The authority to admit someone to the practice of law resides solely in the courts of the state. For those who still cry about there not being a federal, overarching right to practice law, and that state admissions are anachronistic because of virtual internet lawyers, this is one of those unintended consequences that isn’t good for you but is good for Cesar Vargas.

And yet, this decision remains unsatisfying on numerous levels.  Aside from the fact that it took three years for Vargas to be approved for admission, because he was certainly in no rush to practice law after attending college, then three years, then passing the bar exam, he remains at the mercy of DACA.  He may be a New York lawyer, at least once he does the “I, state your name” part of the ritual, but he will not be an American.

What if DACA is terminated?  What happens when he walks into federal court for his first big case?  What about the concept that a lawyer, sworn to uphold the Constitution, exists in undocumented status?

There is no shortage of people who will decry DACA as an illegal excess by our Keynesian Kenyan president, because those illegals took our jerbs.  After all, there is such consternation on the part of red-blooded Americans searching for positions in migrant labor.  And then there’s the crime, giving rise to Crazy Joe Arpaio’s obsession with pink underwear and tanks.

Ridicule aside, the controversy and heat generated by the issue of undocumented aliens, having absolutely no bearing upon their character and fitness to be wonderful friends, neighbors and lawyers, makes the situation in which a young lawyer like Cesar Vargas functions problematic for as long as he remains in legal limbo.

As a lawyer, or if I was a judge before whom Vargas appeared, I can well appreciate the hypocrisy of sentencing people to prison, to deportation, to exclusion, for being in the same essential position as Vargas, but for some fortuitous regulatory twists over which the individual had no control.  How does one person go to prison while another stands beside him in a suit and tie?

Congratulations, Cesar Vargas, and welcome to the bar.  I am proud of the Second Department’s decision, upholding New York’s authority to address membership in its own bar, and refusing to bend to the vicissitudes of federal immigration politics.  This is the way New York courts had historically treated individual rights, and it’s good to see that they still have enough of that boldness left to recognize that you are fit to be a lawyer, despite what anyone else has to say about your immigration status.