Digital Commons Network^™

“Muslim Women In The Diaspora: Shaping Lives And Negotiating Their Marriages”, Enaya Othman

Enaya Othman

Immigrants As Artists: How Immigrants To The United States Define Creativity And Describe Its Role In Their Lives, William Pierson

William Pierson

Invisible Adjudication In The U.S. Courts Of Appeals, Michael Kagan, Rebecca Gill, Fatma Marouf

Fatma Marouf

Non-precedent decisions are the norm in federal appellate courts, and are seen by judges as a practical necessity given the size of their dockets. Yet the system has always been plagued by doubts. If only some decisions are designated to be precedents, questions arise about whether courts might be acting arbitrarily in other cases. Such doubts have been overcome in part because nominally unpublished decisions are available through standard legal research databases. This creates the appearance of transparency, mitigating concerns that courts may be acting arbitrarily. But what if this appearance is an illusion? This Article reports empirical data drawn …

The Network For Justice: Pursuing A Latinx Civil Rights Agenda, Luz E. Herrera, Pilar M. Hernández-Escontrías

Luz Herrera

This article explores the need to develop a Latinx-focused network that advances law and policy. The Network for Justice is necessary to build upon the existing infrastructure in the legal sector to support the rapidly changing demographic profile of the United States. Latinxs are no longer a small or regionally concentrated population and cannot be discounted as a foreign population. Latinxs reside in every state in our nation and, in some communities, comprise a majority of the population. The goal of the Network for Justice is to facilitate and support local and statewide efforts to connect community advocates to formal …

Building A Regime Of Restrictive Immigration Laws, 1840-1945, Felice Batlan

Felice J Batlan

Policy Considerations Regarding The Integration Of Lusophone West African Immigrant Populations, Kezia Lartey, Brandon D. Lundy

Brandon D. Lundy

On January 23, 2012, Resolution No. 3 enacted the National Immigration Strategy for the island nation of Cabo Verde, the first of its kind in the country. As a buffer nation to Western Europe with a rapidly developing economy and good governance indicators, Cabo Verde is transitioning from a sending and transit country to a receiving nation for African mainlanders, especially from Guinea-Bissau. How effective are these immigration policies at managing these changing mobility patterns? Are immigrants successfully integrating into host communities? How might integration be handled more effectively? This policy briefing reports integration successes and failures from ethnographic research …

State-Created Immigration Climates And Domestic Migration, Huyen Pham, Pham Hoang Van

Huyen T. Pham

With comprehensive immigration reform dead for the foreseeable future, immigration laws enacted at the subfederal level -- cities, counties, and states -- have become even more important. Arizona has dominated media coverage and become the popular representation of the states' response to immigration by enacting SB 1070 and other notoriously anti-immigrant laws. Illinois, by contrast, has received relatively little media coverage for enacting laws that benefit the immigrants within its jurisdiction. The reality on the ground is that subfederal jurisdictions in the United States have taken very divergent paths on the issue of immigration regulation.

Compiling city, county, and state …

A Particularly Serious Exception To The Categorical Approach, Fatma E. Marouf

Fatma Marouf

A noncitizen who has been convicted of a “particularly serious crime” can be deported to a country where there is a greater than fifty percent chance of persecution or death. Yet, the Board of Immigration Appeals has not provided a clear test for determining what is a “particularly serious crime.” The current test, which combines an examination of the elements with a fact-specific inquiry, has led to arbitrary and unpredictable decisions about what types of offenses are “particularly serious.” This Article argues that the categorical approach for analyzing convictions should be applied to the particularly serious crime determination to promote …

Alternatives To Immigration Detention, Fatma E. Marouf

Fatma Marouf

The United States places over 440,000 people each year in immigration detention, far more than any other country in the world. This Article argues that there are compelling humanitarian and financial reasons to utilize more alternatives to detention. It examines the strengths and limitations of existing alternatives, including the need to develop more community-based case management programs and to rely less on electronic monitoring. The Article then sets forth several legal arguments under the Constitution, Rehabilitation Act, and international human rights law for requiring greater consideration of alternatives to detention.

Alienage Classifications And The Denial Of Health Care To Dreamers, Fatma E. Marouf

Fatma Marouf

In the Affordable Care Act (“ACA”), passed in 2010, Congress provided that only “lawfully present” individuals could obtain insurance through the Marketplaces established under the Act. Congress left it to the Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) to define who is “lawfully present.” Initially, HHS included all individuals with deferred action status, which is an authorized period of stay but not a legal status. After President Obama announced a new policy of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (“DACA”) in June 2012, however, HHS amended its regulation specifically to exclude DACA recipients from the definition of “lawfully present.” The revised …

“Nationwide” Injunctions Are Really “Universal” Injunctions And They Are Never Appropriate, Howard Wasserman

Howard M Wasserman

Federal district courts are routinely issuing broad injunctions prohibiting the federal government from enforcing constitutionally invalid laws, regulations, and policies on immigration and immigration-adjacent issues. Styled “nationwide injunctions,” they prohibit enforcement of the challenges laws not only against the named plaintiffs, but against all people and entities everywhere.

The first problem with these injunctions is one of nomenclature. “Nationwide” suggests something about the “where” of the injunction, the geographic scope in which it protects. The better term is “universal injunction,” which captures the real controversy over the “who” of the injunction, as courts purport to protect the universe of all …

Workers, Families, And Immigration Policies, Shannon Gleeson

Shannon Gleeson

[Excerpt] Unauthorized immigration to the US has a long and varied history shaped by a number of shifts in immigration policy. Of the global immigrant stock, 10–15 % is estimated to be undocumented (20–30 million; International Organization for Migration 2008). Today, undocumented immigrants comprise roughly 40 % of the immigrant flow to the US. Although immigrants often come to this country as a result of complex factors that were initiated or supported by the US—including free trade agreements and wars that devastated immigrants’ home countries and their national economies—once they become unauthorized, they find themselves in extremely vulnerable positions. Besides …

Music And Migratory Subjects In Pedro Almodóvar’S Todo Sobre Mi Madre, Hable Con Ella, And Volver, Debra J. Ochoa

Debra Ochoa

A film criticism is presented for the Spanish films "Todo sobre mi madre," "Hable con ella," and "Volver," all by film director, screen writer, and producer Pedro Almodóvar. It focuses particularly on Almodóvar's use of international music and his interest in immigrants and their cultural influences on Spain.

Alma Mater, Mater Exulum. Jesuit Education And Immigration In America: A Moral Framework Rooted In History And Mission, Michael M. Canaris

Michael Canaris

Book Description: The current daily experiences of undocumented students as they navigate the processes of entering and then thriving in Jesuit colleges are explored alongside an investigation of the knowledge and attitudes among staff and faculty about undocumented students in their midst, and the institutional response to their presence. Cutting across the fields of U.S. immigration policy, theory and history, religion, law, and education, Undocumented and in College delineates the historical and present-day contexts of immigration, including the role of religious institutions. This unique volume, based on an extensive two-year study (2010-12) of undocumented students at Jesuit colleges in the …

The Overlooked Significance Of Arizona's New Immigration Law, Rick Su

Rick Su

The current debate over Arizona's new immigration statute, S.B. 1070, has largely focused on the extent to which it “empowers” or “allows” state and local law enforcement officials to enforce federal immigration laws. Yet, in doing so, the conversation thus far overlooks the most significant part of the new statute: the extent to which Arizona mandates local immigration enforcement by attacking local control. The fact is the new Arizona law does little to adjust the federalist balance with respect to immigration enforcement. What it does, however, is threaten to radically alter the state-local relationship by eliminating local discretion, undermining the …

Urban Politics And The Assimilation Of Immigrant Voters, Rick Su

Rick Su

Despite the growing strength of immigrant voters in the U.S., immigrants continue to participate at the polls in much lower rates than not only native voters, but also immigrants in the past. What accounts for this disparity? Looking beyond the characteristics of the immigrants themselves, this essay argues that a major reason lies in the different political structure that immigrants face upon their arrival, especially at the local level. Tracing the evolution of big city politics alongside, and in response to, the three major waves of foreign immigration to the U.S., this essay outlines three competing models of immigrant political …

The States Of Immigration, Rick Su

Rick Su

Immigration is a national issue and a federal responsibility — so why are states so actively involved? Their legal authority over immigration is questionable. Their institutional capacity to regulate it is limited. Even the legal actions that states take sometimes seem pointless from a regulatory perspective. Why do they enact legislation that essentially copies existing federal law? Why do they pursue regulations that are likely to be enjoined or struck down by courts? Why do they give so little priority to the immigration laws that do survive?

This Article sheds light on this seemingly irrational behavior. It argues that state …

Means To An End: An Assessment Of The Status-Blind Approach To Protecting Undocumented Worker Rights, Shannon Gleeson

Shannon Gleeson

This article applies the tenets of bureaucratic incorporation theory to an investigation of bureaucratic decision making in labor standards enforcement agencies (LSEAs), as they relate to undocumented workers. Drawing on 25 semistructured interviews with high-level officials in San Jose and Houston, I find that bureaucrats in both cities routinely evade the issue of immigration status during the claims-making process, and directly challenge employers’ attempts to use the undocumented status of their workers to deflect liability. Respondents offer three institutionalized narratives for this approach: (1) to deter employer demand for undocumented labor, (2) the conviction that the protection of undocumented workers …