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An Unexceptional Aspect Of President Obama's Immigration Executive Actions, Jill Family Jan 2015

An Unexceptional Aspect Of President Obama's Immigration Executive Actions, Jill Family

Jill E. Family

Discussing Obama's recent immigration executive actions and the Obama administration's exercises of executive power.

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A People's Guide To U.S. Immigration Law, Irene Scharf Nov 2013

A People's Guide To U.S. Immigration Law, Irene Scharf

Irene Scharf

The goal of this book is to help those who are already here to understand their rights, responsibilities, and choices under the ever-more complicated immigration laws. In these insecure times, it is crucial to understand one's legal rights during work and home raids, how to act if charged by the authorities, how to avoid being deported/removed, how to decide whether to hire a lawyer and if hiring one how to choose one, how to assist one's lawyer to reduce fees, and much more.

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Easing The Guidance Document Dilemma Agency By Agency: Immigration Law And Not Really Binding Rules, Jill Family Dec 2012

Easing The Guidance Document Dilemma Agency By Agency: Immigration Law And Not Really Binding Rules, Jill Family

Jill E. Family

Immigration law relies on rules that bind effectively, but not legally, to adjudicate millions of applications for immigration benefits every year. This article provides a blueprint for immigration law to improve its use of these practically binding rules, often called guidance documents. The agency that adjudicates immigration benefit applications, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), should develop and adopt its own Good Guidance Practices to govern how it uses guidance documents. This article recommends both a mechanism for reform, the Good Guidance Practices, and tackles many complex issues that USCIS will need to address in creating its practices. The …

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Remedies For The Wrongly Deported: Territoriality, Finality, And The Significance Of Departure, Rachel Rosenbloom Jul 2012

Remedies For The Wrongly Deported: Territoriality, Finality, And The Significance Of Departure, Rachel Rosenbloom

Rachel E. Rosenbloom

In recent years, thousands of longtime legal residents have been deported based on erroneous interpretations of the 1996 amendments to the Immigration and Nationality Act. Their return to the United States is precluded by a pair of Department of Justice regulations barring immigration judges and the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) from correcting errors in removal proceedings once a deportee has left the United States. Advocates have begun to take aim at these regulations through litigation and administrative advocacy. This article, the first scholarly work to consider the phenomenon of wrongful deportation and the arguments for and against the “departure …

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Opinion Analysis: Deferring To (Even More) Limited Relief From Removal, Jill Family May 2012

Opinion Analysis: Deferring To (Even More) Limited Relief From Removal, Jill Family

Jill E. Family

In a unanimous decision on Monday, the Court held that the Department of Justice’s Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) reasonably construed a statute to forbid the imputation of a parent’s U.S. residency and immigration status to a child to compute the child’s eligibility for relief from removal (deportation).  The Court reversed the decision of the Ninth Circuit in Holder v. Gutierrez, consolidated with Holder v. Sawyers.

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Argument Recap: Imputing Eligibility For Relief From Removal, Jill Family Jan 2012

Argument Recap: Imputing Eligibility For Relief From Removal, Jill Family

Jill E. Family

At oral argument on January 18, the Court questioned the attorneys in Holder v. Gutierrez and Holder v. Sawyers about calculating relief from removal.  At issue in these consolidated cases is whether a parent’s immigration status and residency in the United States may be imputed to a minor child to calculate eligibility for relief from removal.  The Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) said no; the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said yes.

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Argument Preview: Calculating Relief From Removal, Jill Family Jan 2012

Argument Preview: Calculating Relief From Removal, Jill Family

Jill E. Family

Holder v. Gutierrez and Holder v. Sawyers call into question the BIA’s decision to forbid the imputation of a parent’s immigration status and residency in the United States to a minor child for the purpose of calculating eligibility for relief from removal.  Scratching that simple surface reveals a complex history of imputation and relief from removal.

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Administrative Law Through The Lens Of Immigration Law, Jill Family Dec 2011

Administrative Law Through The Lens Of Immigration Law, Jill Family

Jill E. Family

Immigration law does lag behind in the advancement of public law, but not in all respects. While immigration law is idiosyncratic in many ways, this article finds immigration law in the administrative law mainstream when it comes to its troubles with nonlegislative rules (sometimes called guidance documents). There are concerns throughout administrative law that agencies use such rules to bind regulated parties practically, even if not legally, without the procedural protections of notice and comment.
This article analyzes immigration troubles with nonlegislative rules and makes three main contributions. First, it casts new light on the negative effects of guidance documents …

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Immigration Sanctuary Policies: Constitutional And Representative Of Good Policing And Good Public Policy, Bill Hing Dec 2011

Immigration Sanctuary Policies: Constitutional And Representative Of Good Policing And Good Public Policy, Bill Hing

Bill Ong Hing

Sanctuary ordinances or policies that constrain local authorities from assisting in federal immigration enforcement do not receive the same political and media attention as anti-immigrant laws enacted by states and local governments. In the political struggle over the rights of undocumented immigrants in the United States, the greater media and political focus on anti-immigrant measures, such as Arizona’s S.B. 1070 and similar policies in cities like Hazleton, Pennsylvania, and Farmers Branch, Texas, is understandable.

With much less fanfare, the legality of sanctuary policies also has been challenged. In this article I review the case law that specifically has involved the …

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Reason Over Hysteria: Keynote Essay, Bill Ong Hing Dec 2010

Reason Over Hysteria: Keynote Essay, Bill Ong Hing

Bill Ong Hing

We are a nation of immigrants, but we also are a nation that loves to debate immigration policy, and that debate reflects the battle over how we define who is an American. The anti-immigrant movement in the United States is as strong as ever. Immigrant bashing is popular among politicians, talk radio hosts, private militiamen, and xenophobic grassroots organizations. They take full advantage of the high-tech era in which we live, as they complain about the “illegal alien invasion.” Their common thread is the rhetoric of fear. This hysteria leads to tragic policies that challenge us as a moral society. …

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Conflicting Signals: Understanding Us Immigration Reform Through The Evolution Of Us Immigration Law, Jill Family Dec 2009

Conflicting Signals: Understanding Us Immigration Reform Through The Evolution Of Us Immigration Law, Jill Family

Jill E. Family

This essay, published in the Revista catalana de dret public (Catalan Journal of Public Law), highlights the conflicting signals sent throughout the history of US immigration law. One consistent feature of the development of US immigration law is that it has exhibited signs of welcome and of tight control. Understanding this conflicted narrative helps to explain modern debates about immigration reform in the United States. The conflicting signals are evident in debates about the effectiveness of the system designed to select immigrants (including its enforcement features) and in debates over the future of the immigration adjudication system. Opposing views in …

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Systemic Failure: Mental Illness, Detention, And Deportation, Bill Ong Hing Dec 2009

Systemic Failure: Mental Illness, Detention, And Deportation, Bill Ong Hing

Bill Ong Hing

Our detention and deportation system failed Tatyana Mitrohina. She was born in Russia with heart defects and deformed hands. She was rejected by her parents for many years, spending her infancy in hospitals and institutions. Though she was later able to move back home, her parents abused her and then abandoned her. She immigrated to the United States as a young teen, adopted by U.S. citizens. After more than a decade, she had a child of her own, whom she abused. Tatyana was diagnosed with mental illness. Although she was convicted of child abuse, the state court recommended medication, counseling, …

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"Streamlining" The Rule Of Law: How The Department Of Justice Is Undermining Judicial Review Of Agency Action, Shruti Rana May 2009

"Streamlining" The Rule Of Law: How The Department Of Justice Is Undermining Judicial Review Of Agency Action, Shruti Rana

Shruti Rana

Judicial review of administrative decision making is an essential institutional check on agency power. Recently, however, the Department of Justice dramatically revised its regulations in an attempt to insulate its decision making from public and federal court scrutiny. These “streamlining” rules, carried out in the name of national security and immigration reform, have led to a breakdown in the rule of law in our judicial system. While much attention has been focused on the Department of Justice’s recent attempts to shield executive power from the reach of Congress, its efforts to undermine judicial review have so far escaped such scrutiny. …

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Stripping Judicial Review During Immigration Reform: The Certificate Of Reviewability, Jill E. Family Dec 2007

Stripping Judicial Review During Immigration Reform: The Certificate Of Reviewability, Jill E. Family

Jill E. Family

Congress contemplated a drastic change during the 2005-2006 immigration reform debate that sought to narrow access to the federal courts: a proposed certificate of reviewability requirement. The requirement would compel foreign nationals subject to an administrative removal order to obtain permission from a single federal court of appeals judge to access the federal courts. The U.S. House of Representatives endorsed the requirement but the U.S. Senate dropped it from its slate of immigration reform priorities. Why did the requirement disappear from the Senate's agenda during an era of increased congressional restrictions on judicial review of immigration cases?

A definitive answer …

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Another Limit On Federal Court Jurisdiction? Immigrant Access To Class-Wide Injunctive Relief, Jill Family Dec 2004

Another Limit On Federal Court Jurisdiction? Immigrant Access To Class-Wide Injunctive Relief, Jill Family

Jill E. Family

This article examines a statute that may embody another limit on the power of the federal courts. The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA) implemented sweeping changes that substantially restrict federal court review of administrative immigration decisions. One provision implemented as a part of IIRIRA, 8 U.S.C. § 1252(f)(1), appears, at least at first glance, to prohibit courts from issuing class-wide injunctive relief in immigration cases. Such a restriction would be significant because federal courts have issued class-wide injunctions in the past to stop unconstitutional immigration practices and policies of the federal government. The Supreme Court …

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