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Full-Text Articles in Law
'Water Is Life!' (And Speech!): Death, Dissent, And Democracy In The Borderlands, Jason A. Cade
'Water Is Life!' (And Speech!): Death, Dissent, And Democracy In The Borderlands, Jason A. Cade
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Decades of stringent immigration enforcement along the Southwest border have pushed migrants into perilous desert corridors. Thousands have died in border regions, out of the general public view, yet migrants continue to attempt the dangerous crossings. In response to what they see as a growing humanitarian crisis, activists from organizations such as No More Deaths seek to expand migrant access to water, to honor the human remains of those who did not survive the journey, and to influence public opinion about border enforcement policies. Government officials, however, have employed a range of tactics to repress this border-policy “dissent,” including blacklists, …
Limiting Deterrence: Judicial Resistance To Detention Of Asylum-Seekers In Israel And The United States, Michael Kagan
Limiting Deterrence: Judicial Resistance To Detention Of Asylum-Seekers In Israel And The United States, Michael Kagan
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Governments have advanced the argument that asylum-seekers may be detained in order to deter other would-be asylum-seekers from coming. But in recent litigation in the United States and Israel, this justification for mass detention met with significant resistance from courts. This Essay looks at the way the American and Israeli courts dealt with the proposed deterrence rationale for asylum-seeker detention. It suggests that general deterrence raises three sequential questions:
1. Is deterrence ever legitimate as a stand alone justification for depriving people of liberty?
2. If deterrence is sometimes legitimate, is it valid as a general matter in migration control, …
Believable Victims: Asylum Credibility And The Struggle For Objectivity, Michael Kagan
Believable Victims: Asylum Credibility And The Struggle For Objectivity, Michael Kagan
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Asylum adjudication is often the invisible frontline in the struggle by oppressed groups to gain recognition for their plights. Through this process, individual people must tell their stories and try to show that they are genuine victims of persecution rather than simply illegal immigrants attempting to slip through the system. In 2002, because the world had not yet acknowledged the nature of the calamity from which they were escaping, many Darfurian asylum cases would have relied on the ability of each individual to convince government offices to believe their stories. They would have had to be deemed “credible,” or they …
Assumed Sane, Fatma Marouf
Assumed Sane, Fatma Marouf
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In 2014, the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) held in Matter of G-G-S- that a noncitizen’s mental health status at the time of an offense is irrelevant to determining whether the offense is a “particularly serious crime” for immigration purposes. Since a “particularly serious crime” is a bar to asylum and withholding of removal, it can result in a noncitizen’s deportation to a country where he or she faces a serious risk of persecution. In deciding that immigration judges “are constrained by how mental health issues were addressed as part of the criminal proceedings,” the BIA failed to recognize the …
Refugee Credibility Assessment And The “Religious Imposter” Problem, Michael Kagan
Refugee Credibility Assessment And The “Religious Imposter” Problem, Michael Kagan
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Credibility assessment in refugee status determination (RSD) poses unique challenges when the outcome of asylum applications turns on the question of whether an asylum seeker is actually a member of a persecuted religious minority. These cases require secular adjudicators to delve into matters of religious identity and faith that are, by their nature, subjective and beyond the realm of objective analysis. This Article explores practical means of addressing this challenge through a case study of the RSD interviews of Eritrean asylum seekers in Egypt who based their refugee claims on Pentecostal religious associations. Analysis of the interview methods used in …
Shelter From The Storm: An Analysis Of U.S. Refugee Law As Applied To Tibetans Formerly Residing In India, Eileen Kaufman
Shelter From The Storm: An Analysis Of U.S. Refugee Law As Applied To Tibetans Formerly Residing In India, Eileen Kaufman
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No abstract provided.
The Emerging Importance Of "Social Visibility" In Defining A Particular Social Group And Its Potential Impact On Asylum Claims Related To Sexual Orientation And Gender, Fatma E. Marouf
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An emerging issue in U.S. asylum claims based on "membership in a particular social group" is the relevance of social visibility in determining whether such a group exists. Of the five protected grounds for asylum, "membership in a particular social group" has always generated the most debate. In 2002, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) issued guidelines that present the "protected characteristic" and "social perception" approaches as alternative ways of establishing a particular social group, instructing States Parties to the 1951 Refugee Convention (the "Convention") to determine first if there is a protected characteristic and, only if no …