Law Commons^™

This article’s main proposition is that women who seek asylum in the United States based on gender do not have sufficient protection. It first discusses the evolution of gender in asylum law and the growing Northern and Southern dichotomy. This includes a discussion of the specific legal protections of refugees and asylees within the UN Refugee Convention and the relatively recent introduction of gender-based asylum in general. The core of this article is the detailed case discussion of female asylum seekers, particularly from Somalia, but also from Cameroon, Eritrea and Iraq. These female asylum seekers’ claims were augmented by their …

In 1823, Justice John Marshall, Justice of the United States Supreme Court in Johnson v. M’Intosh held that the United States had “the exclusive right to settle, possess, and govern the new land and the absolute title to the soil, subject to certain right of occupancy only in the natives.” He added that “when the conquest is complete . . . the conquered inhabitants can be blended with the conquerors, or safely governed as a distinct people.” This article discusses the human rights tragedy and the line of cases and policy that stemmed from this decision which culminated in the …

Recent and continuing rights abuses of Arabs and Muslims including detainment, deportation, torture, harassment, discrimination, limited internment and other types of human rights abuses along with Special Registration, since September 11th, have been massive and are sensational in U.S. history; it rivals in scale to past major government actions, including the Japanese internment and Palmer raids. Like the Japanese internment until after the war, there is little or no discussion of these rights abuses in the main stream or corporate media. It has stemmed from both de facto and de jure profiling of primarily the immigrant population for Arabs and …

This article discusses the political, legal and cultural similarities between the United States and Australia. It ties in the experience of the author in living both these countries and as an immigration attorney.

As an introduction, this article notes that Australia and the U.S. have many common traits. Both Australia and the U.S. are termed “immigrant nations” because the vast majority of what constitutes the populations in the current political entities of the “Commonwealth of Australia” or the “United States of America” are immigrants. Both nations were also rooted in the colonialism of the British Empire with corresponding Anglo-American legal …