Law Commons^™

Immigration Law's Catch-22: The Case For Removing The Three And Ten-Year Bars, Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia

Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia

Congress has made family immigration a priority in statute but the unlawful-presence bars, also known as the three and ten-year bars, create unique barriers for family reunification that prevent many immigrants from legalizing their status through the existing immigration system. The three and ten-year bars prevent immigrants who have overstayed their visas or entered unlawfully from earning a green card even if they are otherwise capable of legally acquiring it. Removing or reforming the unlawful presence bars would remove a major legislative catch-22 that impedes the legalization of many unauthorized immigrants. Take the example of Maria, a 23 year-old woman …

Business As Usual: Immigration And The National Security Exception, Shoba S. Wadhia

Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia

Javaid Iqbal is a native and citizen of Pakistan and a Muslim. After moving to the United States, Iqbal worked as a cable television installer on Long Island. Iqbal was one among hundreds of men apprehended and detained by the United States Department of Justice in the weeks that followed the September 11, 2001 attacks. Iqbal was held in a federal prison in Brooklyn, New York called the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC), for more than one year. In January 2002, Iqbal was transferred to the maximum security section of the jail known as the Administrative Maximum Special Housing Unit (ADMAX …

Use Of The Term 'Illegal Alien', Shoba S. Wadhia

Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia

This essay examines the use of the terms “alien,” “illegal,” and “illegal alien.” It will show that use of the term “illegal alien” is problematic because it is subject to many definitions that are often inaccurate. Moreover, even if there is agreement on the scope of the phrase “illegal alien,” the term cannot be fully understood without studying the individual characteristics of those defined by this term as well as the role of the government in sustaining an outdated immigration structure that creates illegal immigration an inevitability. Finally, this essay will show that the term “illegal alien” is dehumanizing because …

The Immigration Prosecutor And The Judge Examining The Role Of The Judiciary In Prosecutorial Discretion Decisions, Shoba S. Wadhia

Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia

Legal scholars and judges have long examined the role of judicial review in immigration matters, and also criticized the impacts of the “plenary power” doctrine and statutory deletions of judicial review for certain immigration cases. Absent from this scholarship is a serious examination of the judiciary’s role in immigration decisions involving prosecutorial discretion. I attribute this absence to both a silent concession that prosecutorial discretion decisions are automatically barred from judicial review because of the plain language of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA); the judicial review “exceptions” in the Administrative Procedures Act (APA), and the cases that analyze these …

Sharing Secrets: Examining Deferred Action And Transparency In Immigration Law, Shoba S. Wadhia

Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia

Sharing Secrets: Examining Deferred Action and Transparency in Immigration Law

Abstract

This Article is about deferred action and transparency in related immigration cases falling under the jurisdiction of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). While scholars from other genres have written extensively on the topic of prosecutorial discretion, the subject is largely absent from immigration scholarship, with the exception of early research conducted by Leon Wildes in the late 1970s and early 2000s, and a law review article I published in 2010 outlining the origins of prosecutorial discretion in immigration law and related lessons that can be drawn from administrative …

The Role Of Prosecutorial Discretion In Immigration Law, Shoba S. Wadhia

Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia

The concept of "prosecutorial discretion" appears in the immigration statute, agency memoranda and court decisions about select immigration enforcement decisions. Prosecutorial discretion extends to decisions about which offenses or populations to target; whom to stop, interrogate, and arrest; whether to detain or release a noncitizen; whether to initiate removal proceedings; and whether to execute a removal order; among other decisions. Similar to the criminal context, prosecutorial discretion in the immigration context is an important tool for achieving cost-effective law enforcement and relief for individuals who present desirable qualities or humanitarian circumstances. Yet there is a dearth of literature on the …

Business As Usual Immigration And The National Security Exception, Shoba S. Wadhia

Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia

Javaid Iqbal is a native and citizen of Pakistan and a Muslim. After moving to the United States, Iqbal worked as a cable television installer on Long Island. Iqbal was one among hundreds of men apprehended and detained by the United States Department of Justice in the weeks that followed the September 11, 2001 attacks. Iqbal was held in a federal prison in Brooklyn, New York called the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC), for more than one year. In January 2002, Iqbal was transferred to the maximum security section of the jail known as the Administrative Maximum Special Housing Unit (ADMAX …

Under Arrest: Immigrants' Rights And The Rule Of Law, Shoba S. Wadhia

Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia

The discussion is broken down into four parts. First, I will review some basic historical points and terminology. Second, I will describe some of the government's immigration enforcement policies following the comprehensive immigration reform ("CIR") debate and the human consequences and concerns behind such policies. Third, I will describe the relevant legal authorities for arresting and detaining noncitizens. Finally, I will provide some recommendations for moving forward.

The Policy And Politics Of Immigrant Rights, Shoba S. Wadhia

Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia

This article examines how immigration policies over the past decade have affected immigrant rights, scrutinizes administrative and legislative efforts to improve or eliminate these measures, and makes recommendations for advancing a due process agenda in the future. The first part of this article analyzes administrative and legislative proposals under four themes: 1) checks and balances, 2) punishment does not fit the crime, 3) judicial review, and 4) detention. The second part of this article identifies efforts to redress measures emanating from the 1996 immigration laws and policies issued after September 11, 2001. For example, it analyzes legislation introduced in the …

Immigration: Mind Over Matter, Shoba S. Wadhia

Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia

This article examines the current field of debate and legislation on immigration reform and related due process issues. "Comprehensive Immigration Reform" is an expression in the immigration debate and embraces five tenets. First, reform addresses the eleven million people who are living in the United States without documentation and specifically provide them with an incentive to make themselves known to the government, register for some kind of work visa, and if they wish, get on the path to permanent residence. Second, reform embodies what lobbyists in Washington, D.C. call the "future flow," which corresponds to the flow of people who …