Law Commons^™

Daca's Tax Benefits Highlight The Need For Broader Immigration Reform, Jacqueline Lainez Flanagan

Journal Articles

America’s aging population and declining birth rates are negatively affecting the nation’s Social Security and Medicare safety nets, reducing tax revenue, and weakening the broader economy.1 Meanwhile, immigration is increasing workforce participation by expanding the number of young adults in the United States.2 Despite political setbacks, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program exemplifies the economic and tax benefits of immigration, providing data and the impetus for a better way forward. Although not all DACA-eligible youth have registered for it, it is estimated that in 2017 alone, more than $2.2 billion in federal taxes were paid by DACA-eligible youth …

The Immigrant Struggle For Effective Counsel: An Empirical Assessment, Jayanth K. Krishnan

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Recently, in Department of Homeland Security v. Thuraissigiam, the Supreme Court upheld 8 U.S.C. § 1252(e)(2), a statutory provision placing restrictions on certain noncitizens from seeking habeas review in the federal judiciary. The Court focused on the Constitution’s Suspension Clause, but it also discussed the Due Process Clause, declaring that there was no violation there either.

One question which flows from this decision is whether the federal courts will soon be precluded from hearing other types of claims brought by noncitizens. Consider ineffective assistance of counsel petitions, which in the immigration law context are rooted in the Due Process Clause. …

Trafficking And The Shallow State, Julie A. Dahlstrom

Faculty Scholarship

More than two decades ago, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) established new, robust protections for immigrant victims of trafficking. In particular, Congress created the T visa, a special form of immigration status, to protect immigrant victims from deportation. Despite lofty ambitions, the annual cap of 5,000 T visas has never been reached, with fewer than 1,200 approved each year. In recent years, denial rates also have climbed. For example, in fiscal year 2020, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services denied 42.79% of the T visa applications that the agency adjudicated, compared with just 28.12% in fiscal year 2015. These developments …

Reframing Taxigration In The Search For Tax Justice, Jacqueline Lainez Flanagan

Journal Articles

The Search for Tax Justice is a Tax Notes State series examining the inequities inherent in state and federal taxes. In this installment, Jacqueline Laínez Flanagan, associate professor of law and director of the University of the District of Columbia’s David A. Clarke School of Law Tax Clinic, discusses tax challenges faced by immigrants and responds to myths about the undocumented taxpayer community.

Changemakers: Coming Full Circle, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Laboratories Of Exclusion: Medicaid, Federalism & Immigrants, Medha D. Makhlouf

Faculty Scholarly Works

Medicaid’s cooperative federalism structure gives states significant discretion to include or exclude various categories of immigrants. This has created extreme geographic variability in immigrants’ access to health coverage. This Article describes federalism’s role in influencing state policies on immigrant eligibility for Medicaid and its implications for national health policy. Although there are disagreements over the extent to which public funds should be used to subsidize immigrant health coverage, this Article reveals that decentralized policymaking on immigrant access to Medicaid has weakened national health policy. It has failed to incentivize the type of state policy experimentation and replication that justifies federalism …

Local Elected Officials’ Receptivity To Refugee Resettlement In The United States, Robert Shaffer, Lauren E. Pinson, Jonathan A. Chu, Beth A. Simmons

All Faculty Scholarship

Local leaders possess significant and growing authority over refugee resettlement, yet we know little about their attitudes toward refugees. In this article, we use a conjoint experiment to evaluate how the attributes of hypothetical refugee groups influence local policymaker receptivity toward refugee resettlement. We sample from a novel, national panel of current local elected officials, who represent a broad range of urban and rural communities across the United States. We find that many local officials favor refugee resettlement regardless of refugee attributes. However, officials are most receptive to refugees whom they perceive as a strong economic and social fit within …

Law School News: Will Sheehan '20 Selected For Prestigious Immigration Fellowship 06-17-2020, Michael M. Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Law School News: Distinguished Service Professor: Deborah Gonzalez 05-20-2020, Michael M. Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Law School News: Rwu Law Professors File Emergency Covid-19 Lawsuit 04-12-2020, Michael M. Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Immigrants And Interdependence: How The Covid-19 Pandemic Exposes The Folly Of The New Public Charge Rule, Medha D. Makhlouf, Jasmine Sandhu

Faculty Scholarly Works

On February 24, 2020, just as the Trump administration began taking significant action to prepare for an outbreak of COVID-19 in the United States, it also began implementing its new public charge rule. Public charge is an immigration law that restricts the admission of certain noncitizens based on the likelihood that they will become dependent on the government for support. The major effect of the new rule is to chill noncitizens from enrolling in public benefits, including Medicaid, out of fear of negative immigration consequences. These chilling effects have persisted during the pandemic. When noncitizens are afraid to (1) seek …

The Disconnect Between Family Law And Immigration Law In The Usa That Results In Undocumented Immigrants Losing Parental Rights, Mercedes Aznar, Sara Schechter

Publications and Research

Due to increasing violence in Latin American countries, the flow of immigrants seeking asylum in the United States has risen. In our research we look into possible legal consequences of the practice of separating immigrant families. Through the analysis of scholarly articles and legal documents we found that oftentimes, undocumented immigrants lose parental rights while being detained by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), due to lack of coordination between Family Law and Immigration Law. Findings in this study reinforce the urgency to find solutions to this problem.

Law School News: Tough Talk On Asylum 11/22/2019, Michael M. Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Dehumanization, Immigrants, And Equal Protection, Reginald Oh

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This article is divided into three parts. Part I explores the concept of dehumanization and its central role in the subordination of marginalized groups. Part II discusses the equal protection doctrine of suspect classes by analyzing key decisions by the Court and its reasoning for whether or not to consider a particular group as a suspect class. Part II also argues that the decision in Brown v. Board of Education regards racial segregation in public schools as a form of racial dehumanization and provides the doctrinal basis to consider dehumanization a central factor in determining suspect class status. Part III …

Champions For Justice & Public Interest Auction 2019, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Public Interest Auction

No abstract provided.

Unaccompanied Immigrant Child And Family/Sponsor Community Service System Study: Metropolitan Chicago Area, Adam Avrushin, Maria Vidal De Haymes

Center for the Human Rights of Children

This research report seeks to (1) address research gaps relevant to services for unaccompanied immigrant children within the Chicago metropolitan area, and (2) provide relevant information to stakeholders who can strengthen the systems that support these young people. This report provides an overview of this research project, background information and findings from the study. To date, no research has examined these young people and their families who live in the Chicago metropolitan area, their needs, or the services and systems that can, potentially, meet their needs.

15th Diversity Symposium Dinner 4-27-2018, Michael M. Bowden

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Newsroom: Center Of The Storm: Rwu Law And Daca 11-21-2017, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Newsroom: Governor Raimondo On Rwu Law 09-19-2017, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Rwu First Amendment Blog: Jared A. Goldstein's Blog: Trump's Order Violates Bedrock Principles Of Roger Williams And Ri 01-30-2017, Jared A. Goldstein

Law School Blogs

No abstract provided.

Trending @ Rwu Law: Deborah Gonzalez's Post: Why I Marched... 1-25-2017, Deborah Gonzalez

Law School Blogs

No abstract provided.

Newsroom: Undocumented Licenses, Safer Roads 01-05-2017, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Newsroom: Vox: Mancheno '13 On Orlando 6-23-2016, Luis F. Mancheno, Vox, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Trending @ Rwu Law: Deborah Gonzalez's Post: Bringing Good Fortune (And New Champions) Into The New Year!: 01-22-2016, Deborah Gonzalez

Law School Blogs

No abstract provided.

Silent Protest And The Art Of Paper Folding: The Golden Venture Paper Sculptures At The Museum Of Chinese In America, Sandra Cheng

Publications and Research

Housed in the Museum of Chinese in America is the Fly to Freedom collection of paper art, which were produced by a traditional folk method of Chinese paper folding. The 123 paper works were created by detainees of the Golden Venture, a freighter used to smuggle undocumented immigrants into the U.S. On the evening of June 6, 1993, the ship ran aground off the Rockaways in New York City and nearly 300 migrants, gaunt from the four-month ordeal at sea, poured out of the cramped windowless hold of the vessel. Several drowned that night, a few escaped, but the majority …

26 States Sue Obama Over Immigration Plan, Lauren Carasik

Media Presence

No abstract provided.

Family Unity Revisited: Divorce, Separation, And Death In Immigration Law, Albertina Antognini

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Families are integral to immigration law and policy, and family-based immigration accounts for the majority of legal entry into the United States. Legislative, judicial, and scholarly discussions that address immigration law's family-based categories rely nearly exclusively on the principle of family unification, which has long been a cornerstone policy of immigration law. Yet the family-based provisions of immigration law do more than unify intact families; understanding families as dynamic entities that experience change reveals an immigration system that acknowledges a flexible family structure in determining status.

The principal aim of this Article is to present a more complete description of …

Legal Status And The Criminal Activity Of Immigrants, Giovanni Mastrobuoni, Paolo Pinotti

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

We exploit exogenous variation in legal status following the January 2007 European Union enlargement to estimate its effect on immigrant crime. We difference out unobserved time-varying factors by 1) comparing recidivism rates of immigrants from the “new” and “candidate” member countries and 2) using arrest data on foreign detainees released upon a mass clemency that occurred in Italy in August 2006. The timing of the two events allows us to set up a difference-in-differences strategy. Legal status leads to a 50 percent reduction in recidivism and explains one-half to two-thirds of the observed differences in crime rates between legal and …

From Citizenship To Custody: Unwed Fathers Abroad And At Home, Albertina Antognini

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The sex-based distinctions of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) have been remarkably resilient in the face of numerous equal protection challenges. In Miller v. Albright, Nguyen v. INS, and most recently United States v. Flores-Villar — collectively the "citizenship transmission cases" — the Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of the INA’s provisions that require unwed fathers, but not unwed mothers, to take a series of affirmative steps in order to transmit citizenship to their children born abroad.

The conventional account of these citizenship transmission cases is that the Court upholds sex-based distinctions that would otherwise fail …

The Plea Bargain Crisis For Noncitizens In Misdemeanor Court, Jason A. Cade

Scholarly Works

This Article considers three factors contributing to a plea-bargain crisis for noncitizens charged with misdemeanors: 1) the expansion of deportation laws to include very minor offenses with little opportunity for discretionary relief from removal; 2) the integration of federal immigration enforcement programs with the criminal justice system; and 3) the institutional norms in non-federal lower criminal courts, where little attention is paid to evidence or individual equities and where bail and other process costs generally outweigh perceived incentives to fight charges. The Article contends that these factors increase the likelihood that a noncitizen’s low-level conviction will not reliably indicate guilt …