Law Commons^™

From Status To Agency: Defining Migrants, Avinoam Cohen

International Migrants Bill of Rights Symposium

Migrants share an intricate relationship with the law. Identifying a person as a migrant implies, in ordinary language, that she has crossed legally defined territorial boundaries. In legal terminology, invoking the term migrant usually alludes to a particular legal status that entails a specific set of rights, distinguished from those of the citizen. Acknowledging the role of law in identifying and classifying people that move across national frontiers, migrants appear as legal constructs, structured by and within the law. Regulatory mechanisms designed to direct and control migration are deeply intertwined with the phenomenon they strive to govern. In itself, this …

Reaffirming Rights: Human Rights Protections Of Migrants, Asylum Seekers, And Refugees In Immigration Detention, Eleanor Acer, Jake Goodman

International Migrants Bill of Rights Symposium

The International Migrants Bill of Rights (IMBR) addresses migrants’ rights in a variety of contexts, and this paper looks closely at some of the most crucial rights that apply to migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers who are held in immigration detention.

Migrants, refugees and asylum seekers are entitled to a broad range of rights protections. These protections are spelled out in the provisions of core human rights treaties and regional human rights conventions that apply to all people, as well as in the specific conventions relating to refugees and migrants. While States have the authority to regulate migration, their immigration …

Rejecting Refugees: Homeland Security's Administration Of The One-Year Bar To Asylum, Andrew I. Schoenholtz, Philip G. Schrag, Jaya Ramji-Nogales, James P. Dombach

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Since 1980, the Refugee Act has offered asylum to people who flee to the United States to escape persecution in their homeland. In 1996, however, Congress amended the law to bar asylum – regardless of the merit of the underlying claim – for any applicant who fails to apply within one year of entering the United States, unless the applicant qualifies for one of two exceptions to the rule.

In the years since the bar was established, anecdotal reports have suggested that genuine refugees, with strong merits claims to asylum, have been rejected solely because of the deadline. Many scholars …