Immigration Law Commons^™

Why The Legal Strategy Of Exploiting Immigrant Families Should Worry Us All, Jamie Abrams

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

This article applies a family law lens to explore the systemic and traumatic effects of modern laws and policies on immigrant families. A family law lens widens the scope of individuals harmed by recent immigration laws and policies to show why all families are affected and harmed by shifts in state power, state action, and state rhetoric. The family law lens reveals a worrisome shift in intentionality that has moved the state from a bystander to family-based immigration trauma to an incendiary agent perpetrating family trauma.

Modern immigration laws and policies are deploying legal and political strategies that intentionally sever …

The Dual Purposes Of The U Visa Thwarted In A Legislative Duel, Jamie Abrams

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Congress created the U visa non-immigrant classification to achieve the dual purposes of both strengthening law enforcement’s ability to pursue domestic violence cases and protecting victims. This article reveals how the gatekeeper function of the law enforcement certification in the U visa petition, as set out in the interim final regulations, undermines Congress’s dual purposes and thwarts the statutory framework entirely. The law enforcement certification provisions of the U visa interim final regulations irreparably shift considerable centralized power to law enforcement personnel, subjecting the certification process to inconsistent application and misapplication.

U Visas allow undocumented non-immigrants who are victims of …