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Articles 31 - 60 of 84

Full-Text Articles in Immigration Law

The Rise Of Speed Deportation And The Role Of Discretion, Shoba S. Wadhia Jan 2014

The Rise Of Speed Deportation And The Role Of Discretion, Shoba S. Wadhia

Journal Articles

In 2013, the majority of people deported never saw a courtroom or immigration judge. Instead, they were quickly removed by the Department of Homeland Security via one of several procedures collectively referred to as “speed deportation.” The policy goals of speed deportation are economic; these processes save government resources from being spent on procedural safeguards such as a trial attorney, immigration judge, and a fundamentally fair hearing. Higher deportation numbers may also benefit the image the government seeks to portray to policymakers who support amplified immigration enforcement. However, the human consequences of speed deportation are significant and can result in …


To File Or Not To File A Notice To Appear: Improving The Government's Use Of Prosecutorial Discretion, Penn State Law Immigrants' Rights Clinic Oct 2013

To File Or Not To File A Notice To Appear: Improving The Government's Use Of Prosecutorial Discretion, Penn State Law Immigrants' Rights Clinic

Center for Immigrants' Rights Clinic Publications

A report by the Penn State Law Immigrants' Rights Clinic that highlights the rate and circumstances surrounding Notice to Appear (NTA) filings at the immigration court.


Foia Request To Uscis On Deferred Action Records, Shoba Wadhia Jan 2013

Foia Request To Uscis On Deferred Action Records, Shoba Wadhia

Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia

No abstract provided.


The Immigration Prosecutor And The Judge: Examining The Role Of The Judiciary In Prosecutorial Discretion Decisions, Shoba S. Wadhia Jan 2013

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 …


Our Illegal Founders, Victor C. Romero Jan 2013

Our Illegal Founders, Victor C. Romero

Journal Articles

This Essay briefly mines America’s history to argue that the law setting forth where our national borders are and how strictly we patrol them has always been subject to the vagaries of politics, economics, and perception. Illegal (im)migration has long been part of our migration history, engaged in not just by Latin American border crossers, but also by prominent colonists, giving the lie to the claim that upholding border laws should always be sacrosanct. In many school districts today, the usual summary of American history from our childhood civics classes no longer bypasses the uncomfortable truths of conquest and westward …


Reading (Into) Windsor: Presidential Leadership, Marriage Equality, And Immigration Policy, Victor C. Romero Jan 2013

Reading (Into) Windsor: Presidential Leadership, Marriage Equality, And Immigration Policy, Victor C. Romero

Journal Articles

Following the demise of the federal Defense of Marriage Act in United States v. Windsor, the Obama Administration directed a bold, equality-based reading of Windsor to immigration law, treating bi-national same-sex couples the same as opposite-sex couples. This Essay argues that the President's interpretation is both constitutionally and politically sound: Constitutionally, because it comports with the Executive's power to enforce immigration law and to guarantee equal protection under the law; and politically, because it reflects the current, increasingly tolerant view of marriage equality. Though still in its infancy, President Obama's policy of treating same-sex beneficiary petitions generally the same as …


The Immigration Prosecutor And The Judge: Examining The Role Of The Judiciary In Prosecutorial Discretion Decisions, Shoba S. Wadhia Jan 2013

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

Journal Articles

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 …


My Great Foia Adventure And Discoveries Of Deferred Action Cases At Ice, Shoba S. Wadhia Jan 2013

My Great Foia Adventure And Discoveries Of Deferred Action Cases At Ice, Shoba S. Wadhia

Journal Articles

This Article describes my adventures in FOIA litigation and analyzes deferred action data collected informally by 24 ICE field offices between October 1, 2011, and June 30, 2012. This Article also offers recommendations for the agency on data collection, recordkeeping, and transparency in deferred action cases. Deferred action is a form of prosecutorial discretion that can be granted at any stage of the immigration enforcement process and historically has been applied both to people who meet group characteristics and on an individual basis in compelling humanitarian circumstances. The theory behind deferred action and prosecutorial discretion more generally is to enable …


Immigration Relief For Victims Of Abuse And Domestic Violence, Penn State Law Immigrants' Rights Clinic, Centre County Women's Resource Center Jul 2012

Immigration Relief For Victims Of Abuse And Domestic Violence, Penn State Law Immigrants' Rights Clinic, Centre County Women's Resource Center

Center for Immigrants' Rights Clinic Publications

Advocates and attorneys who work with victims of domestic violence need to understand the dynamics of power and control and how they affect the safety of their clients. This understanding is especially important in working with non-citizen victims who often face additional hurdles compared to American citizens. The Center for Immigrants' Rights has published "Immigration Relief for Victims of Abuse and Domestic Violence," a toolkit to help practitioners in representing immigrant victims of domestic abuse.


Leveling The Playing Field: Reforming The H-2b Program To Protect Guestworkers And U.S. Workers, Penn State Law Immigrants' Rights Clinic, National Guestworker Alliance Jun 2012

Leveling The Playing Field: Reforming The H-2b Program To Protect Guestworkers And U.S. Workers, Penn State Law Immigrants' Rights Clinic, National Guestworker Alliance

Center for Immigrants' Rights Clinic Publications

This report highlights cases of exploitation from Texas to Tennessee, and calls for four indispensible reforms that would end employer abuse and protect both guest workers and U.S. workers: (1) Guaranteeing guest workers the right to organize without fear of retaliation; (2) Prohibiting employers from using guest workers as cheap, exploitable alternatives to U.S. workers; (3) Eliminating debt servitude and other elements of human trafficking in the program; and (4) Subjecting employers to meaningful government enforcement and community oversight.


The Nseers Effect: A Decade Of Racial Profiling, Fear, And Secrecy, Penn State Law Immigrants' Rights Clinic, Rights Working Group Jun 2012

The Nseers Effect: A Decade Of Racial Profiling, Fear, And Secrecy, Penn State Law Immigrants' Rights Clinic, Rights Working Group

Center for Immigrants' Rights Clinic Publications

n the wake of the tragic attacks of September 11, 2011, the landscape of immigration law and policy in the United States changed dramatically as the government scrambled to create counterterrorism programs to respond to potential national security threats. One program is the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS) or "special registration" that was initiated by the Department of Justice in 2002 and inherited by the Department of Homeland Security in 2003. NSEERS served as a tool that allowed the government to systematically target Arabs, Middle Easterners, Muslims, and South Asians from designated countries for advanced scrutiny. ...The purpose of …


Behind Closed Doors: An Overview Of Dhs Restrictions On Access To Counsel, Penn State Law Immigrants' Rights Clinic, American Immigration Council May 2012

Behind Closed Doors: An Overview Of Dhs Restrictions On Access To Counsel, Penn State Law Immigrants' Rights Clinic, American Immigration Council

Center for Immigrants' Rights Clinic Publications

The Center collaborated with LAC to produce a white paper addressing the law, policy and practice surrounding right to counsel in non-removal contexts before the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). To reach this end, students at the Center reviewed an internal legal memorandum prepared by the American Immigration Lawyers Association and LAC; a detailed memo prepared by the Center analyzing individual attorney experiences with restrictions on access before DHS; and conduct additional research pertaining to access to counsel. The white paper articulates the legal and policy standards governing an individual’s right to counsel in various non-removal settings in order to …


Response, The Obama Administration, In Defense Of Daca, Deferred Action, And The Dream Act, Shoba S. Wadhia Jan 2012

Response, The Obama Administration, In Defense Of Daca, Deferred Action, And The Dream Act, Shoba S. Wadhia

Journal Articles

This essay responds to “The Obama Administration, the DREAM Act and the Take Care Clause” by Robert J. Delahunty and John C. Yoo. Though I credit Yoo and Delahunty for considering the relationship between the DACA program and the President’s duties under the “Take Care” clause, they miss the mark in at least three ways: 1) Contrary to ignoring immigration enforcement, the Obama Administration has executed the immigration laws faithfully and forcefully; 2) Far from being a new policy that undercuts statutory law, prosecutorial discretion actions like DACA have been pursued by other presidents, and part of the immigration system …


Sharing Secrets: Examining Deferred Action And Transparancy In Immigration Law, Shoba S. Wadhia Jan 2012

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

Journal Articles

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 law and criminal law. That article ends with specific recommendations for …


The 9/11 Effect And Its Legacy On U.S. Immigration Laws: Essays, Remarks, And Photographs, Penn State Law Immigrants' Rights Clinic, Penn State School Of International Affairs Sep 2011

The 9/11 Effect And Its Legacy On U.S. Immigration Laws: Essays, Remarks, And Photographs, Penn State Law Immigrants' Rights Clinic, Penn State School Of International Affairs

Center for Immigrants' Rights Clinic Publications

An anthology of 9/11 reflections released today by the Penn State Law Center for Immigrants’ Rights and the Penn State School of International Affairs concentrates on the impact of the attacks on the lives of immigrants and immigration policy, providing both a report card and ideas for the future.


Response From Uscis On My Foia Re: Deferred Action, Shoba Wadhia Jan 2011

Response From Uscis On My Foia Re: Deferred Action, Shoba Wadhia

Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia

No abstract provided.


Immigrant Education And The Promise Of Integrative Egalitarianism, Victor C. Romero Jan 2011

Immigrant Education And The Promise Of Integrative Egalitarianism, Victor C. Romero

Journal Articles

Although not an equal protection case, Martinez v. Regents of the University of California challenges us to grapple with the Supreme Court’s post-Brown commitment to equal opportunity within the context of immigrant higher education. Sadly, Brown’s progeny from Bakke to Parents Involved reveals the cost of embracing a color-blind constitutionalism unmoored from a fundamental commitment to vigilantly combat subordination and dismantle unearned privilege. More optimistically, the Supreme Court’s gay rights jurisprudence developed in Romer v. Evans and Lawrence v. Texas provides insights into how a conservative court can accurately distinguish irrational discrimination from democratic deliberation, a lesson that might help …


The One-Year Asylum Deadline And The Bia: No Protection, No Process, Penn State Law Immigrants' Rights Cliinic, Human Rights First, National Immigrant Justice Center Oct 2010

The One-Year Asylum Deadline And The Bia: No Protection, No Process, Penn State Law Immigrants' Rights Cliinic, Human Rights First, National Immigrant Justice Center

Center for Immigrants' Rights Clinic Publications

The right to seek asylum from persecution is a fundamental and long-recognized human right. The United States committed to protecting refugees in 1967 when it signed the Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees and later enacted legislation to incorporate the Protocol’s key provisions into domestic law. Despite these commitments, in 1996 Congress enacted a filing deadline for asylum applications which has resulted in potentially denying protections to thousands of legitimate refugees.


Reading The Morton Memo Federal Priorities And Prosecutorial Discretion, Shoba Wadhia Jan 2010

Reading The Morton Memo Federal Priorities And Prosecutorial Discretion, Shoba Wadhia

Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia

On June 30, 2010, the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), John Morton, issued a memo to the agency that reflected the Obama administration’s oft repeated intent to focus removal efforts on serious offenders. Morton noted: In light of the large number of administrative violations the agency is charged with addressing and the limited enforcement resources the agency has available, ICE must prioritize the use of its enforcement personnel, detention space, and removal resources to ensure that the removals the agency does conduct promote the agency's highest enforcement priorities, namely national security, public safety, and border security. …


The Role Of Prosecutorial Discretion In Immigration Law, Shoba S. Wadhia Jan 2010

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

Journal Articles

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 …


Decriminalizing Border Crossings, Victor C. Romero Jan 2010

Decriminalizing Border Crossings, Victor C. Romero

Journal Articles

An international border crosser should only be deemed a criminal if the United States government can prove that, with requisite criminal intent, she engaged in an act aside from crossing the border that would constitute a crime. No longer should crossing the border be a strict liability criminal offense. Doing so will restore balance to the civil immigration system, conserve scarce enforcement resources to target truly criminal behavior, enhance our standing abroad, and help heal our racially-polarized discourse on immigration policy.


Christian Realism And Immigration Reform, Victor C. Romero Jan 2010

Christian Realism And Immigration Reform, Victor C. Romero

Journal Articles

Drawing upon President Barack Obama’s admiration of Reinhold Niebuhr’s work, this Essay outlines a Protestant, Christian realist approach toward immigration policy, with specific focus on the role of the executive in providing providential leadership. Embracing realism in its political, moral, and theological dimensions, Christian realism offers a pragmatic, yet optimistic, alternative to secular liberalism’s faith in reason by striving instead to adhere to God’s guidance on matters, taking into account the fundamentally flawed nature of man. The specific policy prescriptions described here mirror the twin virtues of Christian realism by promoting the hope in pursuit of the peaceable kingdom and …


Interrogating Iqbal: Intent, Inertia, And (A Lack Of) Imagination, Victor C. Romero Jan 2010

Interrogating Iqbal: Intent, Inertia, And (A Lack Of) Imagination, Victor C. Romero

Journal Articles

In Ashcroft v. Iqbal, the Court reaffirmed the long-standing equal protection doctrine that government actors can only be held liable for discriminatory conduct when they purposefully rely on a forbidden characteristic, such as race or gender, in promulgating policy; to simply know that minorities and women will be adversely affected by the law does not deny these groups equal protection under the law. This Essay interrogates this doctrine by taking a closer look at Iqbal and Feeney, the thirty-year-old precedent the majority cited as the source of its antidiscrimination standard. Because Feeney was cited in neither of the …


Playing Politics At The Bench: A White Paper On The Justice Department's Investigation Into The Hiring Practices Of Immigration Judges, Penn State Law Immigrants' Rights Clinic, National Immigration Project Of The National Lawyers Guild Oct 2009

Playing Politics At The Bench: A White Paper On The Justice Department's Investigation Into The Hiring Practices Of Immigration Judges, Penn State Law Immigrants' Rights Clinic, National Immigration Project Of The National Lawyers Guild

Center for Immigrants' Rights Clinic Publications

On behalf of the National Lawyers Guild National Immigration Project (NLGNIP), the Center for Immigrants' Rights (Center) at the Pennsylvania State University's Dickinson School of Law prepared a white paper facilitated by a government report on the politicized hiring of immigration judges. This white paper is based findings by the Department of Justice‘s Office of Professional Responsibility and Office of the Inspector General in their investigation of the illegal hiring of immigration judges during a period in the George W. Bush Administration. The recommendations presented here are a product of this analysis and extensive research on data produced by individuals …


U.S. Immigration Policy: Contract Or Human Rights Law?, Victor C. Romero Jan 2008

U.S. Immigration Policy: Contract Or Human Rights Law?, Victor C. Romero

Journal Articles

The current immigration debate often reflects a tension between affirming the individual rights of migrants against the power of a nation to control its borders. An examination of U.S. Supreme Court precedent reveals that, from our earliest immigration history to the present time, our immigration policy has functioned more like contract law than human rights law, with the Court deferring to the power of Congress to define the terms of that contract at the expense of the immigrant's freedom.


Under Arrest: Immigrants' Rights And The Rule Of Law, Shoba S. Wadhia Jan 2008

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

Journal Articles

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.


Commercial Peace And Political Competition In The Crosshairs Of International Arbitration, Thomas E. Carbonneau Jan 2008

Commercial Peace And Political Competition In The Crosshairs Of International Arbitration, Thomas E. Carbonneau

Journal Articles

This article examines the mixed effect of arbitration upon the generation of international law norms; in particular, how arbitration can generate private law norms so effectively and yet still face strong resistance in public international law processes and controversies. The work of arbitration for international commercial litigation has been nothing less than spectacular. In both the private international and domestic civil contexts, arbitration has provided viable remedial solutions and functional adjudication when the law was either nonexistent or incapacitated. It has supplied a workable and adaptable trial system, which-on the international side-could also generate substantive legal norms. Arbitration thereby has …


Crossing Borders: Loving V. Virginia As A Story Of Migration, Victor C. Romero Jan 2007

Crossing Borders: Loving V. Virginia As A Story Of Migration, Victor C. Romero

Journal Articles

The struggle of binational same-gender partners today parallels the struggles of Mildred and Richard Loving during the heyday of the Civil Rights Movement - not only in the obvious parallels between race and sexual orientation as barriers to freedom, but also in the way the law uses these immutable characteristics to limit the freedom of movement. It is this freedom of movement - this migration or immigration - that I want to focus on in this essay. Lest we forget, the Lovings' story is, importantly, a story of migration: It's a story of the great lengths to which an interracial …


The Policy And Politics Of Immigrant Rights, Shoba S. Wadhia Jan 2007

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

Journal Articles

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 …


Asians, Gay Marriage, And Immigration: Family Unification At A Crossroads, Victor C. Romero Jan 2005

Asians, Gay Marriage, And Immigration: Family Unification At A Crossroads, Victor C. Romero

Journal Articles

Family unification has long been a significant component of U.S. immigration policy, and the Asian Pacific American (APA) community has long been a champion of laws that strengthen America's commitment to this goal. The recent emergence of same-gender marriages among state and local governments has caused society to consider more closely its definition of the family, challenging the traditional notion that only civil unions between heterosexuals should be celebrated. But because U.S. immigration law does not include a gay or lesbian partner within its statutory definition of spouse, binational same-gender couples may not legally remain in the country together, even …