Immigration Law Commons^™

Ownership Without Citizenship: The Creation Of Noncitizen Property Rights, Allison Brownell Tirres

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

At the nation’s founding, the common law of property defined ownership as an incident of citizenship. Noncitizens were unable lawfully to hold, devise, or inherit property. This doctrine eroded during the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but few scholars have examined its demise or the concommittant rise of property rights for foreigners. This Article is the first sustained treatment of the creation of property rights for noncitizens in American law. It uncovers two key sources for the rights that emerged during the nineteenth century: federal territorial law, which allowed for alien property ownership and alien suffrage, and state …

Easing The Guidance Document Dilemma Agency By Agency: Immigration Law And Not Really Binding Rules, Jill E. Family

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Immigration law relies on rules that bind effectively, but not legally, to adjudicate millions of applications for immigration benefits every year. This Article provides a blueprint for immigration law to improve its use of these practically binding rules, often called guidance documents. The agency that adjudicates immigration benefit applications, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), should develop and adopt its own Good Guidance Practices to govern how it uses guidance documents. This Article recommends a mechanism for reform, the Good Guidance Practices, and tackles many complex issues that USCIS will need to address in creating its practices. The recommended …

¡Silencio! Undocumented Immigrant Witnesses And The Right To Silence, Violeta R. Chapin

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

At a time referred to as "an unprecedented era of immigration enforcement," undocumented immigrants who have the misfortune to witness a crime in this country face a terrible decision. Calling the police to report that crime will likely lead to questions that reveal a witness's inmigration status, resulting in detention and deportation for the undocumented immigrant witness. Programs like Secure Communities and 287(g) partnerships evidence an increase in local immigration enforcement, and this Article argues that undocumented witnesses' only logical response to these programs is silence. Silence, in the form of a complete refusal to call the police to report …

The Citizenship Shibboleth: Is The American Dream Everyone Else's Nightmare?, Emily Marr

Michigan Law Review

The American Dream is a trope with global reach. Although the "city upon a hill" may have lost some of its luster in recent years, the idea that America is a country where citizens can rise above "the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position" largely continues to resonate. Professor Ayelet Shachar's provocative new book, however, suggests otherwise. In The Birthright Lottery, Shachar condemns birthright citizenship laws as a feudal anachronism analogous to an inherited-property regime. For her, birthright citizenship in a prosperous nation confers a morally arbitrary windfall that determines life opportunities (pp. 4-7). Shachar further argues that in a …

The End Of Citizenship?, Jonathan Weinberg

Michigan Law Review

Part I of this Review challenges his view that the value of American citizenship is in decline. Part II critiques his discussion of the lines drawn by citizenship law-who is or can become a citizen-and what those lines mean for the nature of citizenship in the modem age. This Part urges that the lack of fit between our citizenship rules and the goal of organic community is hardly new; it was a feature of our citizenship law long before current globalization trends. Part III discusses the meaning of citizenship, and the basis for citizenship and immigration exclusions, in the context …

Transnational Families In Crisis: An Analysis Of The Domestic Violence Rule In E.U. Free Movement Law, Adam Weiss

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Essay analyzes a concrete rule of European law that has emerged to address the problem of domestic violence within certain transnational families. The domestic violence rule is found in Article 13 of the European Community Free Movement Directive (the Directive), legislation that governs the rights of E.U. citizens and their family members to enter and reside in other E.U. Member States.6 The rule affects the rights of a discrete group: non-E.U. ("third-country national") family members of migrant E.U. citizens, that is, E.U. citizens who have moved to another E.U. Member State (the "host State") to exercise residence rights there. …

The Shifting Border Of Immigration Regulation, Ayelet Shachar

Michigan Journal of International Law

While American immigration law is still largely informed by the doctrine of plenary power, which holds that "[a]dmission to the United States is a privilege granted by the sovereign" (as the Supreme Court asserted in Knauff more than fifty years ago), what has dramatically changed in recent years is the location of "our gates," which no longer stand at the country's territorial edges. Instead, the border itself has become a moving barrier, a legal construct that is not tightly fixed to territorial benchmarks. This shifting border of immigration regulation, as we might call it, is selectively utilized by national …

The Citizenship Paradox In A Transnational Age, Cristina M. Rodríguez

Michigan Law Review

Through Americans in Waiting, Hiroshi Motomura tells us three different stories about how U.S. law and policy, over time, have framed the relationship between immigrants and the American body politic. He captures the complexity, historical contingency, and democratic urgency of that relationship by canvassing the immigration law canon and teasing from it the three frameworks that have structured immigrants' social status, their interactions with the state, and the processes of immigrant integration and naturalization. In so doing, he illuminates how popular mythologies about the assimilative capacity of the American melting pot obscure myriad political and social conflicts over how …

Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens And Alien Citizens, Leti Volpp

Michigan Law Review

America is a nation of immigrants, according to our national narrative. This is the America with its gates open to the world, as well as the America of the melting pot. Underpinning this national narrative is a very particular story of immigration that foregrounds the inclusion of immigrants, rather than their exclusion. Highlighted in this story is the period before 1924, of relatively unfettered European immigration, and the period after 1965, post the lifting of national origins quotas. Also underlying this national narrative is a particular story about what happens once immigrants enter. In this story the immigrant traverses smoothly …

The Alienation Of Fathers, Linda Kelly

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

By evaluating immigration and custody law from a father's perspective and thereby uncovering and addressing the biases held against men, both fathers and mothers will achieve greater recognition. Beyond revealing gender discrimination, such a study also demonstrates the disparate views still harbored toward unmarried parents. Examining custody and immigration law with an emphasis on these issues will hopefully foster a dialogue that brings the law in line with the reality of today's families and promotes each family member's individual potential.

Between National And Post-National: Membership In The United States, T. Alexander Aleinikoff

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This essay argues that the concept of post-nationalism does not precisely explain the American concept of citizenship. This is due to the strict construction of the nation state in American constitutional theory, the ineffective role of international human rights norms in American jurisprudence, and the extension of protection to non-citizens based on territorialist rationales. For these reasons, the author suggests that denizenship is a more appropriate way of viewing the American citizenship model, and is one that explains how notions of personal identity can be transnational while still justifiable within traditional nation-state constructs.

To Yick Wo, Thanks For Nothing!: Citizenship For Filipino Veterans, Kevin Pimentel

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

In this Note, the Author uses science fiction novelist Robert Heinlein's model of citizenship as an analytical framework for examining the historical treatment of Filipino veterans of World War II. The Author Heinlein's conception of citizenship in Starship Troopers was one in which a person can acquire citizenship only through a term of service in the state's armed forces. Similarly, the United States provided immediate eligibility for citizenship to World War II era foreign veterans, but it effectively excluded Filipino veterans from this benefit. The Author examines how the plenary power doctrine in immigration law, has quashed legal challenges by …

Race Discourse And Proposition 187, John Sw Park

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Proposition 187 inspired a visceral public discourse. Proponents and opponents of the measure discussed several themes important to contemporary political theory, particularly themes related to sovereignty and civil rights. This Note shows how participants in that debate-including people of color-spoke of "rights" in a way that denied the possibility for undocumented aliens to have rights. When citizens spoke, they did so in a way that implicitly linked rights to citizenship; in other words, they assumed that without citizenship, persons were not entitled to rights or rights-based claims. Ironically, the debate about Proposition 187 pointed to the achievements of a "civil …

Theories Of Loss Of Citizenship, T. Alexander Aleinikoff

Michigan Law Review

The underlying issue that I address in this essay is whether the Constitution ought to be read to prohibit denationalization of U.S. citizens. (I will use the term "denationalization" to refer to the government's act of terminating citizenship. "Expatriation" will be used to refer to an individual's voluntary relinquishment of citizenship.) In examining this question, I will explore citizenship from four different perspectives - rights, consent, contract, and community - in search of a theoretical framework for the Supreme Court's doctrine in the denationalization cases.

The Second Generation Of Immigrants, Henry G. Schermers

Michigan Law Review

During the 1960s, many workers from the Mediterranean region migrated to more northerly regions of Europe. Often they brought their wives, and children were born in the host country. The situation of these children, the "second generation" of immigrants, deserves our attention.

In many respects the offspring who make up this second generation of immigrants are closer to their country of residence than to the country of their parents. Yet the desirability of integrating these young people into the country where they were born and live may be questioned. If they are able to speak their parents' language, they could …

The Schneiderman Case: An Inside View Of The Roosevelt Court, Jeffrey F. Liss

Michigan Law Review

Only rarely in the study of Supreme Court history do events, personalities, records, and historical sources converge to afford an intimate view of that institution. Schneiderman v. United States, in its own right an important decision in the field of denaturalization law, provides such an opportunity. The manuscript collections of the major adversaries on the Court are well-preserved, and a surviving major figure from among the parties to ·the litigation has provided personal insight into the intricacies of the case.

Aliens - Denaturalization - Requirement That The Governmnet Be Deceived In Naturalization Proceeding As Basis For Denaturalization, Charles B. Renfrew S.Ed.

Michigan Law Review

Defendant Umberto Anastasio, arrived in this country as a deserting seaman in 1917. A certificate of registry was granted in 1931 upon the fraudulent allegation in his application and testimony before an immigration inspector that he had never been arrested. After filing other papers necessary for naturalization, defendant was issued a certificate of arrival in 1933 based on the certificate of registry. Before obtaining citizenship, however, defendant executed an affidavit which revealed his criminal record and filed a consent of dismissal of his petition for naturalization in 1935. In 1942, while in the United States Army, defendant applied for naturalization …

Aliens - Naturalization - Netural Aliens Who Sought Relief From Military Service Barred From Becoming United States Citizens, John Houck S.Ed.

Michigan Law Review

During World War II, an alien who was a citizen or a subject of a neutral country was allowed to escape service in the armed forces of the United States by signing Selective Service Form DSS 301. A release thus obtained carried with it a disability ever to become a citizen of the United States. A substantial number of neutral aliens availed themselves of this relief from military service. Today, the courts are faced with the problem of whether signing Form 301 shall in every case prevent the alien from becoming a citizen. It is the purpose of this comment …

Constitutional Law-Equal Protection-Validity Of State Restraints On Alien Ownership Of Land, Alfred W. Blumrosen S.Ed.

Michigan Law Review

In the short period of five years, action on three governmental fronts has solved one problem of state legislation which seemed to violate a basic premise of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Congress, the Supreme Court and the courts of last resort of two states have acted to destroy the effectiveness of state laws which prohibited ownership of land by aliens ineligible for citizenship. These laws incorporated whatever classification Congress established for naturalization purposes into state statutes determining rights to own land. This process has resulted in recent years in discrimination against Orientals, particularly Japanese. The purpose …