Immigration Law Commons^™

Voiceless Victims: Sex Slavery And Trafficking Of African Women In Western Europe, Melanie R. Wallace

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

War Of The Words: Aliens, Immigrants, Citizens, And The Language Of Exclusion, D. Carolina Nunez

BYU Law Review

Words communicate more than their ordinary dictionary meaning. Words tell us about individuals' and communities' conscious and subconscious perceptions. The words we use are evidence of how we think, which, in turn, ultimately determines what we do. In this paper, I examine and compare the usage of the words "immigrant," "alien," and "citizen" to make observations on the nature of membership and belonging in the United States. While it is perhaps intuitive that these words carry very different connotations, here I use corpus linguistics to explore those connotations. I rely on the Corpus of Contemporary American English, a database of …

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 …

Defining American: The Dream Act, Immigration Reform And Citizenship, Elizabeth Keyes

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

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 …

Crossing The Final Border: Securing Equal Gender Protection In Immigration Cases, Michelle L. Sudano

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

In The Breach: Citizenship And Its Approximations, Susan C.B. Coutin

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

To analyze the forms of membership that are created in the gap between formal citizenship and social belonging, this paper takes up three examples of citizenship in the breach: (1) the 1980-1992 Salvadoran civil war, in which human rights abuses perpetrated in El Salvador effectively constituted Salvadoran migrants as stateless persons, though technically they held Salvadoran citizenship; (2) informal U.S. membership claims put forward by longtime U.S. residents who were deported to El Salvador; and (3) the legal or documentary problems that emerge when legal permanent residents, some of whom immigrated to the United States from El Salvador during the …

Deferred Action For Childhood Arrivals: Why Granting Driver’S Licenses To Daca Beneficiaries Makes Constitutional And Political Sense, Kari E. D'Ottavio

Maryland Law Review

No abstract provided.

Children Of A Lesser God: Should The Fourteenth Amendment Be Altered Or Repealed To Deny Automatic Citizenship Rights And Privileges To American Born Children Of Illegal Aliens?, Robert J. Shulman

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Reforming The Good Moral Character Requirement For U.S. Citizenship, Kevin Lapp

Indiana Law Journal

This Article explores the impact of the convergence of criminal law and immigration law on the most valued government benefit in the land: citizenship. Specifically, it examines how criminal history influences the opportunity to naturalize through the good moral character requirement for U.S. citizenship.

Since 1790, naturalization applicants have been required to prove their good moral character. Enacted to ensure that applicants were fit for membership and would not be disruptive or destructive to the community, the character requirement also allowed for the reformation and eventual naturalization of those guilty of past misconduct. This Article shows that recent changes in …

"Coming Out Of The Shadows": Dream Act Activism In The Context Of Global Anti-Deportation Activism, Laura Corrunker

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

This Article, based on ethnographic fieldwork with an undocumented, youth-led immigrant rights organization, explores undocumented youth activism in the United States in relation to global anti-deportation movements. The strategies that undocumented youth utilize in their fight for the DREAM Act, a bill that creates provisions for certain undocumented youth to legalize their status, are compared with examples of anti-deportation activism outside the United States. In comparing the DREAM Act movement with anti-deportation movements globally, three points of commonality emerge: (1) leadership of undocumented immigrants; (2) visibility; and (3) measures of "deservingness." This Article argues that comparing examples of immigrant activism …

Citizenship And Marriage In A Globalizing World: Multicultural Families And Monocultural Nationality Laws In Korea And Japan, Erin Aeran Chung, Daisy Kim

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

This Article analyzes how individual and local attempts to address low fertility rates in Korea and Japan have prompted unprecedented reforms in monocultural nationality laws. Korea and Japan confront rapidly declining working-age population projections; yet, they have prohibited the immigration of unskilled workers, until recently in Korea's case, on the claim that their admission would threaten social cohesion. Over the past two decades, both countries have made only incremental reforms to their immigration policies that fall short of alleviating labor shortages and the fiscal burdens of maintaining a large elderly population. Instead, prompted by the growth of so-called multicultural families …

¡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 …

Anastasia Tataryn On The Deportation Regime: Sovereignty, Space, And The Freedom Of Movement. Edited By Nicholas Degenova And Nathalie Peutz. Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2010. 520pp., Anastasia Tataryn

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

The Deportation Regime: Sovereignty, Space, and the Freedom of Movement. Edited by Nicholas DeGenova and Nathalie Peutz. Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2010. 520pp.

A Review Of Beyond Citizenship: American Identity After Globalization, By Peter J. Spiro, Andy Williams

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

No abstract provided.

The Veil That Covered France's Eye: The Right To Freedom Of Religion And Equal Treatment In Immigration And Naturalization Proceedings, Kendal Davis

Nevada Law Journal

In June 2008, France’s highest administrative court upheld a decision to deny citizenship to a Muslim woman because, essentially, she was ‘not French enough.’ This decision incited both praise and outrage in the international human rights arena regarding considerations such as the right to freedom of religion, gender equality, and citizenship.

This Note examines relevant French domestic law and international human rights instruments, and argues that while immigration and naturalization decisions remain an exercise of broad sovereign powers, the emerging human rights norm to be free from discrimination should apply in naturalization proceedings. Furthermore, despite judicial deference and flexibility to …

Formalizing Local Citizenship, Peter J. Spiro

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This essay highlights recent state and local policies relating to immigrants and the respects in which they reflect the community membership of those who do not have national citizenship, and makes a case for bundling measures premised on alien membership through the institutional challenge of citizenship. The article also explores the modalities of a formalized local citizenship.

"Sanctuary Cities" And Local Citizenship, Rose Cuison Villazor

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This article explores the ways in which sanctuary laws illustrate the tensions between national and local citizenship, and specifically examines the ways in which "sanctuary cities" have constructed membership for undocumented immigrants located within their jurisdictions.

A New Look At The Original Meaning Of The Diversity Clause, Mark Moller

William & Mary Law Review

Must a federal court have obtained the power to bind a party before her citizenship becomes relevant to diversity jurisdiction? For a long time conventional wisdom has assumed the answer is “no”: Congress can authorize diversity jurisdiction based on the citizenship of persons who, although currently beyond the court’s power to bind, might later join the suit. Congress, in turn, has acted on this assumption. Key provisions of the most ambitious, and controversial, expansion of diversity jurisdiction in the last decade, the 2005 Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA), hinge diversity jurisdiction on the citizenship of persons conventionally believed beyond 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 …

Toward A World Migratory Regime, Raffaele Marchetti

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Increasing transnationalism challenges the predominant statist treatment of migration and citizenship. Global, indeed cosmopolitan, citizenship offers an alternative to open border policies and global migratory management that focuses on the extent to which political agents are free to move and join different societies. Multilayered citizenship and multileveled political membership encourages a supranational institution dedicated to global deliberation. Such a migratory regulatory system and new admission criteria developed under the universal membership regime ensure the grant of civil, social, and political rights to all migrants.

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 …

Birthright Citizenship, The Fourteenth Amendment, And State Authority, James C. Ho

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Choiceless Choices: Deportation And The Parent-Child Relationship, David B. Thronson

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

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 …

Violation Of Latino Civil Rights Resulting From Ins And Local Police's Use Of Race, Culture And Class Profiling: The Case Of The Chandler Roundup In Arizona, Mary Romero, Marwah Serag

Cleveland State Law Review

The case of the Chandler Roundup provides a unique window into law enforcement practices including the planning, staging and procedures employed in removing undocumented immigrants from a specific urban space. We begin with an overview of the Chandler Roundup and community protests resulting from the five-day immigration raid. This section provides a general outline of the five day raid, including incidents leading up to the joint operation, official investigations conducted and lawsuits filed. The basis of the lawsuits filed was that "individuals were stopped and interrogated by the Chandler Police Department based exclusively on the fact that their physical characteristics …

The Child Citizenship Act: Too Little, Too Late For Tuan Nguyen, Ashley Moore

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

No abstract provided.