Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Emotional Directives Of Legal Status Changes: A Study On Immigration Status Grants, Perla Galindo

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Judicial decision making has provided new frameworks to examine the effects of extra-legal factors. Yet, immigration courts have not received much scholarly attention. This Thesis examines the conditions under which non-citizen applicants likely to receive successful immigration status change. In particular, I analyze the effects of sympathy on the decision making of immigration court judges. Using a convenience sample of the El Paso Area, I evaluate immigrant applications for status changes to identify which factors illicit sympathetic and thus more likely to receive their status change requests. I find that younger applicants and Deferred Action of Childhood Arrivals (DACA) applicants …