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Governing By Guidance: Civil Rights Agencies And The Emergence Of Language Rights, Ming Hsu Chen
Governing By Guidance: Civil Rights Agencies And The Emergence Of Language Rights, Ming Hsu Chen
Publications
On the fiftieth anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, this Article asks how federal civil rights laws evolved to incorporate the needs of non-English speakers following landmark immigration reform (the 1965 Hart-Cellar Act) that led to unprecedented migration from Asia and Latin America. Based on a comparative study of the emergence of language rights in schools and workplaces from 1965 to 1980, the Article demonstrates that regulatory agencies used nonbinding guidances to interpret the undefined statutory term "national origin discrimination" during their implementation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Their efforts facilitated the creation of language rights, …
Where You Stand Depends On Where You Sit: Bureaucratic Politics In Federal Workplace Agencies Serving Undocumented Workers, Ming H. Chen
Where You Stand Depends On Where You Sit: Bureaucratic Politics In Federal Workplace Agencies Serving Undocumented Workers, Ming H. Chen
Publications
This Article integrates social science theory about immigrant incorporation and administrative agencies with empirical data about immigrant-serving federal workplace agencies to illuminate the role of bureaucracies in the construction of rights. More specifically, it contends that immigrants' rights can be protected when workplace agencies incorporate immigrants into labor law enforcement in accordance with the agencies' professional ethos and organizational mandates. Building on Miles' Law that "where you stand depends on where you sit," this Article argues that agencies exercise discretion in the face of contested law and in contravention to a political climate hostile to undocumented immigrants for the purpose …