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The Preempting Of Equal Protection For Immigrants?, Jenny-Brooke Condon

Washington and Lee Law Review

Recent debates about immigration have focused overwhelmingly on unauthorized migration and the respective roles of the federal and state governments in enforcing immigration law. But that emphasis in law and theory has obscured a critical civil rights question of our time: what measure of equality is due to those with the opportunity to abide by the rules of entry, who are now lawfully present within the United States? Although the United States Supreme Court recognized decades ago that lawfully present migrants are a discrete and insular minority entitled to heightened judicial protection under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth …