Law Commons^™

Speculative Immigration Policy, Matthew Boaz

Scholarly Articles

This Article considers how speculative fiction was wielded by the Trump administration to implement destructive U.S. immigration policy. It analyzes the thematic elements from a particular apocalyptic novel, traces those themes through actual policy implemented by the president, and considers the harm effected by such policies. This Article proposes that the harmful outcomes are not due to the use of speculative fiction, but rather the failure to consider the speculative voices of those who have been historically marginalized within the United States. This Article argues that alternative speculative visions could serve as a platform for radical imagination about future U.S. …

Refugees Under Duress: International Law And The Serious Nonpolitical Crime Bar, David Baluarte

Scholarly Articles

Congress intended that the serious nonpolitical crime bar under United States asylum law have the same meaning and scope as the 1F(b) Refugee Convention exclusion clause. The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that it was the intent of Congress to not only replicate the language of the provisions of the Refugee Convention in United States law, but to incorporate the full extent of the meaning of such language and bring the United States into compliance with its treaty obligations. Accordingly, when Congress reproduced exactly the language of the Article 1F(b) exclusion clause in the INA, it intended for that provision …

A New Narrative Of Statelessness, David Baluarte

Scholarly Articles

Statelessness: A Modern History by Dr. Mira Siegelberg offers a meticulous reconstruction of the varied contributions of artists, scholars, and policy makers to the understanding of statelessness in the years between the First and Second World Wars. Siegelberg situates statelessness in some of the most prominent debates about international law and relations in modern history, most notably whether the individual is an appropriate subject of international law and whether a political order beyond the confines of the nation-state is desirable.

A Civil Shame: The Failure To Protect Due Process In Discretionary Immigration Bond Hearings, Stacy Brustin

Scholarly Articles

Over the last four years, the US Supreme Court has granted certiorari in four immigration bond review cases. The sheer number of cases the Court has recently considered underscores the significance of this area of immigration law. Each case centers on whether the Immigration and Nationality Act or the Constitution mandates a bond review hearing after prolonged detention. Yet these cases leave unresolved the issue of whether initial bond hearings themselves meet the due process threshold required of civil confinement proceedings. Federal circuit and district courts have addressed aspects of this question and found procedural due process violations. However, most …

Practical Abolition: Universal Representation As An Alternative To Immigration Detention, Matthew Boaz

Scholarly Articles

A federally funded universal representation program can serve as a practical first step toward the abolition of immigration detention and the other harsh enforcement mechanisms that are utilized today. While abolition is typically an ideology espoused by a small subsection of the general population, its purpose can be achieved through a less partisan and broader reaching ideal -- fiscal efficiency and responsibility. By demonstrating that the provision of counsel and other wrap around services is significantly less costly than immigration detention, while also showing that providing counsel and wrap around services is an extremely effective way to ensure compliance, this …

Protecting Stateless Refugees In The United States, David Baluarte

Scholarly Articles

This article proposes a more complete and nuanced consideration of statelessness in asylum adjudication procedures in the United States and the possibility of reopening previously denied asylum claims for this purpose. The article proceeds in four parts, beginning with a discussion of statelessness in the United States. Next, the article describes the international protection frameworks for both refugees and stateless persons and identifies important points of intersection between these frameworks. Then the article argues that discriminatory denationalization that renders a person stateless triggers refugee protection, thereby making victims of such deprivation eligible for asylum in the United States. The article …

Family In The Balance: Barton V. Barr And The Systematic Violation Of The Right To Family Life In U.S. Immigration Enforcement, David Baluarte

Scholarly Articles

The United States systematically violates the international human right to family life in its system of removal of noncitizens. Cancellation of removal provides a means for noncitizens to challenge their removal based on family ties in the United States, but Congress has placed draconian limits on the discretion of immigration courts to cancel removal where noncitizens have committed certain crimes. The recently issued U.S. Supreme Court decision in Barton v. Barr illustrates the troubling trend of affording less discretion for immigration courts to balance family life in removal decisions that involve underlying criminal conduct. At issue was the “stop-time rule” …

The Right To Migrate: A Human Rights Response To Immigration Restrictionism In Argentina, David C. Baluarte

Scholarly Articles

Within days of President Donald Trump’s 2017 Executive Orders on border security and immigration enforcement, President Mauricio Macri of Argentina issued a Decree to address what he declared was an urgent problem of immigrant criminality. The timing of the two Presidents’ actions triggered concerns that U.S.-style restrictionist immigration regulation was spreading to South America, a continent that has taken progressive steps towards recognizing the human rights of migrants in recent years. Until Macri’s 2017 Decree, Argentina was considered a leader in this regard, with its 2004 immigration law that boldly codified a “right to migrate” and included robust substantive and …

The Arrival Of "Statelessness Studies"?, David C. Baluarte

Scholarly Articles

In this symposium contribution, the author provides a view that the study of statelessness has emerged as a multi-disciplinary field and urge that we institutionalize it as such. Statelessness is fundamentally a legal concept. The definition of ‘stateless person’ specifically refers to the operation of law, and the protections envisioned by both the 1954 and 1961 Conventions afforded to stateless persons are legal in nature. At the same time, formal legal reasoning has proven inadequate to fully understand statelessness and protect stateless persons. Moreover, factual statelessness enjoys few legal protections, but is essential to a more robust understanding of nationality …

The "Irish Born" One American Citizenship Amendment, Kevin C. Walsh

Scholarly Articles

Our Constitution has a deferred maintenance problem because we have fallen out of the habit of tending to its upkeep ourselves. The silver lining is a double benefit from any constitutional maintenance projects that we undertake now. These projects are good not only for what they do to our Constitution, but also for making us exercise self-government muscles that have atrophied from civic sloth.

Fortunately, the time has never been better to repeal one of our Constitution’s most pointlessly exclusionary provisions. The President of the United States is married to a naturalized citizen. And nobody can legitimately question the patriotism …

Crimmigration-Counterterrorism, Margaret Hu

Scholarly Articles

The discriminatory effects that may stem from biometric ID cybersurveillance and other algorithmically driven screening technologies can be better understood through the analytical prism of “crimmigration-counterterrorism”: the conflation of crime, immigration, and counterterrorism policy. The historical genesis for this phenomenon can be traced back to multiple migration law developments, including the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. To implement stricter immigration controls at the border and interior, both the federal and state governments developed immigration enforcement schemes that depended upon both biometric identification documents and immigration screening protocols. This Article uses contemporary attempts to implement an expanded regime of “extreme vetting” …

The Shibboleth Of Discretion: The Discretion, Identity, And Persecution Paradigm In American And Australian Lgbt Asylum Claims, Heather Kolinsky

Scholarly Articles

While the High Court in Australia has made it clear that discretion is not to be considered when determining if an applicant may avoid persecution upon returning home, there are concerns that discretion persists in the decision-making process with respect to discrediting identity claims. In addition, the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom handed down a retooled formulation of discretion, which once again created subcategories of applicants and suggested discretion is an appropriate consideration so long as it is not exercised out of a fear of persecution. This discussion will focus on a comparison of the evolution of LGBT asylum …

American Presidentialism In The Light Of Barack Obama’S Immigration Reform, Rett R. Ludwikowski, Anna Ludwikowski

Scholarly Articles

The main purpose of this article is to bring the reader into an atmosphere of intensity created by the political disputes about the need of immigration reform in the United States. It is unquestionable that problems of the immigrants, who for decades were crossing illegally American borders, contribute to internal political turbulence in this country. This article proceeds on the assumption, that the immigration related problems created a social melting pot which became one of the most serious challenges for the American policymakers. The confrontation of the President with Congress was inevitable. On the one hand, Obama’s administration started to …

Life After Limbo: Stateless Persons In The United States And The Role Of International Protection In Achieving A Legal Solution, David C. Baluarte

Scholarly Articles

Stateless persons are not recognized as citizens by any country, and as such, their enjoyment of fundamental human rights depends on the good faith of host countries, and their basic human security and dignity are often subject to the whims of immigration authorities. Despite this intense level of vulnerability, U.S. immigration law does not explicitly recognize statelessness, nor does it provide for humanitarian protection to relieve stateless persons of their suffering. Rather, stateless persons are treated like any other unauthorized migrants in the United States; when they are ordered removed, they are mandatorily detained while immigration officials undertake efforts to …

A Fine Line, Redefined: Moving Toward More Equitable Asylum Policies, Heather M. Kolinsky

Scholarly Articles

This article is an exploration of the inequities that still remain in asylum claims, with particular reference to the experience of Chinese citizens seeking asylum and Cuban refugees.

Congressional Devolution Of Immigration Policymaking: A Separation Of Powers Critique, Roger C. Hartley

Scholarly Articles

For roughly a decade, federal legislation has devolved to the states some of Congress's authority to adopt immigration policies that discriminate against permanent resident aliens. Equal protection challenges to discriminatory state policies so authorized by Congress raise the knotty issue of the appropriate scope of judicial review. Courts remain divided. The source of the difficulty is that the equal protection "congruence principle" is not applicable to alienage discrimination. Unlike equal protection cases throughout most of constitutional law, the judiciary deploys different standards of judicial review in alienage discrimination cases depending on whether the discrimination arises under federal or state law. …

Border Crossings: Understanding The Civil, Criminal, And Immigration Implications For Battered Immigrants (And Others) Fleeing Across State Lines With Their Children, Catherine F. Klein, Leslye E. Orloff, Hema Sarangapani

Scholarly Articles

This article provides an overview of the impact of state criminal parental kidnapping or custodial interference statutes on immigrant survivors of domestic violence who already have left or wish to leave their state with their children. Specifically, it discusses the jurisdictional laws that relate to interstate custody, criminal implications of intrastate versus interstate custodial interference, the varying applicability of custodial interference statutes for parents who do and do not have court-ordered custody of their children, statutory exceptions or defenses available to survivors of domestic violence facing prosecution on charges of criminal parental kidnapping, and immigration consequences related to a conviction …

How Much Do Western Democracies Value Famiily And Marriage? : Immigration Law's Conflicted Answers, Nora V. Demleitner

Scholarly Articles

None available.

"Collateral Damage": No Re-Entry For Drug Offenders, Nora V. Demleitner

Scholarly Articles

None available.

Immigration Threats And Rewards: Effective Law Enforcement Tools In The "War" On Terrorism?, Nora V. Demleitner

Scholarly Articles

None available.

Case Comment: Ins V. St. Cyr, Kevin C. Walsh

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

Preventing Internal Exile: The Need For Restrictions On Collateral Sentencing Consequences, Nora V. Demleitner

Scholarly Articles

None available.

The Fallacy Of Social "Citizenship" Or The Threat Of Exclusion, Nora V. Demleitner

Scholarly Articles

None available.

With No Place To Turn: Improving Legal Advocacy For Battered Immigrant Women, Leslye E. Orloff, Deeana Jang, Catherine F. Klein

Scholarly Articles

This article explains some of the unique problems faced by battered immigrant women and offers creative solutions for family lawyers and battered women advocates who have immigrant or refugee clientele. Because battered immigrant women who seek to flee violence need assistance with both family law and immigration law matters, we will discuss both areas and highlight their interrelationship.

Images Of Women In U.S. Immigration Policy: The Paradox Of Domestic Violence, Stacy Brustin

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

Expanding Our Vision Of Legal Services Representation:The Hermanas Unidas Project, Stacy Brustin

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

Can Congress Denationalize? The Supreme Court's View In Kennedy V. Mendoza-Martinez, Ralph J. Rohner, Jean J. Provost Jr.

Scholarly Articles

In an age when perhaps the foremost concern of the legal profession is the status and protection of the rights of individuals, the few decided cases on the right to citizenship-the most basic of all rights, the "right to have rights"- are of special significance. Since 1950, but prior to this Term, only two Supreme Court cases directly confronted the constitutional questions inherent in an assertion by Congress of the right to separate a person from his nationality. These cases, decided on the same day in 1957, were scarcely reconcilable with each other; now, in 1963, the Supreme Court has …