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Penn State Law

Immigrant rights

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All The Presidents' Dreamers: Immigration Reform That Biden And Trump Can Agree On (And Why That Reform May Be Elusive), Victor C. Romero Jan 2022

All The Presidents' Dreamers: Immigration Reform That Biden And Trump Can Agree On (And Why That Reform May Be Elusive), Victor C. Romero

Journal Articles

While a sizeable gulf exists between the Trump and Biden administrations’ approaches to immigration, there is one policy area where these presidents would see eye-to-eye: a legal pathway for “Dreamers,” longtime undocumented residents who initially came to the U.S. as children. Notwithstanding this exceptional example of bipartisanship, how the nation now moves forward to create such a pathway is a conundrum. The political divide that has stalled a two-decades-long search for a congressional solution has its roots in America’s longstanding ambivalence about whether and how to provide basic opportunities to the least of its denizens. This Essay traces the current …


U.S. Immigration Policy: Contract Or Human Rights Law?, Victor C. Romero Jan 2008

U.S. Immigration Policy: Contract Or Human Rights Law?, Victor C. Romero

Journal Articles

The current immigration debate often reflects a tension between affirming the individual rights of migrants against the power of a nation to control its borders. An examination of U.S. Supreme Court precedent reveals that, from our earliest immigration history to the present time, our immigration policy has functioned more like contract law than human rights law, with the Court deferring to the power of Congress to define the terms of that contract at the expense of the immigrant's freedom.