Law Commons^™

The Racialization And Exploitation Of Foreign Workers By The Law, Seiko Ishikawa

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Intense demand for cheap labor in the United States has resulted in a widespread effect of employing high skilled immigrants in STEM fields. Examining how companies use high-skilled visa categories to create a flexible cheaper immigrant workforce, this paper demonstrates that skilled immigrants from Asia are being exploited through neutral skills-based criteria that are de facto racially biased. The purpose of this paper is to raise awareness of how, from the perspective of law and society, skills-based immigration works primarily to benefit the technological industry rather than skilled immigrants.

The Fear Factor: Exploring The Impact Of The Vulnerability To Deportation On Immigrants' Lives, Shirley P. Leyro

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This qualitative study explores the impact that the fear of deportation has on the lives of noncitizen immigrants. More broadly, it explores the role that immigration enforcement, specifically deportation, plays in disrupting the process of integration, and the possible implications of this interruption for immigrants and their communities. The study aims to answer: (1) how vulnerability to deportation specifically impacts an immigrant’s life, and (2) how the vulnerability to deportation, and the fear associated with it, impacts an immigrant’s degree of integration. Data were gathered through a combination of six open-ended focus group interviews of 10 persons each, and 33 …

Running For Ayotzinapa: A Father's Marathon To Find His Son, Gustavo Martínez

Capstones

People find a world of reasons to run marathons: to fight cancer, to raise money for a charity, to fulfill a promise. But Antonio Tizapa runs for the reason that has dictated his every waking moment for more than two years: finding his son. The story is presented through a written piece and a video short documentary. It follows Tizapa through events and races in the New York City area.

http://intl-clarke.2016.journalism.cuny.edu/2016/12/30/running-for-ayotzinapa-a-fathers-marathon-to-find-his-missing-son/

Catering Hall Harbors Immigrant Families Through Underground Employment, Kimberly J. Avalos

Capstones

A catering hall in Queens serves as a hub of work for immigrant families and holds a collection of Latin American migration stories and insights into illegal immigration in the United States.

The stories of the catering hall workers—younger and older, longtime residents and new arrivals—reflect the different struggles of immigration across the different generations of immigrants who work there. Their stories also show the common bonds for the different generations and the longstanding dreams of America.

immigrantworkers.kimberlyjavalos.com

Law Without Recognition: The Lack Of Judicial Discretion To Consider Individual Lives And Legal Equities In United States Immigration Law, John Clark Salyer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Law is not separate and apart from society but exists as a unique institution within society both being directed by social change and affecting social change. The history of U.S. immigration law shows that immigrants were welcomed or rejected depending on economic, political, and social factors (such as racial attitudes) and the legal definitions of what sorts of immigration were permissible or excludable differed over time. Since the 1990s, hostile attitudes towards certain immigrants have been represented in laws to a greater and greater extent, most significantly with the 1996 amendments to the Immigration and Nationality Act. As a result …

"These Illegals": Personhood, Profit, And The Political Economy Of Punishment In Federal-Local Immigration Enforcement Partnerships, Daniel L. Stageman

Publications and Research

Contemporary popular discourse linking immigration and immigrants to crime has proved extremely difficult to dislodge, despite clear evidence that immigrant labor provides broad and direct economic benefits to a significant proportion of the US population. The criminalizing discourse directed at immigrants may in part be functional, by leading to restrictionist immigration policies and practices and subjecting immigrants to intensified economic exploitation.

This study examines the economic context in which state and local governments adopt restrictionist immigration policies and practices, and implicates the political economy of punishment (Rusche and Kirchheimer, Punishment and social structure. New York: Columbia University Press, 1939) …

Director's Letter, Sarah Chinn

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

As I write this, the snow is slowly melting: the residue of the blizzard that brought 2010 to a close (and ground the East Coast to an almost complete halt). The stillness of the air outside fosters a kind of meditativeness, although it's hard to get a firm grasp on the events of the past few weeks. After what seemed like an endless parade of false starts, Congress finally overturned Don't Ask, Don't Tell, a policy that came into being at the same time as our newest crop of undergraduates. And at almost the same moment, the DREAM Act, legislation …