Immigration Law Commons^™

Invisible: My Experiences With The Undocumented And Abused, Anna Paden Carson

VA Engage Journal

As a legal advocate at Tapestri, Inc. in Atlanta, Georgia this summer, I saw many of my immigrant and refugee clients consumed by fear, desperation, and insecurity, and I quickly realized that many of the women I helped only contacted Tapestri because they truly had nowhere else to turn. They were victims of domestic violence and usually living in America undocumented, making the seriousness of their situations that much more intense and pressing. These women were trapped and alone, and Tapestri’s role was to help them in any way we could.

This article explores what I learned throughout my eight-week …

Immigration Policy And The Rhetoric Of Reform: “Deport Felons, Not Families,” Moncrieffe V. Holder, Children At The Border, And Idle Promises, Terri R. Day, Leticia M. Diaz

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The New Refugees And The Old Treaty: Persecutors And Persecuted In The Twenty-First Century, Andrew I. Schoenholtz

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

When the fledgling U.N. negotiated a treat to protect refugees after the Second World War, member states focused on Europe as well as on events causing forced migration that occurred prior to 1951. No one imagined that cross-border escape from persecution would become a global phenomenon and remain one more than sixty years later, or that this human rights treaty would be needed in the twenty-first century. In fact, as increased numbers of asylum seekers from developing countries reached the most developed regions of the world during the last thirty years, critics have questioned the merits of this treaty and …

Persecution: How Much Is Enough?, Hillary R. Chambers

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Particularized Social Groups And Categorical Imperatives In Refugee Law: State Failures To Recognize Gender And The Legal Reception Of Gender Persecution Claims In Canada, The United Kingdom, And The United States, Melanie Randall

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Non-Refoulement In A World Of Cooperative Deterrence, Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen, James C. Hathaway

Articles

Developed states have what might charitably be called a schizophrenic attitude towards international refugee law. Determined to remain formally engaged with refugee law and yet unwavering in their commitment to avoid assuming their fair share of practical responsibilities under that regime, wealthier countries have embraced the politics of non-entrée, comprising efforts to keep refugees away from their territories but without formally resiling from treaty obligations. As the early generation of non-entrée practices — visa controls and carrier sanctions, the establishment of “international zones,” and high seas deterrence — have proved increasingly vulnerable to practical and legal challenges, new forms of …

Between Protection And Punishment: The Irregular Arrival Regime In Canadian Refugee Law, Efrat Arbel

All Faculty Publications

This chapter questions the Canadian border’s reconstitution as a site of punishment for refugee claimants by examining the Designated Foreign National (DFN) regime, which permits the Canadian government to discipline foreign nationals for suspected violations of Canadian border laws by subjecting them to penalties that are formally classified as administrative, but amount to de facto punishment. These include mandatory arrest and detention, as well as compulsory reporting and ongoing document inspection. In this chapter, I examine the operation of the DFN regime in relation to other border measures, focusing specifically on the Canada-US Safe Third Country Agreement. I argue that …

Bordering Persecution: Why Asylum Seekers Should Not Be Subject To Expedited Removal, Alvaro Peralta

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Believable Victims: Asylum Credibility And The Struggle For Objectivity, Michael Kagan

Scholarly Works

Asylum adjudication is often the invisible frontline in the struggle by oppressed groups to gain recognition for their plights. Through this process, individual people must tell their stories and try to show that they are genuine victims of persecution rather than simply illegal immigrants attempting to slip through the system. In 2002, because the world had not yet acknowledged the nature of the calamity from which they were escaping, many Darfurian asylum cases would have relied on the ability of each individual to convince government offices to believe their stories. They would have had to be deemed “credible,” or they …

Immigrant Victims, Immigrant Accusers, Michael Kagan

Scholarly Works

The U Visa program provides an immigration status to noncitizen victims of crime, which is essential to prevent unauthorized immigrants from being afraid to seek help from the police, and thus becoming easy prey for criminals. This visa falls into a category of immigration programs that grant benefits on the basis of victim status, rather than on family or employment connections to the United States. But the federal government structured the U Visa program so that in order to be protected as a victim, a person must also become an accuser. The U Visa thus implicates the rights of third …

Closing The Doors To Justice: A Critique Of Pimentel V. Dreyfus And The Application Of Legal Formalism To The Elimination Of Food Assistance Benefits For Legal Immigrants, Hannah Zommick

Seattle University Law Review

This Comment contends that the Ninth Circuit’s opinion in Pimentel v. Dreyfus employed a legal formalist approach and that by applying this framework, the court prevented legal immigrants, who were caught between the strict eligibility restrictions of welfare reform, from asserting their rights through the justice system. The legal formalist approach “treats the law as a set of scientific formulae or principles that are derived from the study of case law. These principles create an internal analytical framework which, when applied to a set of facts, leads the decision maker, through logical deduction, to the correct outcome in a case.” …

Can International Law Provide Extra-Constitutional Protection For Excludable Aliens?, Louis B. Sohn

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

The Changing Tide Of Immigration Law: Equality For All?, Laurie M. Cochran

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Does The European Convention On Human Rights Protect Refugees From "Safe" Countries?, Kathleen M. Whitney

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Voiceless Victims: Sex Slavery And Trafficking Of African Women In Western Europe, Melanie R. Wallace

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Hidden In Plain Sight: Exploring The Vulnerabilities Of Street-Working Boys In Se Asia, Jarrett Davis, Glenn Miles

Annual Interdisciplinary Conference on Human Trafficking: 6th (2014)

The sexual exploitation of men and boys is often little understood and commonly goes ignored. Internationally, it is said that 1 in 6 boys are sexually abused before reaching adulthood and in some nations the exploitation and abuse of boys far outweighs that of girls. Social and cultural norms often assume men and boys to be inherently strong and/or invulnerable to sexual exploitation; however, research in this area continues to show these assumptions to be false. Because of this lack of awareness, the efforts of the organizations and individuals who work to provide for the needs of male victims are …

Analysis Of Human Trafficking Cases In Rhode Island, 2009-2013, Donna M. Hughes, Rachel Dunham, Faith Skodmin, Lucy Tillman, Jessica Wainfor

Annual Interdisciplinary Conference on Human Trafficking: 6th (2014)

This presentation is an analysis of seven state and federal cases of human trafficking, including forced labor and sex trafficking, in Rhode Island from 2009 until 2013. In 2009, Rhode Island passed a comprehensive human trafficking law. Since then there have been six cases of sex trafficking and one case of forced labor. Sources for information on the human trafficking cases were police reports, witness statements, court documents and media reports. This presentation will briefly summarize the cases and discuss the similarities and difference among the cases and discuss of some key findings from these cases, which include:
1) Victims …

Human Trafficking To Northern America: The Balkan Connection, Natalya Timoshkina, Naser Miftari, Antonela Arhin

Annual Interdisciplinary Conference on Human Trafficking: 6th (2014)

This paper draws on the results of a large multi-method study, which examined human trafficking from the former Eastern Bloc to Northern America (Canada and the United States). The study was conducted in 2011-2013, and funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). The analysis is grounded in the findings from 9 countries of the Balkan region included in the study: Albania, Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia. The following data sources were used: (a) national and international reports, media and academic articles, and various documents (in English and official languages …

Human Trafficking, Education And Migration At Ngos In Cambodia And Thailand, Robert Spires, Xinyi Duan

Annual Interdisciplinary Conference on Human Trafficking: 6th (2014)

This presentation is based on in-progress collaborative research between researcher Dr. Bob Spires and Hong Kong-based NGO Liberty Asia. The research involves interviews and observations conducted at multiple NGOs in Cambodia and Thailand working to address human trafficking and incorporating educational components into their programs. The study uses comparative lenses to examine issues of education and migration in both the Cambodian and Thai context for human trafficking survivors and at-risk populations. The study is interdisciplinary, drawing on the work on human trafficking in several social science fields. The framework for the research is based on Frank Laczko and Elzbieta Gozdziak’s …

Bra’S For A Cause: A Service Learning Project In A Freshman Level Human Trafficking Course, Beth A. Wiersma

Annual Interdisciplinary Conference on Human Trafficking: 6th (2014)

Women and Children for Sale: The Global Problem of Human Trafficking is a General Studies Portal course for college freshman at a Midwestern university. The students in the course were surveyed the first day of class about why they chose the course, what they hoped to get out of the course, what they believed to be true about human trafficking, and how they learned about human trafficking. During the semester the students planned and carried out a service learning project “Bras for a Cause”. This project involved educating others about human trafficking and collecting bras. The bras are sent overseas …

The Problem Of State Intervention In Post-Abolition Slavery: A Critique Of Consensus, Anthony Talbott, David Watkins

Annual Interdisciplinary Conference on Human Trafficking: 6th (2014)

Slavery is now illegal by all states and under international law. Contrary to the hopes of abolitionists, this state of affairs has transformed rather than eradicated slavery as an institution. Furthermore, responses by states to post-abolition forms of slavery have often been less than ideal. This paper begins by comparing two state responses to slavery in the early 20th century: the federal peonage trials in Montgomery, Alabama from 1903-1905, and the federal response to an alleged epidemic of “white slavery” from 1909-1910, culminating in the passage of the White Slave-Traffic Act. Taken together, these responses engender pessimism about the state …

Invisible No More: Domestic Workers Organizing In Massachusetts And Beyond, Natalicia Tracy, Tim Sieber, Susan Moir Scd

Labor Studies Faculty Publication Series

Domestic workers across the country are making it clear that, even in a difficult political environment, it is possible to make gains for low-wage workers. For the first time in many, many decades, domestic workers are finding ways to win. They are creat
ing policy change that will improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of workers in tangible and substantial ways. The 2014 Massachusetts Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights is the most expansive codification of rights for this long-overlooked part of the labor force ever to be enacted. In one sense, there is nothing new about domestic workers organizing …

Immigrant Integration And Social Solidarity In A Time Of Crisis: Europe And The United States In A Postwelfare State, David Abraham, David Abraham

Articles

A cloud has settled over the immigration regimes of the European welfare states and the United States. Confidence has waned in the viability and value of integrating newcomers into a system of social solidarity. The weakening of civic nationalism and secular constitutional patriotism has unsettled national identities and undermined efforts to facilitate the inclusion of immigrants, especially Muslims. More forceful integration policies might better sustain the welfare state, but individual liberties and group recognition make this more difficult. Ironically, immigrants may now fare better in more unjust neoliberal societies such as the United States than in the advanced welfare states. …

The Little India Riot: Domestic And International Law Perspectives, Siyuan Chen

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

A riot involving hundreds of foreign labourers broke out in Little India, Singapore, on 8 December 2013. Only the second riot to occur in more than 40 years in fairly tranquil Singapore, the damage was extensive as rioters destroyed police and emergency vehicles and even injured dozens of police and civil defence personnel. The authorities only needed a few days to complete the investigations and shortly after, some of the alleged rioters were arrested and charged, while some of them were repatriated. The swiftness of the entire process prompted harsh criticism from international and local human rights groups, who claimed …

States And Status: A Study Of Geographical Disparities For Immigrant Youth, Laila Hlass

Faculty Scholarship

This article looks at the legal and practical challenges arising out of a particular immigration protection for abandoned, abused, and neglected child migrants called “Special Immigrant Juvenile Status” (SIJS). This benefit, which is a pathway to legal permanent residence and citizenship, is the only area within federal immigration law that requires a state court to take action in order for immigration authorities to consider an individual’s eligibility for relief. Using an original data set of roughly 12,000 SIJS applications from the Department of Homeland Security in June 2013, this article describes trends over time and by state regarding the number …

Big Success Or "Big Brother?": Great Britain's National Identification Scheme Before The European Court Of Human Rights, Jennifer Morris

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

A Break With The Past Or Justice In Pieces: Divergent Paths On The Question Of Amnesty In Argentina And Colombia, Douglas Jacobson

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Official, National, Common Or Unifying: Do Words Giving Legal Status To Language Diminish Linguistic Human Rights?, Paul C. Hale

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

A Comparative Analysis Of Unconscious And Institutional Discrimination In The United States And Britain, Leland Ware

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Getting Kids Out Of Harm's Way: The United States' Obligation To Operationalize The Best Interest Of The Child Principle For Unaccompanied Minors, Erin B. Corcoran

Law Faculty Scholarship

The government estimates by the end of the fiscal year over 90,000 children will enter the United States. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees 58% of these children were forcibly displaced and are potentially in need of international protection. However, in U.S. immigration law unaccompanied children are often seen as illegal migrants and law enforcement prioritizes their “alien” status over their status as children. As the crisis escalates, many of these children are being housed at emergency shelters in icebox-cold cells – nicknamed hierleras, Spanish for freezers, with no access to food or medical care, while DHS …