Immigration Law Commons^™

Canons, The Plenary Power Doctrine And Immigration Law, Brian G. Slocum

ExpressO

There is a fundamental dichotomy in immigration law. On one hand, courts have consistently maintained that Congress has “plenary power” over immigration and reject most constitutional challenges on that basis. On the other hand, courts frequently use canons of statutory construction in an aggressive fashion to help interpret immigration statutes in favor of aliens. Immigration scholars have almost exclusively focused on the plenary power doctrine. They have either ignored the important role that canons have played in immigration law or have viewed canons as serving only a temporary and marginally legitimate role as substitutes for the lack of constitutional rights …

'Tis A Gift To Be Simple: A Model Reform Of The Federal Sentencing Guidelines, Frank O. Bowman Iii

Faculty Publications

This essay introducing the June 2006 edition of the Federal Sentencing Reporter (Vol. 18, No. 5) describes two important contributions to the movement for real reform of the federal sentencing system. First, Professor Bowman summarizes the recommendations of the Constitution Project Sentencing Initiative (CPSI) report on federal sentencing. The CPSI report, reproduced in this Issue, cautions against any over-hasty legislative response to the Supreme Court's decision in United States v. Booker, suggests some near-term improvements to the existing federal sentencing system, and then sets out a framework for a reformed and markedly simplified federal sentencing regime. Second, Professor Bowman describes …

U.S./Mexico Border And Illegal Immigration: Policy Analysis, Stephanie Smith

Undergraduate University Honors Capstones

Using a model from the field of Social Work, “Social Welfare Policy Analysis,” to analyze the U.S. immigration, the following thesis has been composed in three sections. The first describes previous policies implemented prior to the current administration’s policy, the second section explains the social and economic (together) impacts of current policy, and the last section discusses politics regarding the current policy and proposals for future policies regarding illegal immigration. [copied from part of the introduction]

The Day Laborer Debate: Small Town, U.S.A. Takes On Federal Immigration Law Regarding Undocumented Workers, Margaret B. Hobbins

ExpressO

Herndon, Virginia is the latest example of small town immigration issues exploding into the national debate on illegal immigration. This four-square mile town, population 22,000, was propelled into the national spotlight after a dramatic public reaction to Mayor Michael O’Reilly’s proposal to construct a hiring site for day laborers. Three months before the center even opened its doors, Herndon and Fairfax County faced a law suit challenging the legality of funding a day labor center that would inevitably extend its services to undocumented immigrants.

Small towns, adjusting to significant increases in the immigrant worker population, have become a new battlefield …

Any Place For Ethnicity? The Liberal State And Immigration, David Abraham

ExpressO

When it comes to immigration, almost all liberal states are faced with the contradiction between their universalist principles and the real affinities they feel for ethnic kinsmen. This review essay (4000 words) addresses the different ways a number of liberal democracies have handled this dilemma.

Children And Immigration: International, Local, And Social Responsibilities, Berta E. Hernández-Truyol, Justin Luna

UF Law Faculty Publications

This essay focuses on the human rights of immigrant children, regardless of the legality of their presence within U.S. borders, especially with respect to health, education, and welfare. In that context, the work explores, as the title suggests, the international, local, and social/cultural normative standards that structure the responsibilities—independently and collectively, that proverbial village—with respect to children's well-being. We develop these ideas in three parts. First, we address the foundations of the human rights idea and specifically enumerate the particular normative notions, including international treaties that govern children's lives. Next, we discuss immigration in the United States, with particular attention …

Civil Rights, Latinos, And Immigration : Cybercascades And Other Distortions In The Immigration Reform Debate, Enid Trucios-Haynes

Brandeis School of Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Founded Suspicion: The Ninth Circuit's Response To Almeida Sanchez, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Considering the difficulty of interdicting smugglers and aliens at the Mexican border, the Ninth Circuit's ready acceptance of founded suspicion to justify searches near the border is not surprising. The United States Supreme Court, however, has consistently held that the mere presence of an important governmental interest does not justify vitiating Fourth Amendment protections. The Fourth Amendment requires courts to scrutinize closely the interests of the individual prior to concluding that the interests of the government, however exigent and compelling, are paramount. This comment, after analyzing the conceptual underpinnings of automobile seizure law and "stop and frisk"--the possible grounds supporting …

No More Deaths: On Conscience, Civil Disobedience, And A New Role For Truth Commissions, Marie Failinger

Faculty Scholarship

This article uses as its focal point the emerging civil disobedience movement in southwestern United States, aimed at providing humanitarian assistance to undocumented workers crossing the U.S. border, and the government's prosecution response to that movement. It argues that the courts that have considered such civil disobedience in previous cases, such as the 1980s Sanctuary movement, have a limited understanding of the right of conscience, and utilizes the insights of Reformation theology on the nature of the conscience to argue that it is necessary for the United States to respect the public role of conscience of civil disobedients in mass …

Designating The Dangerous: From Blacklists To Watch Lists, Daniel J. Steinbock

Seattle University Law Review

This Article aims to remedy that gap with respect to one important component of the country's current anti-terrorism strategy watch lists and to suggest some ways to avoid the worst excesses of the 1950s. A comparison of the two periods also serves to shed some light on the question of whether our institutions have learned from the experiences of the past in striking the balance between security and civil liberties. Part II of this Article gives a brief and broad-brush description of the McCarthy era blacklists and loyalty-security programs. Part III then describes the operation, bases for inclusion, and uses …

The Immigrant Workers Project Of The Afl-Cio, Rosanna M. Kreychman, Heather H. Volik

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Liability For Torts In Violation Of International Law: No Hook Under Sosa For Secondary, Complicit Actors, Helena Lynch

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Introduction, Lenni Benson

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Nature And Causes Of The Immigration Surge In The Federal Courts Of Appeals: A Preliminary Analysis, John R.B. Palmer

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Are They Human Children Or Just Border Rats?, Susan M. Akram

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Decentering The Firm: The Limited Liability Company And Low Wage Immigrant Women Workers, Miriam A. Cherry

All Faculty Scholarship

Congress is now considering radical changes to the immigration system. This article looks at the immigration issue as a labor and employment law question, and proposes a possible solution based on this approach.

I suggest that forming Limited Liability Companies (LLCs) will benefit low-wage immigrant women workers by transforming them into business owners. By using existing legal structures to their benefit, low-wage women workers can curtail at least a portion of the exploitation that they currently experience. Instead of being hired to perform a job, having the intermediary take a cut, and then pay them some amount out of that, …

The Crimmigration Crisis: Immigrants, Crime, And Sovereign Power, Juliet Stumpf

American University Law Review

This article provides a fresh theoretical perspective on the most important development in immigration law today: the convergence of immigration and criminal law. It proposes a unifying theory - membership theory - for why these two areas of law recently have become so connected, and why that convergence is troubling. Membership theory restricts individual rights and privileges to those who are members of a social contract between the government and the people.

Membership theory provides decisionmakers with justification for excluding individuals from society, using immigration and criminal law as the means of exclusion. It operates in the intersection between criminal …

The Strategic Use Of Mexico To Restrict South American Access To The Diversity Visa Lottery, Jonathan H. Wardle

Vanderbilt Law Review

In 1990, Congress enacted the Family Unity and Employment Opportunity Act (the "1990 Act"), which created a visa lottery to enhance the diversity of the immigrant stream and to ensure that areas of the world sending relatively few immigrants to the United States could still have access to the immigrant stream. In order to achieve these goals, Congress created a complex formula by which 55,000 "diversity" visas would be distributed annually among six geographically defined regions based on the total number of immigrant admissions from each region. Under this formula, regions with relatively low admission rates are granted more visas …

Mara Salvatrucha (Ms-13) And Ley Anti Mara: El Salvador's Struggle To Reclaim Social Order, Juan J. Fogelbach

San Diego International Law Journal

MS-13 poses a threat to both Salvadorians and Americans. It is a gang that must be cooperatively contained; it will not be controlled by a simplistic burden-shifting policy that leaves El Salvador, a developing country, to unilaterally deal with the problem. This paper will argue that: (1) the deportation of gang members, which results in the arbitrary deaths of thousands of innocent Salvadorians who have no legal recourse amounts to a grave violation of human rights; (2) deportation of gang members to a society where they are likely to be killed by vigilante death squads, or in prison fires and …

Reforming U.S. Immigration Policy In An Era Of Latin American Immigration: The Logic Inherent In Accommodating The Inevitable, Ryan D. Frei

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Wrong Solution: An Examination Of Present Bush's Proposed Temporary Worker Program., Tory A. Cronin

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

In 2004, President George Bush offered a new proposal to provide temporary work permits to undocumented immigrants. His proposal, however, falls short of his goals to create an immigration system which serves the American economy and reflects the American Dream. This temporary worker program would provide labor for positions which Americans are not filling currently. For some reason, Americans seem averse to holding certain jobs even though these jobs are readily available. President Bush’s proposal, which he asked Congress to draft, alleviates pressure on American employers who wish to fill low-demand jobs with foreign laborers. The proposal accomplishes this by …

Immigration And Constitutional Consequences Of Post-9/11 Policies Involving Arabs And Muslims In The United States: Is Alienage A Distinction Without A Difference?, Susan M. Akram, Maritza Karmely

Faculty Scholarship

There has been much public and academic discussion on post-9/11 government policies and whether their impact on Arabs and Muslims in the United States is unconstitutional “racial profiling” or legitimate immigration control based on constitutionally permissible nationality distinctions. The main assumption underlying this debate is that the focus of the government's policies in the “war on terror” is noncitizens, even if principally Arabs and Muslims. Thus, the racial profiling issues center on the differences between the constitutional due process analysis applied to noncitizens and that applied to citizens. This Article challenges the above argument and a number of its underlying …

The Evolving, Yet Still Inadequate, Legal Protections Afforded Battered Immigrant Women, Indira K. Balram

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.

Towards Balancing A New Immigration And Nationality Act: Enhanced Immigration Enforcement And Fair, Humane And Cost-Effective Treatment Of Aliens, Christopher Nugent

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.

Immigration: Mind Over Matter, Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.

"Soft Immutability" And "Imputed Gay Identity": Recent Developments In Transgender And Sexual-Orientation-Based Asylum Law, Joseph Landau

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This Article surveys the law of LGBT asylum as it has developed over the past fifteen years, first, with the landmark case of Matter of Toboso-Alfonso, which recognized homosexuality as a "particular social group"; second, with the Ninth Circuit's recent cases adopting a soft immutability standard of identity and expanding asylum protection to transgender individuals; and third, with a discussion of the "particular social group" analysis as it applies to transgender asylum seekers and the emergence of the "imputed gay identity" category as an alternative basis for relief for those litigants who do not identify as gay or lesbian but …

The Surge In Immigration Appeals And Its Impact On The Second Circuit Court Of Appeals, Michael B. Mushlin

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

In this report we (1) describe the BIA procedural reforms; (2) quantify the resulting increase in appeals from the BIA to the circuit courts of appeals with particular emphasis on the Second Circuit; (3) review the constitutional challenges to the BIA reforms, which have been uniformly rejected; (4) describe the administrative response of the Second Circuit to the BIA appeal surge; (5) assess the impact of the surge on the Second Circuit, and its other ramifications; and (6) offer our recommendations on how to deal with the surge going forward.

Another Limit On Federal Court Jurisdiction - Immigrant Access To Class-Wide Injunctive Relief, Jill E. Family

Cleveland State Law Review

By analyzing both the text of 8 U.S.C. § 1252(f)(1) and relevant Supreme Court precedent, this article attempts to decipher the meaning of § 1252(f)(1). If a federal court were to interpret § 1252(f)(1) to be a broad bar against class-wide injunctive relief, such an interpretation would raise constitutional concerns, as the Supreme Court has ruled that individual actions based on the administrative record of a single hearing are an ineffective means to challenge an immigration pattern or practice of the federal government. The analysis in this article leads to the conclusion that the text of § 1252(f)(1) does not, …

Uncharted Territory: Choosing An Effective Approach In Transgender-Based Asylum Claims, Victoria Neilson

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This Article focuses on individuals who believe that they are born with the wrong anatomical sex and who suffer persecution as a result of their transgender identity. The Article discusses existing precedent in the context of transgender asylum seekers and suggests possible theories for framing successful transgender asylum claims.

Social Citizen As “Guest Worker”: A Comment On Identities Of Immigrants And The Working Poor, Frank W. Munger

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.