Immigration Law Commons^™

What If Refugees Mattered? The Challenge To International Law, Catherine Dauvergne

All Faculty Publications

The starting point of this work is that the figure of the refugee is under-theorized in international law, to the point of being almost entirely absent from dominant accounts of international law. This absence is all the more striking because international law is, if anything, over-theorized. Or, in Martti Koskenniemi’s (vastly more polite) words, “more than other fields, international law’s centre of gravity has been with theoretical abstraction and doctrinal construction.” So why is the figure of the refugee absent? And why does it matter? These are the key questions I am exploring in this work.

Visa To Stay: Immigration Reform For International Students In The United States: From Contractual Limits To Affiliation-Based Opportunities, Jeanette Subkhanberdina

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

International student mobility is a vehicle of globalization in today’s world, with a significant rise in students pursuing higher education abroad over the past two decades, reaching approximately 6.9 million globally. Regardless of personal motivations, the decision to study abroad rests in a careful evaluation of whether long-term rewards outweigh the short-term sacrifices these students make. For students looking to build a professional foundation and immerse themselves in the culture of the country in which they study, few long-term rewards are more appealing than having their student visas serve as a pathway to permanent residency. Determining who may be granted …

The Banality Of Crimmigration—Can Immigration Law Recover Itself?, Catherine Dauvergne

All Faculty Publications

This article argues that criminal law has overtaken immigration law to such an extent that the notion of “crimmigration” is no longer shocking. In Canada, where the population has long been supportive of immigration and where national politics have been remarkably consensual in matters of immigration, crimmigration now forms the basis of a new form of bipartisan consensus. By looking back on the Justin Trudeau Liberal government, we see that most of the Harper-era crimmigration measures were left in place, and the advance of crimmigration continued unabated. If we are to make any progress in recovering space for values other …

Deportation And Immigration Enforcement In The United States: Analysis Of Regional And Country Variations, Exmond Ofori Sarpiah

Political Science Theses and Capstones

This study examines the motivations behind President Trump’s mass deportation policies due to the inflow of undocumented migrants from different regions in America. The study employs data visualization techniques, such as scatter plot and bar charts, to analyze regional and country variation trends in migrant removals and undocumented populations across global regions.

Rethinking Trust In The Refugee Resettlement Process: How Service Providers Can Enable Refugee Agency Through Diasporic Connections, Mahfoudha Sidelemine, Emily D. Campion

Political Science & Geography Faculty Publications

Current guidance for refugee resettlement agency workers encourages the simultaneous pursuit of trust-building and administrative tasks (e.g., housing, transportation and employment). This dual goal is resource-intensive, and focusing on the former may come at a cost to the latter. The purpose of the current research is to challenge the importance of trust-building by resettlement agencies. Drawing from our qualitative data from in-depth interviews with resettled refugees (N = 20) and agency workers (N = 15), we adopt a grounded theory approach and find that the burden of responsibility for both caregiving and administrative responsibilities can overtax agency workers …

The Fundamental Right Of A Safe Place To Call Home: Why The United States Immigration System Needs To Reform Its Response To Humanitarian Crises, Mackenzie Biles

Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary

As part of its overall aim to identify how the United States can more proactively intervene in humanitarian crises, this article will examine the Department of Homeland Security’s role in securing the safe arrival of migrants into the United States and helping them to thrive thereafter, using the crisis in Afghanistan as a lens. Part I outlines the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and the events culminating in the 2021 military withdrawal, while seeking to remain mindful of this history’s complexity and nuance. Part II examines existing U.S. immigration mechanisms, with a focus on humanitarian parole, and critiques their inadequacy in …

The Toll Paid When Adjudicators Err: Reforming Appellate Review Standards For Refugees, Charles Shane Ellison

Faculty Scholarship

Deep, variegated, and unresolved tensions run between and within the U.S. courts of appeals’ standard of review classifications of the five core elements of the refugee definition. Several circuits have taken note of their dissonant jurisprudence, calling for either en banc or Supreme Court intervention. While existing scholarship raises cogent criticisms of excessive factual deference in U.S. immigration adjudications, very little attention has been paid to how the fact-law divide regarding the refugee definition maps onto review standards in the appellate context. This dearth of scholarly consideration is accompanied by the reality that standards of review often decide cases where …

The Risks To Refugee Law Of Humanitarian Responses To Flight From Ukraine, Catherine Dauvergne

All Faculty Publications

The invasion of Ukraine that began in February 2022 provoked an enormous exodus of people fleeing to safety by crossing Ukrainian borders into neighbouring states to seek refuge. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported that as of mid-May 2023 more than eight million people had fled the conflict in Ukraine and crossed a border into another European state, and more than five million of these people were registered for temporary protection of some sort. Many of these people were warmly welcomed, and further-flung states raised their hands to provide assistance and refuge as well. Support for these …

Border Trouble: Critical Reflections On The Canada-Us Safe Third Country Agreement Litigation, Efrat Arbel

All Faculty Publications

The Canada-US Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA) has been subject to two different legal challenges before three different Canadian courts and considered in five different judicial decisions. This notwithstanding, the litigation surrounding its legal validity is not yet conclusively determined. This article analyses all five STCA decisions to develop a critical reading of the leading decision as issued by the Supreme Court of Canada in 2023. It posits that the Supreme Court of Canada, like the appellate courts before it, erred in its understanding of the STCA. Specifically, the Court did not engage the facts on record in sufficient detail, …

Misery, Melancholy, And Misfortune: A Migrant Case Study, Jayanth K. Krishnan

Articles by Maurer Faculty

There is an ongoing crisis of despair involving migrants from abroad who are seeking refuge in one of the world’s longest-standing, post-World War II democracies—India. There are roughly 4.9 million noncitizen migrants in India, with most coming from Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Because these migrants often live in the shadows, they are frequently deprived of fundamental human rights.

On the one hand, it may seem surprising that this population remains so vulnerable. After all, India’s Supreme Court has been a leading institutional light in safeguarding the rights of many marginalized groups. Supreme courts in other countries point …

Haitian Climate Migrants: Heralds Of The United States’ Unprepared Immigration System, Noah Rust

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

This note explores the complex relationship between climate change and Human migration, and the ensuing complications for the United States immigration scheme. Climate change can both directly and indirectly contribute to human migration, yet the United States’ regulatory scheme is unprepared for this reality and its consequences. Through analyzing several separate migratory events in Haiti, the specific failures of the United States status quo immigration systems become clearer. Further, the note will identify frameworks that could offer relief to climate-related migrants.

Investigating The Role Of Identity Documents In Refugees’ Access To Education In South Africa, Elvis Munyoka

Southern African Journal of Policy and Development

This article examined the role of identity documentation in refugees’ access to education in South Africa. Identity documentation has become a necessity in modern societies. Proof of identity is required to demonstrate who one is, and to gain access to various government services such as health care, employment, and 􀏐inancial assistance. However, the role of identity documents in refugees’ access to education in South Africa has received less attention. Few studies have demonstrated that without identity documents, refugees confront multiple barriers to accessing primary and secondary education in South Africa. This article reviewed available studies and recent literature on the …

Internally Displaced Persons: Ordeals And Analyses Of The Possible Regimes Of Legal Protection Frameworks, Olawale Ogunmodimu

St. Mary's Law Journal

This present global community is complicated because of anxiety and uncertainty. It is thoroughly interconnected yet intricately partitioned. Pivotally, one could argue that the centrality to this global anxiety is identity and belonging. People want to identify with and belong to a political system, territory, and culture. It seems that there is a present world that mirrors the political emergence of the interwar period that had nationalism on the rise. There is hostility to non-citizens globally, whether as refugees, internally displaced peoples (IDPs), or immigrants seeking to join new political communities. This Article explains the difficulties that ensue from being …

Chevron: Fueling The Right Against Title 42 And The Denial Of U.S. Asylum Rights, Nicholas Pierre-Paul

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

This Note was inspired by the questionable treatment of Haitian asylum seekers in Del Rio, Texas, where horseback U.S. officials charged at them using reins as whips, before immediately deporting them back to Haiti. The U.S. government justified its actions by claiming that Title 42 permits U.S. officials to prohibit the entry of individuals when there is a danger of introducing certain diseases, such as COVID-19. However, Title 42 conflicts with the United States’ codified commitment to the principle of non-refoulment, prohibiting it from returning certain refugees to a country where their life or freedom would be threatened. Accordingly, the …

The So-Called Stateless: Firm Resettlement, African Immigrants, And Human Rights Violations In Mexico, Claire R. Thomas

Articles & Chapters

This paper explores Mexico’s reactionary migration policies, especially concerning the labeling of African migrants and asylum-seekers as so-called “stateless” and the subsequent unsolicited permanent residence status it offers, and address the numerous international and domestic legal violations contained within. Part I of this article presents the lived experiences of African asylum-seekers traveling through Mexico in 2015 and 2019 to demonstrate the direct impact of Mexican migratory policy changes. Many Black migrants and asylum-seekers, as well as Afro-Mexicans, have raised awareness of anti-Blackness in Mexico and of how racism is pervasive. Part II of this article explains Trump-era changes to U.S. …

Connecting The Dots: Immigration Policy And Access To Higher Education For Refugees In France, Isabella Amaro Varas

CISLA Senior Integrative Projects

Since 2016, the increasing number of refugees in Europe accelerated the development of national and regional policies to determine their rights and access to resources. Against this backdrop, the strong politicization of migration, and the recent financial crises, refugees' access to welfare has “become a key area of concern across European democracies” (Lafleur et al. 2020). Considering public education programs as a pillar of social policy agendas in this region, this study examines French policy in order to answer the following questions: How do French immigration and education policies converge to determine refugees’ access to higher education in France? What …

The Distinction Between Refugee Populations In Lebanon: A Look Into Lebanon's Treatment Of Palestinian Refugees Since 1948 Versus Its Treatment Of Syrian Refugees Since 2011, Mia Bodell

Refugee Law & Migration Studies Brief

No abstract provided.

Another Look At The Concept Of Nation-State Borders In The Time Of Covid And Ukraine, John J. Chung

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Surge Of Unaccompanied Minors At The U.S.-Mexico Border, Lauren Werner

Political Science Theses and Capstones

No abstract submitted.

The Right To Remain, Timothy E. Lynch

Faculty Works

Article 12.4 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) states, "No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of the right to enter his own country." Citizens clearly enjoy Article 12.4 rights, but this article demonstrates that this right reaches beyond the citizenry. Using customary methods of treaty interpretation, including reference to the ICCPR's preparatory works and the jurisprudence of the Human Rights Committee, this article demonstrates that Article 12.4 also forbids States from deporting long-term resident noncitizens both documented and undocumented - except under the rarest circumstances. As a result, the ICCPR right to remain in one's own …

Denmark And Sweden: The Collision Between Welfare State Politics And Immigration, Amy Elizabeth Cantrell

Student Publications

The Scandinavian welfare states of Denmark and Sweden have famously similar socio-political and cultural systems, ones which have advanced the common perception of these nations as united in a common humanitarian and progressive global position. However there exists a significant divergence within either nation’s approach to immigration, asylum and integration policy, one indicative of the deeply ingrained deviations in popular understandings of national belonging and perspectives on greater European and global integration. By contextualizing the historical progressions of either nation and juxtaposing their individual responses to both the 2015 European refugee crisis and the contemporary Ukrainian conflict and resulting refugee …

Reimagining Sovereignty To Protect Migrants, Pooja R. Dadhania

Faculty Scholarship

The concept of sovereignty in international law allows states to exclude and expel most categories of migrants, subject only to very narrow exceptions from international human rights and refugee law. Inverting the state sovereignty paradigm traditionally used to exclude migrants, this Essay reimagines sovereignty to protect migrants by drawing on the international law doctrine of state responsibility. The doctrine of state responsibility requires states to remedy the consequences of their actions in violation of international law. States that violate the sovereignty of other states, more specifically their territorial integrity or political independence, and thereby cause forced migration should have an …

A Comparative Perspective On Safe Third And First Country Of Asylum Policies In The United Kingdom And North America: Legal Norms, Principles And Lessons Learned, Susan M. Akram, Elizabeth Ruddick

Faculty Scholarship

Wealthy refugee-receiving countries across the global north have recently been experimenting with systems that they believe will allow them lawfully to remove or turn back asylum-seekers reaching their borders, without considering their claims for international protection. These include the Trump administration's Asylum Cooperation Agreements (ACAs), the United Kingdom's Nationality and Borders Act, and the recent amendments to Denmark's Aliens Act that will allow asylum-seekers to be transferred to third countries for processing. Although these systems have many important differences, they rest on a shared premise that neither the Refugee Convention nor international, regional or domestic human rights laws prohibit such …

Predictors Of Refugees’ Ability To Pass The United States Citizenship Exam, Molly Grover, Fern Hauck, Sarah Blackstone, Emily Cloyd

Virginia Journal of Public Health

Background: Passing the United States citizenship exam can be challenging for refugee populations for several reasons, including affordability of English classes, time restraints, medical stressors, and limited formal education. The purpose of this study was to examine factors that may influence a refugees’ ability to pass the citizenship exam, including English proficiency, education, employment, and completion of English as a Second Language (ESL) classes.

Methods: Refugee patients at the International Family Medicine Clinic (IFMC) in Central Virginia participated in a survey that assessed their levels of English proficiency and whether or not they had passed the citizenship exam. The survey …

What An Ethics Of Discourse And Recognition Can Contribute To A Critical Theory Of Refugee Claim Adjudication, David Ingram

Philosophy: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Thanks to Axel Honneth, recognition theory has become a prominent fixture of critical social theory. In recent years, he has deployed his recognition theory in diagnosing pathologies and injustices that afflict institutional practices. Some of these institutional practices revolve around specifically juridical institutions, such as human rights and democratic citizenship, that directly impact the lives of the most desperate migrants. Hence it is worthwhile asking what recognition theory can add to a critical theory of migration. In this paper, I argue that, although its contribution to a critical theory of migration is limited, it nonetheless carves out a unique body …

“By Accident Of Birth”: The Battle Over Birthright Citizenship After United States V. Wong Kim Ark, Amanda Frost

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

In theory, birthright citizenship has been well established in U.S. law since 1898, when the Supreme Court held in United States v. Wong Kim Ark that all born on U.S. soil are U.S. citizens. The experience of immigrants and their families over the last 120 years tells a different story, however. This article draws on government records documenting the Wong family's struggle for legal recognition to illuminate the convoluted history of birthright citizenship. Newly discovered archival materials reveal that Wong Kim Ark and his family experienced firsthand, and at times shaped, the fluctuating relationship between immigration, citizenship, and access to …

Trump Expelled Refugees Against Cdc Advice. As Covid Subsides, Why Won't Biden Admit Them?, Lindsay M. Harris, Sarah Sherman-Stokes

UDC Law Faculty in the News

No abstract provided.

The Role Of Nations-State In Protecting And Supporting Internally Displaced Persons, Daisy Byers

Master's Theses

The rising increase of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) has become a global problem. There are over 40 million internally displaced people globally, and 15.9 million are displaced in Africa. These displacements come into place due to war/conflict, corruption, massive human rights violations, natural disasters, urban renewal projects (at the hands of powerful nations such as America, China, France, UK, etc.), and large-scale development projects. According to UNHCR, refugees are people who have international cross-border. In contrast, internally displaced persons must stay within their own country and stay under the protection of their government, even if the government is the reason …

Colombia, Un Refugio Cercano Pero No Accesible Para Los Venezolanos, Diana Maria Tovar Rojas

Master's Theses

The non-application of the International Protection mechanisms, such as the non-recognition of the determination of refugee status to the migrant population victims of forced migration, not only aggravates the conditions of vulnerability of the migrants because the State does not respond adequately to their specific needs but also because the State is violating what is stipulated in the International Human Rights Law and ignoring its responsibilities acquired by having signed instruments of the International Protection Regime. Despite the fact that Colombia is the largest recipient of Venezuelan migrants in Latin America due to its geographical proximity, it is also one …

The Authority Of International Refugee Law, Evan J. Criddle, Evan Fox-Decent

William & Mary Law Review

As COVID-19 has spread around the world, many states have suspended their compliance with a core requirement of international refugee law: the duty to refrain from returning refugees to territories where they face a serious risk of persecution (the duty of non-refoulement). These measures have prompted some observers to question whether non-refoulement will survive the pandemic as a nonderogable legal duty. This Article explains why the international community should embrace non-refoulement as a peremptory norm of general international law (jus cogens) that applies even during public emergencies, such as the coronavirus pandemic. Viewed from a global justice perspective, the …