Immigration Law Commons^™

A Family Tradition: Giving Meaning To Family Unity And Decreasing Illegal Immigration Through Anthropology, Micah Bennett

Indiana Law Journal

My Note explores the family-preference provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act and argues that they are far too limited, especially in light of the “family unity” policy that underscores the law. Using Mexico as a model, the Note relies on the discipline of anthropology to explain that family inherently drives immigration, and it refers to an allegory from a Mexican immigrant to demonstrate how the INA is ineffective. It then argues that immigration law could learn from anthropology—both its scholarship and its disciplinary ideals—to craft a more effective and better informed immigration law, which would further the family unity …

Race And Immigration, Then And Now: How The Shift To "Worthiness" Undermines The 1965 Immigration Law's Civil Rights Goals, Elizabeth Keyes

All Faculty Scholarship

This essay looks at how far immigration reform has come from the explicit civil rights character of the 1965 immigration law that reshaped America. The optimism surrounding that law’s dismantling of national-origins barriers to immigration proved to be overstated in the intervening decades, as the factors determining an immigrant’s “worth and qualifications” too often became proxies for race. After briefly looking at work done by critical race theorists tracing some of ways race and immigration have long intersected in immigration legal history, the article closely examines modern-day immigration reform proposals, particularly the Senate bill that remains the most complete articulation …

Introduction: Angles Of The Right To Counsel In Civil Cases Debate: Formalism, Immigration, Reviewability, And Empiricism, John Pollock

University of the District of Columbia Law Review

Given the recent celebrations of Gideon v. Wainwright's 5 0 th anniversary,' it is most appropriate that this Symposium issue focuses on the civil right to counsel. While Gideon was only about the right to counsel in criminal cases, many of the events and articles marking the anniversary discussed the interplay between criminal and civil cases,2 even reaching the front page of the New York Times 3 and various radio shows. 4 Yet historically, criminal and civil cases have rarely been discussed simultaneously.

Access To Counsel In Removal Proceedings: A Case Study For Exploring The Legal And Societal Imperative To Expand The Civil Right To Counsel, Carla L. Reyes

University of the District of Columbia Law Review

Of the approximately 400,000 immigration cases pending before federal immigration courts across the country,' approximately fifty percent involve pro se respondents.2 Although empirical evidence shows that a foreign national's chances of receiving a favorable ruling doubles when an attorney represents him or her in removal proceedings, a unique confluence of history, legal tradition and policy climate have restricted immigrants' access to counsel to a ten-day window in which the immigrant may seek representation of his or her own choosing at no expense to the government. Although removal proceedings are, by definition, civil proceedings, they nevertheless involve physical detention and the …

Expanding The Civil Privilege Of Being Represented By Counsel Through The Presumed Prejudice Doctrine, Maurice Hew Jr.

University of the District of Columbia Law Review

On the fiftieth anniversary of Gideon v Wainwright,' many scholars are examining 2 the promise to not ration justice 3 by requiring counsel to be appointed for the indigent for State crimes. 4 Yet, other scholars are trying to expand Gideon's promise to all civil law matters,5 including immigration. Providing free appointed immigration counsel for representation in secretive 7 civil immigration removal proceedings would be ideal. However, for respondents who are subjected to the mandatory deportation consequences of their *9. convictions, immigration representation is impractical and serves little purpose.' 0 A better approach is to have criminal counsel simultaneously provide …

Immigration Is Different: Why Congress Should Guarantee Access To Counsel In All Immigration Matters, Careen Shannon

University of the District of Columbia Law Review

This article represents a pipe dream. It envisions an America where no one would be detained, deported, and exiled without the opportunity to meaningfully challenge the grounds for such drastic action against them. Specifically, it envisions an America in which Congress would act in the interest of justice to ensure that foreign nationals held in immigration detention-no, let's call it what it is: prison-while awaiting the opportunity to challenge removability before an Immigration Judge were guaranteed the right to counsel. Similarly, it imagines that even in a time of fiscal crisis and political dysfunction, a Congress that enacts some type …

The Difference Prevention Makes: Regulating Preventive Justice, David Cole

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the United States and many other countries have adopted a ‘‘paradigm of prevention,’’ employing a range of measures in an attempt to prevent future terrorist attacks. This includes the use of pre textual charges for preventive detention, the expansion of criminal liability to prohibit conduct that precedes terrorism, and expansion of surveillance at home and abroad. Politicians and government officials often speak of prevention as if it is an unqualified good. Everyone wants to prevent the next terrorist attack, after all. And many preventive initiatives, especially where they are not coercive and …

Gender And Economic, Social, And Cultural Rights, Christine M. Chinkin

Book Chapters

At the time of adoption of the International Covenant of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) in 1966, the concept of gender had not entered the international arena. Relations between women and men in the allocation and enjoyment of rights were addressed through the concept of non-discrimination, inter alia on the basis of sex. The term ‘gender’ began to enter the international agenda in the 1980s, first through the global conferences on women. The World Conference on Human Rights at Vienna in 1993 continued this trend, referring to gender-based violence, gender bias, and gender-disaggregated statistics. It also called for ‘the …

Transgender Inpportunity And Inequality: Evaluating The Crossroads Between Immigration And Transgender Individuals, Alexandra Caggiano

Seattle University Law Review

Despite being married to a U.S. citizen, non-citizen transgender individuals and non-citizen spouses married to transgender U.S. citizens still face deportation today due to current immigration policies. When forced to return to their home countries, transgender individuals are likely to encounter violence from those who perpetuate hate towards transgender and gender non-conforming individuals. Instead of protecting these individuals, the United States continues to send people back to their native countries solely because those individuals do not fall within the narrowly constructed definition of marriage some states use that is legally recognized by federal courts. Transgender individuals receive disparate treatment as …

Members Only: Undocumented Students & In-State Tuition, Angela M. Banks

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Multiculturalism And Feminism For Hispanic Immigrant Women Accused Of Drug Crimes, Kathryn Duque Lenhart

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Creating Crimmigration, César Cuahtémoc García Hernández

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Mercy In Immigration Law, Allison Brownell Tirres

BYU Law Review

What role should mercy play in immigration law? This Article draws on the robust debate in the criminal law about the role of mercy in the hopes of starting a conversation among immigration law scholars and practitioners. Mercy skeptics argue that mercy contravenes justice, while advocates argue that mercy is a necessary countermeasure to the unrelenting harshness of criminal law today. I argue that the problems of mercy in the criminal law are amplified in the immigration law context. The lack of procedural and substantive protections for immigrants, the acceptance of unfettered discretion and lack of oversight of agency action, …

War Of The Words: Aliens, Immigrants, Citizens, And The Language Of Exclusion, D. Carolina Nunez

BYU Law Review

Words communicate more than their ordinary dictionary meaning. Words tell us about individuals' and communities' conscious and subconscious perceptions. The words we use are evidence of how we think, which, in turn, ultimately determines what we do. In this paper, I examine and compare the usage of the words "immigrant," "alien," and "citizen" to make observations on the nature of membership and belonging in the United States. While it is perhaps intuitive that these words carry very different connotations, here I use corpus linguistics to explore those connotations. I rely on the Corpus of Contemporary American English, a database of …

Immigration After Doma: How Equal Is Marriage Equality?, John Medeiros

Journal of Public Law and Policy

Nearly 36,000 United States citizens are currently living with their foreign-born same-sex partners. Until recently, same-gendered binational spouses have been unable to avail themselves of the immigration advantages shared by their heterosexual counterparts, largely because of Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which defines “marriage” at the federal level as “a legal union between one man and one woman.” This dual treatment changed, however, in the summer of 2013, when the Supreme Court heard the case of United States v. Windsor, which challenged Section 3 of DOMA. In Windsor, the Court held that by restricting …

On Thin Ice? Domestic Violence Advocacy And Law Enforcement-Immigration Collaborations, Diana Rempe

Dissertations and Theses

The public focus on domestic violence has been one of the most successful campaigns of the modern women's movement. This success was achieved in part through the creation of strategic alliances among agencies and organizations responding to partner violence. One of the most contested of these alliances involved partnering with the criminal justice system. While representing an advance in holding police accountable in protecting all citizens (Coker, 2006), this alliance has had problematic consequences, particularly as it has extended state power into the lives of women of color (e.g. Richie, 2005). This problem is exacerbated by new collaborations between law …

The Governance Of Visibility: Bodies, Information, And The Politics Of Anonymity Across The Us-Mexico Borderlands, Robert Latham

Articles

This article explores the relationship between information and mobility as it is manifest at the Mexico-US border and understands that border to be one, although very important, site of information processing and production. Within the electronic as well as the physical spaces of the Mexico-US borderlands, it is argued that practices of evasion and exposure produce specific forms of politics. These forms bear on the militarization of the border, particular bourgeois anxieties, various instances of violence, the pursuit of survival strategies and recognition, and the emergence of resistance and countertactics. Also considered are possibilities for alternatives to the ways mobility …

U.S. Immigration And Custom Enforcement’S New Directive On Segregation: Why We Need Further Protections, Steven D. Schwinn, Sarah Dávila A., John Marshall International Human Rights Clinic

Faculty White Papers

This report addresses the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) September 2013 directive concerning the use of segregation and why it does not provide sufficient protection to detainees. It specifically addresses the changes the directive makes in the use of segregation, the identification of individuals with special vulnerabilities, the review process of detainees in segregation, and the reporting procedures required of detention facilities. This report examines previous attempts to implement immigrant detention standards and sheds light on current practices by detention facilities throughout the United States in relation to their use of solitary confinement. It recommends that ICE should strictly …

The San Francisco Immigrant Integration Project: Findings From Community-Based Research Conducted By The San Francisco Immigrant Legal & Education Network (Sfilen), San Francisco Immigrant Legal & Education Network (Sfilen)

McCarthy Center Faculty and Staff Scholarship

SFILEN conducted a two-year community research effort, the San Francisco Immigrant Integration Project (“Integration Project”). The goal of the Integration Project was to engage a broad range of stakeholders on immigrant integration issues, to document the unique needs of the immigrant community, and to propose relevant policies and practices for meaningful integration.

Border Fixation: The Appearance Of Security And Control In Immigration Reform, Katherine L. Vaughns

Faculty Scholarship

Immigration reform is the subject of intense discussion among politicians, policy experts, analysts, and advocacy groups alike; America’s never-ending debate which today has been infected with shameless demagoguery, rendering sound policy choices virtually impossible. And in this political cauldron, the appearance of border security and control through symbolism and political rhetoric substitute for the practical realities that are essential to inform policymakers about the appropriate administration and enforcement of U.S. immigration laws. For Congress has had an ongoing, unsound focus on sealing the border it shares with Mexico, its southwestern neighbor, seemingly without regard to costs especially in the post-9/11 …

Seek Justice, Not Just Deportation: How To Improve Prosecutorial Discretion In Immigration Law, Erin B. Corcoran

Law Faculty Scholarship

Bipartisan politics has prevented meaningful reform to a system in dire need of solutions: Immigration. Meanwhile there are eleven million noncitizens with no valid immigration status who currently reside in the United States and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) does not have the necessary resources to effect their removal. DHS does have the authority through prosecutorial discretion to prioritize these cases and provide relief to individuals with compelling circumstances that warrant humanitarian consideration; nonetheless, DHS’s exercise of prosecutorial discretion is underutilized, inconsistently applied and lacks transparency. This Article suggests a remedy – that the immigration prosecutor’s role should redefined …

Driving While Undocumented: Chapter 524 Allows Undocumented Immigrants To Apply For Driver’S Licenses In California, Vallerye Mosquera

McGeorge Law Review

No abstract provided.

Chapter 754: The Next Stepping Stone In The Path Toward A California Dream, Courtney S. Hoyland

McGeorge Law Review

No abstract provided.

Bride And Prejudice: How U.S. Immigration Law Discriminates Against Spousal Visa Holders, Sabrina Balgamwalla

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

Naturalizing Immigration Imprisonment, César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Only recently has imprisonment become a central feature of both t across every level of government and involving civil and criminal law enforcement tools.

Examining the population as a whole provides crucial insights as to how we arrived at this state of mass immigration imprisonment. While political motivations — parallel to those that fueled the rapid expansion of criminal mass incarceration — may have started the trend, this Article demonstrates that key legal and policy choices explain how imprisonment has become an entrenched feature of immigration law enforcement. In fact, legislators and immigration officials have locked themselves into this choice, …

Shattering The One-Way Mirror: Discovery In Immigration Court, Geoffrey Heeren

Articles

No abstract provided.

Observations On History, Law, And The Rise Of The New Jim Crow In State-Level Immigration Law And Policy For Latinos, Tom I. Romero

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

This essay works to connect the history of local enforcement of immigration law and policy against Mexican migrants and Mexican American citizens and its relationship to the creation and perpetuation of what Michelle Alexander has described as a redesigned caste system in the United States. As state and local government authorities then and now sought to define and respond to a “Mexican menace” as the failed enforcement of federal immigration law, such law and policy challenged not only Congress’s seemingly settled plenary power to determine who had license and permission to be in the United States but also who had …

The Usual Suspects: Judicial Review Of State Laws That Target Undocumented Immigrants, 47 J. Marshall L. Rev. 1127 (2014), Jonathan Svitak

UIC Law Review

This Comment will attempt to balance the interests of Arizona and Alabama in combating the growing problem of undocumented immigration against the interest of the documented and undocumented aliens and U.S. citizens protected by the Equal Protection Clause.

The Contemporary Assault On Ethnic Studies, 47 J. Marshall L. Rev. 1189 (2014), Ronald Mize

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Finding Hope For "Aged Out" Derivative Beneficiaries: Re-Examining The Child Status Protection Act In The Wake Of Scialabba V. Cuellar De Osorio, 47 J. Marshall L. Rev. 1319 (2014), Jihan Hassan, Hannah Kubica, Christina Corbaci

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.