Immigration Law Commons^™

Culture-Based Crimes Against Women In Societies Absorbing Immigrants - Rejecting The "Mistake Of Law" Defense And Imposing Harsher Sentencing, Gabriel Hallevy

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The article argues that the mistake of law defense is irrelevant in cases of culture-based crimes against women, particularly honor killings, committed by immigrants in Western societies. It asserts that such crimes, often justified by cultural preservation, warrant harsher sentencing rather than leniency due to cultural ignorance. The analysis distinguishes between first-generation immigrants and refugees, emphasizing that refugees should not receive special treatment in legal accountability. The article advocates for stricter legal measures to address these crimes and minimize their occurrence.

Enforcing Idealism: The Implementation Of Complementary International Protection In Canadian Refugee Law, Zofia Przybytkowski

LLM Theses

This thesis evaluates Canadas compliance with human rights-based complementary international protection. Through an analysis of the roots of international refugee protection, it first links the evolution of the latter with the development of human rights law instruments. It then defines complementary protection as the corpus of legal bases for asylum claims outside of the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. It uses various human rights instruments to outline international protection obligations, which take three different forms of complementary protection. The first one consists in independent protection mechanisms outside of the Refugee Convention, the most important being the formulation of …

Rejecting Refugees: Homeland Security's Administration Of The One-Year Bar To Asylum, Andrew I. Schoenholtz, Philip G. Schrag, Jaya Ramji-Nogales, James P. Dombach

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Since 1980, the Refugee Act has offered asylum to people who flee to the United States to escape persecution in their homeland. In 1996, however, Congress amended the law to bar asylum – regardless of the merit of the underlying claim – for any applicant who fails to apply within one year of entering the United States, unless the applicant qualifies for one of two exceptions to the rule.

In the years since the bar was established, anecdotal reports have suggested that genuine refugees, with strong merits claims to asylum, have been rejected solely because of the deadline. Many scholars …

Amidst Controversy Over Federal 287(G) Immigration Program, Arizona Approves Immigration Trespassing Crime Under New Law, Christina Mcmahon

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

What's Dampening Illegal Immigration? , Ilyas Lakada

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

Through Gritted Teeth And Clenched Jaw: Court-Initiated Sanctions Opinions In Bankruptcy Courts., Nancy B. Rapoport

St. Mary's Law Journal

Bankruptcy courts see too many incompetent bankruptcy lawyers, and the courts have few options for dealing with them. A court can rule against the lawyer, but this strategy punishes the lawyer’s client, who may be an innocent bystander. Alternatively, nothing prohibits a judge from deciding to hand down a sanctions opinion. Sanctions opinions arise when one party makes a request, or the court believes a lawyer’s behavior is serious enough to merit a written order. These instances include flouting the law—either bankruptcy law or the ethical rules—or being unaware of the fundamentals of bankruptcy practice and policy. In the instance …

Ethical Issues Associated With Multidisciplinary Practices In Texas., Michael Kelly

St. Mary's Law Journal

In 2000, the American Bar Association House of Delegates voted to uphold the ban on multidisciplinary practices (MDPs) set out in Rule 5.4 of the Model Rules of Professional Conduct (Model Rules). In 2009, the ABA announced the creation of the Ethics 20/20 Commission to review the Model Rules in the context of globalization. The Commission announced it was looking into alternative business structures, including MDPs. In an MDP a client can seek the advice of several professionals with experience in different disciplines working in a single business. Under Rule 5.4, a lawyer is prohibited from sharing legal fees with …

Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor…And Your Convicted? Teaching “Justice” To Law Students By Defending Criminal Immigrants In Removal Proceedings, Michael S. Vastine

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

No abstract provided.

Fitting The Formula For Judicial Review: The Law-Fact Distinction In Immigration Law, Rebecca Sharpless

Intercultural Human Rights Law Review

This article demonstrates that the basic, analytical concept of a question of law in immigration court decisions is more expansive than is typically understood. I unearth and analyze confusion in immigration case law and propose some ways for us to think more clearly about the law-fact distinction, focusing on questions that involve the application of law to facts that have already been established - questions that are commonly called mixed questions. Part II of this article briefly traces the history of immigration judicial review, culminating with the REAL ID Act of 2005 and the jurisdictional savings clause contained in it. …

Good Things Come To Those Who Wait - Reconsidering Indeterminate And Indefinite Detention As Tools In U.S. Immigration Policy, Michael S. Vastine

Intercultural Human Rights Law Review

This article will primarily focus on illustrating examples of lengthy detention that surely seem unending to the immigrants involved, if not "indefinite" as determined by the U.S. Supreme Court. I will address all other aspects of detention more fully than actual "indefinite" detention. Detention is one of many tools at the disposal of DHS to assure orderly immigration and provide predictable consequences for violators of the United States immigration system. I hope to illustrate the frequently coercive affects of the detention scheme and argue that in some, if not many, contexts detention actually impedes the orderly administration of justice, despite …

Stories In Mexico And The United States About The Border: The Rhetoric And The Realities, Gloria Valencia-Weber, Antoinette Sedillo Lopez

Intercultural Human Rights Law Review

Our discussion will: 1) examine the concept of using word choices and metaphors as devices in storytelling to frame political, economic and social issues, which are meant to evoke certain emotional responses among specific audiences in the immigration debates; 2) describe the legal history of the border as a legal and social construct as background for the stories that are told about immigration; 3) demonstrate with examples of stories published in Mexico and the U.S. that portray how some stories about the border are being framed in the U.S. and in Mexico by identifying word choices, metaphors, audience, social and/or …

Changes In The Wind: How Increased Detention Rates, New Medical Care Standards, And Ice Policy Shifts Alter The Debate On Immigrant Detainee Healthcare, Angela Morehouse

Intercultural Human Rights Law Review

This paper provides an analysis of the recent changes in immigration detainee healthcare and argues that ICE is taking significant and proactive steps to address the systemic failures of the prior regime. Briefly discussed at the conclusion of this paper is ICE's significant August 6, 2009 announcement that it is enacting additional major reforms to the immigration detention system. This critical development lends credence to this paper's argument that ICE is developing a workable framework for providing appropriate healthcare to immigrant detainees. However, as the announcement came after this paper had been written, a detailed discussion of how those changes …

Citizenship, In The Immigration Context, Matthew Lister

Maryland Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Veil That Covered France's Eye: The Right To Freedom Of Religion And Equal Treatment In Immigration And Naturalization Proceedings, Kendal Davis

Nevada Law Journal

In June 2008, France’s highest administrative court upheld a decision to deny citizenship to a Muslim woman because, essentially, she was ‘not French enough.’ This decision incited both praise and outrage in the international human rights arena regarding considerations such as the right to freedom of religion, gender equality, and citizenship.

This Note examines relevant French domestic law and international human rights instruments, and argues that while immigration and naturalization decisions remain an exercise of broad sovereign powers, the emerging human rights norm to be free from discrimination should apply in naturalization proceedings. Furthermore, despite judicial deference and flexibility to …

Capteton V. A.T. Massey Coal Co.: The Texas Implications., Catherine Stone, Wendy Martinez

St. Mary's Law Journal

In Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co., the United States Supreme Court addressed whether the Due Process Clause of the United States Constitution was violated by the denial of a motion to recuse. The motion sought to recuse a Supreme Court of Appeals Justice from West Virginia. The justice received an extraordinary campaign contribution from the chief officer of a corporate party to a case pending before the court. Several Texas courts addressed whether recusal was necessary based on campaign contributions prior to the decision in Caperton. Texas courts have universally held that recusal was not required. The United States …

Sustaining Tiered Personhood: Jim Crow And Anti-Immigrant Laws, Karla M. Mckanders

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Latino immigrants are moving to areas of the country that have not seen a major influx of immigrants. As a result of this influx, citizens of these formerly homogenous communities have become increasingly critical of federal immigration law. State and local legislatures are responding by passing their own laws targeting immigrants. While many legislators and city council members state that the purpose of the anti-immigrant laws is to restrict illegal immigration where the federal government has failed to do so, opponents claim that the laws are passed to enable discrimination and exclusion of all Latinos, regardless of their immigration status. …

The Unspoken Voices Of Indigenous Women In Immigration Raids, Karla M. Mckanders

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The voices of the most vulnerable populations often point towards social constructs in dire need of systemic change. The treatment of immigrant women in workplace raids exemplifies this concept. Over the last couple of years, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a division of the Department of Homeland Security, has executed several workplace raids to deport undocumented immigrants who are unauthorized to work in this country. When discussing workplace raids, most news articles focus on the mass deportation of men, this paper will take a different perspective, and examine indigenous immigrant Guatemalan women’s stories in migrating to the United States, seeking employment …

Alienated: A Reworking Of The Racialization Thesis After September 11, Ming H. Chen

Publications

This article revises widespread application of the racialization thesis to Arabs, Muslims, and South Asians following September 11. It suggests in its place an “alienation thesis” to describe the formation of an alien identity for those perceived and treated as noncitizens. This thesis draws on Asian American and critical race scholarship to re-interpret sociological understandings of the post-September 11 response to Arabs, Muslims, and South Asians. The article concludes that shifting conceptions of this phenomenon is critical to reforming “alienating” practices that function not only to cause harm to their intended targets, but also to distort the legal requirements of …

Gender, Law, And Detention Policy: Unexpected Effects On The Most Vulnerable Immigrants, Carla L. Reyes

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

The United States immigration system is especially difficult for children to navigate. Advocates commonly argue that this difficulty stems largely from the poor fit resulting from the application of a system designed for adults to the reality of the child immigrant experience. Advocacy efforts, including those that resulted in changes to detention policy and substantive immigration law regarding Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC), therefore focus on modifying the system to recognize children as subjects, rather than objects, of immigration law. This article argues that the present efforts to streamline the immigration detention and relief experience for UACs by combating adult-centered bias …

Go West Young Woman!: The Mercer Girls And Legal Historiography, Kristin Collins

Faculty Scholarship

This essay is a response to Professor Kerry Abrams’s article The Hidden Dimension of Nineteenth-Century Immigration Law, published in Vanderbilt Law Review. The Hidden Dimension tells the story of Washington Territory’s entrepreneurial Asa Shinn Mercer, who endeavored to bring hundreds of young women from the East Coast to the tiny frontier town of Seattle as prospective brides for white men who had settled there. Abrams locates the story of the Mercer Girls, as they were called, in the history of American immigration law. My response locates The Hidden Dimension in American legal historiography, both that branch of American legal historiography …