Immigration Law Commons^™

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 …

The Alienage Spectrum Disorder: The Bill Of Rights From Chinese Exclusion In Guantanamo, Won Kidane

Faculty Articles

The fundamental notion that increased ties to the polity of the United States would entitle an alien to better rights is deeply-rooted in the jurisprudence. Ordinarily, these rights tend to strengthen as one moves forward from the beginning of the spectrum, which might involve the most attenuated contact, as in the case of enemy aliens detained by United States military in a foreign land or an overseas visa applicant, to the end of the spectrum, which might involve a United States citizen. While this seems to make perfect sense, this article argues that a closer examination of the century-old jurisprudence …

The Terrorism Bar To Asylum In Australia, Canada, The United Kingdom, And The United States: Transporting Best Practices, Won Kidane

Faculty Articles

The contemporary threat of terrorism that the Western world faces is primarily from so-called “aliens.” As such, the laws that are meant to combat terrorism necessarily involve the regulation of the admission and exclusion of aliens. This type of regulation is traditionally the purview of immigration law. Although the link between national security and immigration is by no means contemporary, the existing level of intersection between antiterrorism laws and immigration is essentially a post- 9/11 phenomenon.

The reason for this phenomenon is that the 9/11 attacks were planned and executed by aliens. Although there has not been a terrorist attack …

Migrant Workers In Saudi Arabia, Sarah Jessup

Human Rights & Human Welfare

One of the wealthiest countries in the Middle East, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is also one of the largest exporters of oil, and as such, one of the most influential in the region. Despite this, more than 50 per cent of the work force (nearly 6 million people) in the Saudi Arabia are migrant workers (FIDH, 2003, 3). They contribute billions of dollars each year to their home countries through remittances. With such a large population hailing from outside the Kingdom, it would seem that transnational migrants would have a larger voice in the rights and freedoms they are …

The Overlooked Significance Of Arizona's New Immigration Law, Rick Su

Journal Articles

The current debate over Arizona's new immigration statute, S.B. 1070, has largely focused on the extent to which it “empowers” or “allows” state and local law enforcement officials to enforce federal immigration laws. Yet, in doing so, the conversation thus far overlooks the most significant part of the new statute: the extent to which Arizona mandates local immigration enforcement by attacking local control. The fact is the new Arizona law does little to adjust the federalist balance with respect to immigration enforcement. What it does, however, is threaten to radically alter the state-local relationship by eliminating local discretion, undermining the …

Local Fragmentation As Immigration Regulation, Rick Su

Journal Articles

Immigration scholars have traditionally focused on the role of national borders and the significance of nation-state citizenship. At the same time, local government scholars have called attention to the significance of local boundaries, the consequence of municipal residency, and the influence of the two on the fragmentation of American society. This paper explores the interplay between these two mechanisms of spatial and community controls. Emphasizing their doctrinal and historic commonalities, this article suggests that the legal structure responsible for local fragmentation can be understood as second-order immigration regulation. It is a mechanism that allows for finer regulatory control than the …

Conference: She Can Do No Wrong: Recent Failures In America's Immigration Courts To Provide Women Asylum From Honor Crimes Abroad, Shira T. Shapiro

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

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

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Fifth Colloquium On Challenges In International Refugee Law. The Michigan Guidelines On The Right To Work., Penelope Mathew

Michigan Journal of International Law

An Explanatory Note covering the Fifth Michigan Colloquium on Challenges in International Refugee Law and the Right to Work.

Forced Marriage As A Harm In Domestic And International Law, Catherine Dauvergne, Jenni Millbank

All Faculty Publications

This article reports on our analysis of 120 refugee cases from Australia, Canada, and Britain where an actual or threatened forced marriage was part of the claim for protection. We found that forced marriage was rarely considered by refugee decision makers to be a harm in and of itself. This finding contributes to understanding how gender and sexuality are analysed within refugee law, because the harm of forced marriage is experienced differently by lesbians, gay men and heterosexual women. We contrast our findings in the refugee case law with domestic initiatives in Europe aimed at protecting nationals from forced marriages …

Forced Marriage And The Exoticization Of Gendered Harms In United States Asylum Law, Jenni Millbank, Catherine Dauvergne

All Faculty Publications

While claims of forced marriage or pressure to marry represent only a tiny portion of refugee claims overall, they provide an illuminating sliver reflecting the major recurring themes in gender and sexuality claims from recent decades. Refusal to marry is a flashpoint for expressing non-conformity with expected gender roles for heterosexual women, lesbians and gay men. This paper presents results from our study of 168 refugee decisions from Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States where part of the claim for refugee protection concerned actual or threatened forced marriage. In the present discussion, we highlight our findings from …

The Citizenship Clause: A "Legislative History", Garrett Epps

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Refugee Credibility Assessment And The "Religious Imposter" Problem, Michael Kagan

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Credibility assessment in refugee status determination (RSD) poses unique challenges when the outcome of asylum applications turns on the question of whether an asylum seeker is actually a member of a persecuted religious minority. These cases require secular adjudicators to delve into matters of religious identity and faith that are, by their nature, subjective and beyond the realm of objective analysis. This Article explores practical means of addressing this challenge through a case study of the RSD interviews of Eritrean asylum seekers in Egypt who based their refugee claims on Pentecostal religious associations. Analysis of the interview methods used in …

Beyond The 'Chilling Effect': Immigrant Worker Behavior And The Regulation Of Occupational Safety & Health, Jayesh Rathod

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This article forms part of a broader scholarly project that seeks to understand the root causes of immigrant worker injury and fatality trends in the U.S., and the ways in which legal norms and regulatory practices shape these trends. This particular contribution examines the broad range of attributes and experiences that influence immigrant worker behavior relating to occupational safety and health -- in the context of interactions with employers and regulatory bodies, and relating to the choices that workers themselves make about how to perform their work.

Drawing upon scholarship from multiple disciplines, the article encourages a more robust understanding …

The Dual Purposes Of The U Visa Thwarted In A Legislative Duel, Jamie Abrams

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Congress created the U visa non-immigrant classification to achieve the dual purposes of both strengthening law enforcement’s ability to pursue domestic violence cases and protecting victims. This article reveals how the gatekeeper function of the law enforcement certification in the U visa petition, as set out in the interim final regulations, undermines Congress’s dual purposes and thwarts the statutory framework entirely. The law enforcement certification provisions of the U visa interim final regulations irreparably shift considerable centralized power to law enforcement personnel, subjecting the certification process to inconsistent application and misapplication.

U Visas allow undocumented non-immigrants who are victims of …

Billions (Yes, With A B) For Prevention, Victim Services, Law Enforcement, Underserved Populations And The Courts, And Looking Ahead To Vawa Iv, Leslye Orloff, Claudia Bayliff, Lisalyn Jacobs, Lynn Hecht Schafran, Juley Fulcher

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

[panelist] I feel like I have gone on a trip down memory lane. I want to take us back in time to give you an idea of what it looked like for immigrant women, women of color, and underserved communities in 1994, in terms of access to services and assistance for domestic violence and sexual assault. In those days there were very few programs-and we could probably count them on two, maybe four hands nationally-that were working specifically and had expertise working with immigrant victims, non-English-speaking victims, and women of color victims. Those programs were isolated from each other. In …

Achieving Accountability For Migrant Domestic Worker Abuse, Janie Chuang

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Domestic work has become increasingly commoditized in the global economy. Migrant domestic workers' remittances constitute a rich source of revenues for their countries of origin, while their labor ameliorates the “care deficit” experienced in wealthier countries of destination. Despite the importance of their work, migrant domestic workers are some of the most exploited workers in the world. They are often discriminated against based on their gender, class, race, nationality, and immigration status, and they are excluded from labor law protections in most countries of destination.

This essay examines some of the underlying reasons for this mistreatment and neglect. After describing …

As Old As The Hills: Detention And Immigration, Lenni Benson

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Still On The Border: The Fractured Membership Rights Of The Undocumented Worker, D. Carolina Nuñez

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Fractured Membership: Deconstructing Territoriality To Secure Rights And Remedies For The Undocumented Worker, D. Carolina Nuñez

Faculty Scholarship

Relied upon but unwelcome, among us but uninvited, undocumented workers in the United States – now numbering over 8 million – labor on the border of inclusion and exclusion, between a status-based conception of membership and a territorial approach to membership. Although mere presence in the U.S. secures undocumented workers many of the same labor protections afforded to authorized workers, undocumented status often forecloses certain remedies otherwise available for employer breaches of those protections. Many commentators have criticized this effective status-based denial of rights to undocumented workers as inimical to the goals underlying labor and immigration law. While this Article …