Researching Immigration & Asylum Law

There are approximately eleven million undocumented people living in the United States, and most of them have U.S. citizen family members. There is a common perception that marriage to a U.S. citizen puts undocumented immigrants on a quick and easy path to U.S. citizenship. But for people who have entered the U.S. unlawfully and live here without papers, the line to legal status is neither short nor easy, even for those with U.S. citizen spouses. Becoming Legal: Immigration Law and Mixed Status Families follows mixed status couples down the long and bumpy road of immigration processing. It explores how they navigate every step along the way, from the decision to undertake legalization, to the immigration interview in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, to the effort to put together a case of "extreme hardship" so that the undocumented family member can return. Author Ruth Gomberg-Muñoz also discusses families' efforts to rebuild their lives in the aftermath of immigration processing-both for those who are successful and those who are not. Becoming Legal provides rare insights into U.S. immigration processing and the ways in which immigration policies affect undocumented people, lawful immigrants, and U.S. citizens alike. It will also help students more fully understand central questions in U.S. immigration debates, such as: Why don't undocumented people wait their turn to enter the U.S. legally? Why don't they legalize their status when they have U.S. citizen relatives? And, what are the relationships between undocumented people and U.S. citizens in the current period?

Winner, 2020 Best Book Award, Law Category, given by the American Book Fest Examines immigration enforcement and discretion during the first eighteen months of the Trump administration Within days of taking office, President Donald J. Trump published or announced changes to immigration law and policy. These changes have profoundly shaken the lives and well-being of immigrants and their families, many of whom have been here for decades, and affected the work of the attorneys and advocates who represent or are themselves part of the immigrant community. Banned examines the tool of discretion, or the choice a government has to protect, detain, or deport immigrants, and describes how the Trump administration has wielded this tool in creating and executing its immigration policy. Banned combines personal interviews, immigration law, policy analysis, and case studies to answer the following questions: (1) what does immigration enforcement and discretion look like in the time of Trump? (2) who is affected by changes to immigration enforcement and discretion?; (3) how have individuals and families affected by immigration enforcement under President Trump changed their own perceptions about the future?; and (4) how do those informed about immigration enforcement and discretion describe the current state of affairs and perceive the future? Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia pairs the contents of these interviews with a robust analysis of immigration enforcement and discretion during the first eighteen months of the Trump administration and offers recommendations for moving forward. The story of immigration and the role immigrants play in the United States is significant. The government has the tools to treat those seeking admission, refuge, or opportunity in the United States humanely. Banned offers a passionate reminder of the responsibility we all have to protect America's identity as a nation of immigrants.

Practices of immigration detention are largely resistant to conventional forms of legal correction because contemporary liberal democracies justify these practices with an appeal to their territorial sovereignty, a concept that thwarts the very communicability of individual interests in modern constitutionalism. However, this book argues that human rights in the specific context of immigration detention can function as "destabilisation rights", subjecting to full legal scrutiny those claims that the national state presents as predominantly based on its territorial sovereignty. The resulting destabilisation of territorial sovereignty in both domestic and international constitutionalism will have ramifications for a number of instruments of migration control, the perceived necessity and legitimacy of which is almost exclusively based on the self-referential notion of territorial sovereignty.

The liberal legal ideal of protection of the individual against administrative detention without trial is embodied in the habeas corpus tradition. However, the use of detention to control immigration has gone from a wartime exception to normal practice, thus calling into question modern states' adherence to the rule of law. Daniel Wilsher traces how modern states have come to use long-term detention of immigrants without judicial control. He examines the wider emerging international human rights challenge presented by detention based upon protecting 'national sovereignty' in an age of global migration. He explores the vulnerable political status of immigrants and shows how attempts to close liberal societies can create 'unwanted persons' who are denied fundamental rights. To conclude, he proposes a set of standards to ensure that efforts to control migration, including the use of detention, conform to principles of law and uphold basic rights regardless of immigration status.

Punctuated by marches across the United States in the spring of 2006, immigrant rights has reemerged as a significant and highly visible political issue. Immigrant Rights in the Shadows of U.S. Citizenship brings prominent activists and scholars together to examine the emergence and significance of the contemporary immigrant rights movement. Contributors place the contemporary immigrant rights movement in historical and comparative contexts by looking at the ways immigrants and their allies have staked claims to rights in the past, and by examining movements based in different communities around the United States. Scholars explain the evolution of immigration policy, and analyze current conflicts around issues of immigrant rights; activists engaged in the current movement document the ways in which coalitions have been built among immigrants from different nations, and between immigrant and native born peoples. The essays examine the ways in which questions of immigrant rights engage broader issues of identity, including gender, race, and sexuality.

This compact, comprehensive title offers a thorough overview of the history, constitutional basis, statutory structure, regulatory provisions, administrative procedure, and ethical principles related to immigration law and practice. Updated to reflect developments including the Trump administration's impact on immigration law and the Biden Administration, it is valuable both as a teaching and a practice reference.

Wondering where to begin when determining how to advise a noncitizen client of the potential immigration consequences of involvement with the criminal legal system? Wondering if it would be safe for your noncitizen client to accept a plea deal or to apply for United States citizenship when they have some criminal history? Trying to figure out if a conviction for your jurisdiction's theft offense will make someone deportable? Crimmigration Law in a Nutshell provides an introduction that will open the door for you to a deeply rewarding and intellectually stimulating area of the law. Practice at the intersection of immigration and criminal law is complex and often involves high-stakes consequences ranging from prolonged immigration detention to deportation. It can also be the key to keeping families together and to transformational problem solving for clients. Crimmigration Law in a Nutshell will guide the reader through the analysis required for these cases, as well as the best practices for representing noncitizens who are facing criminal charges, have been convicted of criminal activity, or are suspected of having engaged in criminal activity. The text includes discussion of the relevant sections of the Immigration and Nationality Act as well as detailed explanations of the categorical, modified categorical, and circumstance-specific approaches used to analyze whether a criminal statute will trigger immigration consequences. Readers will come away with a solid foundational grasp of these concepts while understanding the need for detailed and nuanced research and analysis on a case-by-case basis. Readers will be introduced to immigration concepts like inadmissibility, deportability, crimes involving moral turpitude, and aggravated felonies. Chapters on immigration detention, preserving eligibility for relief from removal, federal immigration crimes, post-conviction relief, and the obligations of criminal counsel will give the larger context. Practical considerations for both criminal defense counsel and immigration attorneys are woven in throughout. Intended for students and practitioners venturing into a new area of practice, Crimmigration Law in a Nutshell is a helpful introduction for both criminal and immigration practitioners looking to deepen their knowledge of this important legal intersection. Each chapter ends with hypothetical examples and summarizes key concepts and takeaways. It is the perfect introduction to a challenging and rewarding area of the law.

When more than twenty million immigrants arrived in the United States between 1880 and 1920, the government attempted to classify them according to prevailing ideas about race and nationality. But this proved hard to do. Ideas about racial or national difference were slippery, contested, and yet consequential--were "Hebrews" a "race," a "religion," or a "people"? As Joel Perlmann shows, a self-appointed pair of officials created the government's 1897 List of Races and Peoples, which shaped exclusionary immigration laws, the wording of the U.S. Census, and federal studies that informed social policy. Its categories served to maintain old divisions and establish new ones. Across the five decades ending in the 1920s, American immigration policy built increasingly upon the belief that some groups of immigrants were desirable, others not. Perlmann traces how the debates over this policy institutionalized race distinctions--between whites and nonwhites, but also among whites--in immigration laws that lasted four decades. Despite a gradual shift among social scientists from "race" to "ethnic group" after the 1920s, the diffusion of this key concept among government officials and the public remained limited until the end of the 1960s. Taking up dramatic changes to racial and ethnic classification since then, America Classifies the Immigrants concentrates on three crucial reforms to the American Census: the introduction of Hispanic origin and ancestry (1980), the recognition of mixed racial origins (2000), and a rethinking of the connections between race and ethnic group (proposed for 2020).