Archive for the ‘Immigration’ Category

A Note on Comprehensive Immigration Reform

posted by Kevin Johnson

For several years, “comprehensive” immigration reform has been discussed in the U.S. Congress and among the general public.   Supporters contend that enforcement-only measures — such as extending the border fence, increasing the number of Immigration & Customs Enforcement officers, efforts to increase deportations, etc. — will not address the true causes of immigration, especially the thirst of the American economy for relatively inexpensive labor.   Although “comprehensive” immigration reform has meant many things to many people, reform proposals often include a regularization program for certain group of undocumented immigrants (i.e., the dreaded “amnesty”), some kind of guest worker program supported by agricultural and other employers, and increased immigration enforcement measures.  Some proposals also have included increasing the number of visas to eliminate long lines in certain visa categories and increased employment visas. 

In the spring of 2006, hundreds of thousands of people — U.S. citizens as well as immigrants — marched in cities across the United States, protesting the tough-on-immigrants Sensenbrenner bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in December 2005.  Two U.S. Senators, including now-President Barack Obama, participated in the marches.

President Obama long has supported comprehensive immigration reform.  Supporters of reform were buoyed by his election, feeling that comprehensive immigration reform just might finally be on the horizon.  Well, it just may — or may not — be.

Immigration reform is politically difficult in the best of times — and these most definitely are not the best of times economically in the United States.  Although some members of Congress — Congressman Luis Gutíerrez immediately comes to mind, continue to push for immigration reform, the economy and health care reform now seem to dominate the Congressional legislative agenda.

As the old Brooklyn Dodgers slogan (”Wait until next year!”) went, some members of the Obama administration have argued for restraint and to wait until next year.  But, next year is an election year in Congress.  Enacting legislation on a contentious issue that touches on volatile issues of race and class, seems unlikely in an election year.

At the same time, the Obama administration seems devoted to pursuing more and more immigration enforcement measures.  For discussion of the latest measure, click here.  Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano does not seem to have found an enforcement measure that she does not like.   The political calculus  appears to be that, by so doing, the administration will gain the public trust on enforcement and then be in a better position to seek immigration reform that benefits immigrants.  This strategy was pursued — very unsuccessfully — by the Bush administration — more and more enforcement.  We saw infamous workplace raids in New Bedford, Massachusetts and Postville, Iowa, record levels of deportations year after year, aggressive positions in the courts (while always disputing the court’s jurisdiction), and the like.   The Bush administration ended up with more (and more) enforcement and no immigration reform.

This is precisely the risk that the Obama administration runs.  As it fashions and implements more and more immigration enforcement measures, it may never be able to push balanced immigration reform through Congress.  And delay is dangerous because there is always some reason to put off a national debate on a controversial issue.

Hopefully, the Obama administration knows what it is doing politically on immigration.  Latinos, immigrant rights advocates, and employers have been patient for now.  But, they all have seen what happens when immigration is put off until the second term of a Presidency.  As President Bush acknowledged, such delay was a mistake before — and, many think, a mistake now.

  July 29, 2009 at 9:23 am   Posted in: Civil Rights, Immigration   Print This Post   11 Comments

The Supreme Court’s Immigration Cases From Last Term

posted by Kevin Johnson

Last Term, the U.S. Supreme Court decided four immigration-related cases. The Court rarely takes so many immigration cases, which suggests that it – like the general public – views immigration as an important issue. In the four decisions, the Court also addressed some conflicts on immigration law among the circuits.

The U.S. government lost three out of four of the immigration cases before the Supreme Court. This is a relatively low win percentage for the government in immigration cases, especially in light of the fact that the proverbial deck is often stacked against noncitizens — the immigration laws are not particularly generous to immigrants and the courts frequently afforded broad deference to the immigration bureaucracy. It thus at first glance may seem surprising in some respects that the Roberts Court sided with noncitizens in 75 percent of the cases. A closer look reveals that the Supreme Court pretty closely followed the law and precedent and rejected positions of the Bush administration that pushed the limits.

Identity Theft

The U.S. government has increasingly used identity theft statutes as a tool against undocumented immigrants. The Supreme Court limited the U.S. government’s power to use that tool in Flores-Figueroa v. United States. The decision below, which held for the United States, was unanimously reversed and remanded in an opinion by Justice Breyer. The Court held that prosecutors must prove that defendants knew that fraudulent Social Security numbers or other documents they used belonged to a real person as opposed to an identity being fabricated. In a fairly routine manner, the Court interpreted the language of the statute and in effect applied the traditional rule of lenity, resolving statutory ambiguities in favor of the criminal defendant.

Flores-Figueroa v. U.S. clarifies what federal prosecutors must prove in order to obtain a conviction for criminal identity theft under federal law. The Bush administration had increasingly – and aggressively — used identity fraud criminal charges in immigration enforcement. An infamous example is the raid on the Agriprocessors kosher food plant in Postville, Iowa in May 2008, in which hundreds of undocumented workers faced criminal identity theft charges (as opposed to simply being deported, as had generally been the past practice in immigration raids). The Court resolved the conflict that had emerged in the federal appellate courts over the government’s burden of proof in aggravated identity theft cases.

Stays of Removal Pending Appeals

Noncitizens facing deportation who lose appeals of removal orders in the Board of Immigration Appeals often seek a stay of removal while an appeal is pending in the court of appeals. The question in Nken v. Holder was whether 1996 reforms to the immigration statute continued to permit such stays, which until that time had been routinely granted. As a practical matter, many appeals would be abandoned or mooted if the noncitizen were deported.

Chief Justice Roberts, in a workmanlike opinion, wrote for the 7-2 majority:

“This case involves a statutory provision that sharply restricts the circumstances under which a court may issue an injunction blocking the removal of an alien from this country. The Court of Appeals [for the Fourth Circuit] concluded, and the Government contends, that this provision applies to the granting of a stay by a court of appeals while it considers the legality of a removal order. Petitioner disagrees, and maintains that the authority of a court of appeals to stay an order of removal under the traditional criteria governing stays remains fully intact, and is not affected by the statutory provision governing injunctions. We agree with petitioner, and vacate and remand for application of the traditional criteria.” In so holding, the Court resolved a split between the Fourth and Eleventh Circuits, on one side, and the Second, Third, Fifth Sixth, Seventh, and Ninth Circuits on the other. Justice Alito, joined by Justice Thomas, dissented, emphasizing that “[t]he Court’s decision nullifies an important statutory provision that Congress enacted when it reformed the immigration laws in 1996.”
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  July 6, 2009 at 8:13 am   Posted in: Constitutional Law, Immigration   Print This Post   2 Comments

Analogous or Not?

posted by Gerard Magliocca

Suppose that a family enters an area of land when they have no legal right to do so. They stay and live there for years using the property for lawful purposes (apart from their continuing trespass). At some point, the actual owner or authority returns and tries to kick them out.

Am I describing a case of adverse possession (where the squatter may well get title) or a case of illegal immigration (where deportation is the result)? This comparison raises some interesting questions, though the idea is not original to me. See Timothy J. Lukas & Minh T Hoang, “Open and Notorious: Adverse Possession and Immigration Reform,” 27 Wash. U. J. L. Pol’y 123 (2008); Monica Gomez, “Immigration by Adverse Possession: Common Law Amnesty For Long-Residing Illegal Immigrants in the United States,” 22 Geo. Immigr. L. J. 105 (2007).

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  April 15, 2009 at 4:51 pm   Posted in: Immigration   Print This Post   2 Comments

The Supremes Speak

posted by Jaya Ramji-Nogales

This week, the Supreme Court took the rare step of deciding an asylum case, Negusie v. Holder, which examines the availability of a duress exception to the persecutor bar. The Court has decided very few asylum cases in its history, and when it does so, the result is often messy. The Negusie decision is no exception– while Justice Kennedy commands a majority of six, the proliferation of concurrences and dissents doesn’t inspire confidence in the unity of the court. It does, however, make for a fun read for immigration law junkies as well as for aficionados of administrative law and moral philosophers.

First, for the admin law types, this case continues and amplifies recent tussles in the immigration field over who has the authority to interpret the Immigration and Nationality Act — the federal courts or the Board of Immigration Appeals (the administrative entity charged with reviewing immigration court decisions and establishing national uniformity in immigration law). Kennedy’s majority opinion gives some deference to the administrative agency (deference that, in my opinion, is misplaced, given the dysfunctional nature of the Board, which I’ve discussed in more detail here), finding that while the Board misapplied precedent in interpreting the statute to preclude a duress exception to the persecutor bar, it should be allowed to reinterpret the statute free from this error. But as Scalia notes in his concurrence, the tone of the opinion indicates that Kennedy thinks the Board should come down in favor of a duress exception. Scalia disagrees with this approach, arguing that the Board “deserve[s] to be told clearly whether we are serious about allowing them to exercise . . . discretion, or are rather firing a warning shot across the bow.”

Stevens and Breyer, on the other hand, think the warning shot isn’t clear enough, finding that the question of whether the duress exception exists is one for the courts, and that the role of the administrative agency should be to determine how to apply the standard to be used in deciding whether participation in persecution was voluntary or coerced. Thomas doesn’t explicitly address whether the authority to interpret this provision of the statute should lie with the courts or the administrative agency; he thinks that the Board’s underlying decision was correct because the language of the statute doesn’t contain a duress exception.

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  March 5, 2009 at 9:30 pm   Posted in: Immigration   Print This Post   3 Comments

Privacy’s Inegalitarian Path: Immigrants in a Post-9/11 World

posted by Danielle Citron

The concept of privacy is often invoked for inegalitarian purposes. For over two hundred years, a husband’s privacy and that of his household prevailed over a battered wife’s interests: wife beaters were immunized from prosecution because courts refused to look into the “home closet.” Today, immigrants increasingly fall prey to privacy intrusions. As Raquel Aldana, Anil Kalhan, and Michael Wishnie brought alive at the AALS panel on Defamation and Privacy, immigrants and noncitizens have few privacy protections in our post-9/11 environment. Raquel Aldana highlighted the various ways that privacy policies negatively impact immigrants. Private landlords, hospitals, employers, and welfare offices can demand information on an individual’s immigration and citizenship status, which can produce harassment and discrimination. The Department of Justice plans to add DNA from tens of thousands of immigrants to its CODIS database, which would remain on file permanently for immigration violators (whereas genetic profiles from arrestees could be removed from the CODIS database if they are not convicted). According to Blurring The Lines: A Profile of State and Local Policy Enforcement of Immigration Law Using the National Crime Information Center Database, 2002-2004, the FBI’s criminal history database known as NCIC now includes civil enforcement immigration records, ending a decades-long policy that NCIC only included criminal data. Because NCIC is filled with inaccurate civil immigration information, over 40% of NCIC immigration hits were false positives, leading to unecessary arrests and harassment especially of Latin American nationals.

According to the panel, such privacy policies reflect “immigration exceptionalism”–citizens care little about the privacy of authorized or unauthorized immigrants and noncitizens because such treatment has no application to them. According to Michael Wishnie, the erosion of immigrants’ privacy is arguably illegal. For instance, the entry of civil immigration data into NCIC is not authorized by the NCIC statute, Section 534 of Title 28. Such diminished privacy protections also may not be in society’s best interests. Anil Kalhan made a compelling argument that requiring the disclosure of immigration and citizenship status exacts societal costs as well as individual costs. Individuals are more vulnerable to racial profiling, discrimination, and harassment while their targeted community suffers feelings of fear and shame, leading to a chilling of pro-social behaviors such as the reporting of crime. Kalhan’s The Fourth Amendment and Privacy Implications of Interior Immigration Enforcement published by the U.C. Davis Law Review can be found here.

  January 18, 2009 at 3:16 pm   Posted in: Immigration, Privacy   Print This Post   One Comment

The Economy and Immigration

posted by Jaya Ramji-Nogales

Following up on Frank’s excellent post on outward manifestations of the financial crisis, here are a couple of less obvious ways that the meltdown might affect immigrants. First, the counterintuitive: immigrants may end up with more money in their pockets. Second, the ugly: we may see an increase in hate crimes against immigrants.

The obvious answer to the question of how the economy will impact immigration is that it will decrease border crossings –fewer jobs across the board and particularly less disposable income in the hands of those who pay immigrants to work in their homes will mean less demand for labor. Combined with harsh workplace raids and tightening borders, we’d expect the financial crisis to result in a decrease in immigration. While that was the trend at the beginning of the meltdown, the recent strength of the dollar may end up reversing this expected outcome. As AP reports today, remittances to Mexico in October increased by 13% over October 2007, as a strengthened dollar bought more weakened pesos. Dilip Ratha of the World Bank predicts that this phenomenon might actually lead to an increase in immigration to the U.S., especially as inflation and unemployment climb in Mexico.

Particularly with an increase in immigration, the ugly side of the economic crisis may be an increase in hate crimes against immigrants. The FBI reports that hate crimes against Latinos have increased dramatically — by 40 percent — from 2003 to 2007 (while the Latino population grew by only 16 percent). Call it the “Lou Dobbs” effect; as xenophobic vitriol and resulting anti-immigrant sentiment has increased, so has violence against immigrants or those who appear to be immigrants. Add that to an economy in free-fall, and the result may be highly combustible. As we saw in Long Island last month and Pennsylvania earlier this year, horrifying pastimes such as “beaner hopping” may proliferate as hate-mongering politicians and journalists scapegoat immigrants for job losses and other woes. Vigilant enforcement of hate crime statutes may alleviate some of the simmering tensions, but effective change will require more flattering portraits of immigrants in the popular media and public eye.

  December 1, 2008 at 4:50 pm   Posted in: Immigration   Print This Post   12 Comments

A Dangerous Combination: A Politicized Bench and Diluted Judicial Review

posted by Danielle Citron

Over the summer, a number of sources reported on the Justice Department’s politicization of the immigration bench during the Bush administration. In July, the DOJ’s Inspector General and Office of Professional Responsibility released an investigative report concluding that Justice officials had illegally vetted immigration judges based on their political ties and ideological views. In August, the New York Times published an analysis of the records of the judges appointed under the illegally politicized system, which suggested that these judges disproportionately ruled against asylum-seekers in comparison to their peers appointed under the applicable civil service system.

However, these reports only skim the surface of the DOJ’s changes to the immigration system over the last seven years, and their lopsided effects. Shortly after September 11, 2001, the DOJ implemented expansive “streamlining” rules to the system of immigration adjudication at the agency which had significant consequences for asylum-seekers, agency decision making, and federal courts. (The DOJ oversees the nation’s immigration courts and system of administrative appeals).

Shruti Rana’s superb article, Streamlining the Rule of Law: How the Department of Justice is Undermining Judicial Review of Agency Action, coming out in the Illinois Law Review, analyzes how these streamlining rules, intended to speed up the deportation process and reduce the backlog of cases pending at the agency, instead stripped the immigration system of critical checks and balances and undermined judicial review. The article traces how the politically-vetted judges were installed just as the DOJ sought to grant these judges increasingly unfettered discretionary power. As the agency’s decisions grew increasingly arbitrary and inscrutable, immigration appeals flooded the federal courts, rising to nearly 20% of the federal docket (and now make up 90% of administrative appeals in the federal courts). The article explores the resulting clash between judicial review and agency discretion, and its implications for the vitality of judicial review.

  September 8, 2008 at 9:34 am   Posted in: Administrative Law, Immigration   Print This Post   No Comments

The Incredible Shrinking European Union

posted by Jaya Ramji-Nogales

It’s official: the European Union released a report last week projecting that deaths will outnumber births in its 27 member states by 2015, only seven years from now. While the population in some E.U. nations (including Cyprus, Ireland, Luxembourg, and the United Kingdom) will continue to grow between now and 2060, dramatic declines will be seen in the populations of countries such as Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, and Romania. Migration will continue to increase the E.U. population until 2035, but after that date, the population will begin to decline. By 2060, 30% of Europe’s population will be 65 and older, and 12% will be aged 80 and older. “In other words, there [will] be only two persons of working age for every person aged 65 or more in 2060, compared with four persons to one today.”

Particularly in those nations that rely heavily on taxes to fund social expenditures, this population decline could have dramatic impacts on welfare, social security, health care, and public school funding. But of course, I’m most interested in the impact these demographic changes may have on immigration laws. Will “Fortress Europe” become more welcoming to immigrants? What impact might more liberal European immigration policies have on U.S. immigration laws? To be sure, increased immigration alone will not solve the complex problems resulting from the “greying of Europe”, but what will happen if the current restrictionist laws remain in place? Stay tuned . . .

Cross-posted at IntLawGrrls

  September 6, 2008 at 2:12 pm   Posted in: Immigration   Print This Post   2 Comments

Citing Wikipedia — Harmless Error?

posted by Jaya Ramji-Nogales

A warm thank-you to Concurring Opinions for the invitation to return as a guest blogger! I enjoyed myself so much last time that I couldn’t resist returning despite being on leave.

On to the juicy stuff. Much of my scholarship focuses on documenting and analyzing the disastrous state of our immigration system. I’m not alone in my fascination with this topic; in July, the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General released a report on politicized hiring, over one third of which is devoted to immigration courts and the Board of Immigration Appeals, and the Government Accountability Office will soon release a report documenting the countless problems with the immigration courts.

Moreover, I know that all of you law professors out there have received at least one student paper (if not multiple papers) that cites Wikipedia. This is one of my pet peeves and always garners a “FIND PRIMARY SOURCE!!” notation in the margins. But now I have an Eighth Circuit case, Badasa v. Mukasey, to which I can refer my students. Yes indeed, the Department of Homeland Security trial attorney submitted “information from an Internet website known as Wikipedia”, to be fair, among other documents, to establish the meaning of the term laissez-passer. (Note that the relevant Wikipedia page even warns the reader: “This article does not cite any references or sources.”)

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  September 3, 2008 at 9:26 am   Posted in: Immigration   Print This Post   4 Comments

Faces in the Immigration Debate

posted by Frank Pasquale

States are passing more immigration laws, and the federal government has done some extraordinary raids recently:

[On May 12] [f]ederal immigration agents raided the Agriprocessors factory, arresting nearly 400 workers, most of them men, for being in the United States illegally. Within minutes of the raid, with surveillance helicopters buzzing above the leafy streets, the wives and children of Mexican and Guatemalan families began trickling into St. Bridget’s Church, the safest place they knew. . . .

Father Ouderkirk [of St. Bridget's] said in an interview . . . . “This has happened after 10 years of stable living. These people were in school. They were achieving. It has ripped the heart out of the community and out of the parish. Probably every child I baptized has been affected. To see them stunned is beyond belief.”

I have no idea what our general policy on immigration should be–suffice it to say that the Wall Street Journal editorial page’s emphatic support for nearly open borders leaves me leery of that kind of extremism. But I also agree with Father Ouderkirk that sudden interventions like the Iowa raid are in no one’s best interests. The dream of providing a better life for one’s family by working hard is the most genuine and pervasive form of heroism available today, as artist Dulce Pinzon writes:

The Mexican immigrant worker in New York is a perfect example of the hero who has gone unnoticed. It is common for a Mexican worker in New York to work extraordinary hours in extreme conditions for very low wages which are saved at great cost and sacrifice and sent to families and communities in Mexico who rely on them to survive.

The Mexican economy has quietly become dependent on the money sent from workers in the US. Conversely, the US economy has quietly become dependent on the labor of Mexican immigrants. Along with the depth of their sacrifice, it is the quietness of this dependence which makes Mexican immigrant workers a subject of interest.

The randomness of raids like that on Agriprocessors seems to make them less about realizing the rule of law than about striking fear into those at the bottom of America’s economic pyramid.

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  July 19, 2008 at 1:07 pm   Posted in: Immigration, Law and Inequality   Print This Post   3 Comments

Posner on Immigration Courts and Judges

posted by Deven Desai

Judge Posner has previously voiced his displeasure with immigration judges “the adjudication of these cases at the administrative level has fallen below the minimum standards of legal justice.” This week he has re-stated this view in a speech to the Chicago Bar Association. Judge Posner has called the system “inadequate.” Per the National Law Journal, Posner identified several areas of concern

–better training in international law

–reliance on the State Department for information about international issues

–a need for clinics to improve the immigration bar

–expanded membership of the Board of Immigration Appeals

–conferences so that judges can compare experiences and improve the system

–barriers to understanding the applicant including a lack of familiarity with body language and the need for interpreters

These problem add up to Judge Posner’s conclusion that “personal values and biases” drive the decisions and that “perfunctory review” is often all that occurs.

Despite the problems specific to immigration judges, the basic question of judges relying on instinct seems to haunt all judges. In other words, Judge Psoner may be onto a problem that has both subject matter sources and has its roots in the way judges make decisions in general. There is some good literature on the general question of judicial decision making.

One of the fun parts of my job is co-chairing my school’s colloquium committee which means inviting folks to share their work. Last week Chris Guthrie of Vanderbilt Law School presented his work “Inside the Trial Judges Mind.” The work questions whether formalist or realist understandings of decision making properly explain judging. In their stead, the paper offers an “’intuitive-override’ model of judging. According to this model of judicial behavior, judges generally make intuitive decisions, but sometimes override their intuitive responses with deliberation.” It was a fascinating talk and the work opens many questions about how our system of justice works. For those wishing to read more of Chris’s work here is his SSRN page. The piece that may be of most interest is Blinking on the Bench: How Judges Decide Cases co-authored with Jeffrey J. Rachlinski and Andrew J. Wistrich. The article just came out in the Cornell Law Review.

Image: WikiCommons

Author: Roland Zumbühl (Picswiss), Arlesheim

License: GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2

  April 22, 2008 at 2:17 pm   Posted in: Immigration   Print This Post   3 Comments

Sartorial Exclusion

posted by Alice Ristroph

April is the criminalest month here at Co-op. Thanks to the regular bloggers for the invitation to visit; I’m pleased to join other criminal law professors as a guest. With so many criminal law specialists on board, perhaps no one will mind if I stray from the criminal law and say something about top hats, ascots, and immigration policy.

Sunday’s New York Times featured a story about Sebastian Horsley, a British author and self-proclaimed dandy who was recently denied entrance to the United States on the grounds of moral turpitude—and possibly, for wearing a ten-inch top hat. A customs spokesperson cited Mr. Horsley’s past arrests for drugs and prostitution. But Mr. Horsley’s attire also attracted attention.

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  April 1, 2008 at 5:28 pm   Posted in: Culture, First Amendment, Immigration, Politics   Print This Post   2 Comments

The Sun Never Sets on the British . . . Emigrants

posted by Jaya Ramji-Nogales

The Telegraph reports on a recent OECD study finding that record numbers of skilled professionals are fleeing Britain for more hospitable lands, including the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, France, and Spain. According to the report, the United Kingdom is said to have the worst “brain drain” problem of any nation, having lost one in ten of its most highly qualified professionals. In 2006, 207,000 citizens left the United Kingdom — more than one every three minutes. Only Mexico has had more emigrants in recent years. Apparently free universal health care is not enough to keep skilled Britons from leaving; high house prices and taxes and bad weather are the most commonly cited reasons for leaving. What’s saving Britain from a severe shortage of skilled labor? Immigrants, of course — over a million skilled immigrants have arrived on British shores to take the place of the 1.1 million Britons who have left.

  February 24, 2008 at 7:01 pm   Posted in: Immigration   Print This Post   16 Comments

Using Immigration Law to Prosecute Terrorism Charges: Double Jeopardy or Fair Play?

posted by Jaya Ramji-Nogales

The case of Lyglenson Lemorin, a lawful permanent resident from Haiti facing terrorism charges in immigration court, raises interesting questions about the use of immigration law to prosecute terrorism cases. This phenomenon, known less-than-affectionately as “Crimmigration“, has been used to remove (aka deport) immigrants convicted of a variety of crimes after they have served prison time. But in what one immigration official calls the first case of its kind, Mr. Lemorin was acquitted of terrorism charges by a federal jury in Miami in December, yet faces nearly identical “material support” conspiracy offenses in immigration court this week.

Of course, the standard of proof for criminal charges in federal court is beyond a reasonable doubt — but not in immigration court; rather, the government must meet only the clear and convincing evidence standard in establishing that Lemorin conspired to engage in terrorist activity. In addition, he loses not only constitutional protections awarded to criminal suspects as well as the protections of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, but the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and the Federal Rules of Evidence don’t even apply in immigration court. One might say that the cards are stacked in favor of the government. Instead of a jury, Mr. Lemorin will be tried by an immigration judge, the perils of which are outlined in my recent article “Refugee Roulette.”

This particular case — lodged against a lawful permanent resident, a married father of two whose family now struggles to support itself — has drawn criticism not only from immigrants’ rights lawyers but also from Prof. David Martin, the former general counsel of the administrative agency formerly known as INS (now the Department of Homeland Security). Martin sees potential unfairness in the authorities’ ability to essentially try Lemorin twice for the same crime. But some might say that, like using tax laws to prosecute the Mafia, the immigration laws are fair game for ferreting out potential terrorists — after all, all’s fair in love and war. Isn’t it?

  February 8, 2008 at 4:29 pm   Posted in: Immigration   Print This Post   2 Comments

For Whom Would the Undocumented Vote?

posted by Jaya Ramji-Nogales

A big thank-you to Dave Hoffman and the Concurring Opinions bloggers for inviting me for a guest stint. I’m looking forward to being a regular contributor for the next month, and to the feedback from blog readers! Unlike Paul, I have decided to blog today in one of my areas of substantive interest — immigration — but promise to be more adventurous next time! Now on to the substance:

During the longest primary season on record, we’ve had plenty of opportunities to learn of the voting preferences of American women (favored Obama in Iowa but Clinton in New Hampshire), African-Americans (turned out in record numbers for Obama in South Carolina), Latinos (favored Clinton in Florida and Nevada), independent voters (inclined towards Obama and McCain), and even the under-30 vote (generally favor Obama). But the pollsters have not explored the presidential preferences of a harder-to-locate group, estimated at 12 million individuals, who live and work among us — undocumented immigrants. Of course, the undocumented can’t vote, so it’s no surprise that the campaigns and polling organizations have not expended their resources to investigate the preferences of this group. But I posit that if we take Rawls’ Theory of Justice seriously, particularly the notion that society should be structured so as to balance social and economic inequalities such that they provide the greatest benefit to the least-advantaged members of society, we might want to think about the opinions that the undocumented might express in this political process. Moreover, the rallies and marches in response to immigration reform proposals last spring suggest that the undocumented population has some political voice of its own, and that at least some documented immigrants may represent this voice.

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  February 4, 2008 at 3:59 pm   Posted in: Immigration   Print This Post   4 Comments

Scenes from a Lawyer’s Life

posted by Jeffrey Lipshaw

The Arts Section in today’s New York Times highlights the renewed interest in the work of Diego Rivera, exemplified by a series of exhibitions ongoing in New York. The theme is Rivera’s stepping out from behind the overwhelming interest in his third wife, Frida Kahlo. Our family takes a special interest in all things Rivera and Kahlo as a result of a particular historical interlude: their four year stay in Detroit, beginning in 1929, when, at the behest of Edsel B. Ford, Rivera painted his monumental murals on the walls of the Detroit Institute of Arts.

We have hanging in our living room three prints signed by Rivera, part of a collection of ten he gave to my wife’s grandfather, Nathan Milstein, a lawyer in Detroit, who did work for and befriended Rivera and Kahlo. (Family legend has it that Kahlo made a pass at him, but this is unconfirmed.) Nathan was born in 1907, graduated from Detroit Central High School in 1924, and attended the Detroit College of Law (then the Detroit City Law School and now the Michigan State University College of Law) and Wayne University Law School, receiving his LL.B. at age 21 in 1929. Nathan passed away in 2003, having continued to practice until his late eighties, and his seventy-four year tenure as a member of the bar is supposedly one of the longest in Michigan history.

Alene and I spent many hours going through his voluminous files. One truly appreciates the historian’s and the biographer’s art of distilling the story from the data when looking at records like these. The documents are tantalizing. For example, Nathan was a bachelor until 1946, when he married Alene’s grandmother, who was a widow with two children. Before that, he was supporting his mother and sisters. When the war broke out, he tried for years to find a way to serve without being drafted as a private (which in 1941 paid $21 a month, not enough to support the family.) Ultimately he found a job as a civilian flight instructor, but the file of letters and rejections to almost every branch of the military and government agency is about two inches thick. I have framed in my office my personal favorite: the letter signed by John Edgar Hoover advising Nathan he had failed the F.B.I entrance exam, which I had first interpreted as having been on account of Nathan’s being Jewish while taking it.

The Rivera piece inspired me to go back through some of the files this morning (a quiet Christmas task). I realize now it’s entirely likely Hoover objected to Nathan not only because of his ethnicity, but also because he consorted, in the course of his immigration practice, with all sorts of “undesirables,” and espoused public positions to which the F.B.I. director of long memory must have objected.

As to his practice, I’m just now organizing a series of correspondence relating to his representation in late 1932 of one Halvard Lange Bojer, the son of noted Norwegian author, Johan Bojer. The younger Bojer, an engineer who had emigrated to the U.S. in 1928, was working for General Electric in Fort Wayne, Indiana, when he was arrested by the Immigration Service, and transported to the Wayne County Jail in Detroit, on the grounds that he was a member of the Communist Party. Bojer himself described it to a reporter as follows: “They tell me that I’m a Communist. . .It so happens that I’m a member of the Communist Party Opposition, whose headquarters is in New York. Members of that Party, though glad to take Moscow’s advice, refuse to take Moscow’s dictation. There are other differences, such as our belief that the worker’s solution is in the organization of a Labor Party, comprised of Trade Unions, similar to that of England. Also, we disbelieve in Moscow’s theory that existing labor organizations, such as the A.F. of L., should be wrecked for the formation of Communist units.” (The Communist Party (Opposition), or the Communist Party (Majority Group) as it was originally called, was a splinter group from the main Communist Party USA, organized by Jay Lovestone. Lovestone shows up here; he visited Detroit, and met with Nathan and Bojer.)

The American Civil Liberties Union was interested in intervening on Bojer’s behalf. On December 12, 1932, Roger Baldwin, the ACLU Director, wrote to Nathan, urging Bojer to fight deportation as a test case. Baldwin stated: “The issue is far more than personal to him. This is the first case, so far as we are aware, when a member of his particular Communist group has been held for deportation on the ground of membership. It is worth fighting through because it offers a test of the application of the law to other than members of the Communist Party.” Nathan met with Bojer in the Wayne County jail, where Bojer, “a very affable and highly cultured young man,” advised that he had no desire to appeal the deportation, and was willing to return to Norway. He was released pursuant to a bond posted by his friends in Fort Wayne, and joined an “East bound deportation party” on December 29, 1932.

As to Nathan’s political views, here’s an excerpt from his tribute to Judge Arthur C. Denison on the occasion of his retirement from the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in January, 1932:

Humanizing the enforcement of existing laws relating to admission and deportation of aliens has become a serious problem confronting social leaders throughout the country. In the present delirium of unemployment when a vague terror seizes the nation, this fear is translated into alien hatred. Public discontent must be directed away from the cause of the unrest and to accomplish this, a counter irritant is administered. The ever oppressed alien is again victimized. The term alien becomes synonymous with undesirable. Deportation “drives” and “spectacular raids” then become common occurrences. Wholesale deportation follows as a panacea for what ails the nation. This national hysteria influences the action of public officials and finds expression in more rigid and relentless enforcement of deportation laws. Even the courts are sometimes swept into the whirling cyclone, marring the annals of juridical science with unprecedented decisions. To espouse the cause of the under-privileged requires great courage. Those who bear the courage of their convictions and refuse to be swayed, belong to the school of Holmes and Brandeis. So few do they number that a loss in the ranks is keenly felt by liberty loving citizens.

Just an ordinary kid from an ordinary school in an ordinary city. Whose parents had been aliens.

(Cross-posted at Legal Profession Blog.)

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  December 25, 2007 at 11:22 am   Posted in: Civil Rights, History of Law, Immigration   Print This Post   2 Comments

Don’t Apply for Asylum in Atlanta

posted by Frank Pasquale

That’s the advice savvy immigration lawyers will probably be giving applicants after the publication of a new analysis of 140,000 immigration decisions. The Atlanta office granted asylum to only 12% of applicants, compared to a national average of 40%. Intracourt disparities were also astonishing:

In one of the starker examples cited, Colombians had an 88 percent chance of winning asylum from one judge in the Miami immigration court and a 5 percent chance from another judge in the same court.

The study reminds me of a fascinating documentary entitled “A Well-Founded Fear,” which looks inside one immigration office and records cases presented to staff there. My main impression of the process (or lack thereof) was that the judges were often tasked with a near-impossible job of figuring out whether a given applicant was “credible” on the basis of a very informal “hearing”–basically, just listening to their story and asking questions designed to provoke inconsistent statements. Only a thick paper file documenting trauma or home country conditions had the potential to deter a snap judgment of “not credible.” The disparity among judges is also quickly in evidence–one appears to be a classic “bleeding heart,” but she is easily outnumbered by others who appear ready to dismiss just about any narrative of persecution as unbelievable.

Will Article III courts intervene to supervise this “agency under stress“? Early indications are grim. Consider this language from a First Circuit opinion in Albathani v. U.S.:

the Board member who denied Albathani’s appeal is recorded as having decided over 50 cases on October 31, 2002, a rate of one every ten minutes over the course of a nine-hour day. . . . We are not willing, however . . . to infer from these numbers alone that the required review is not taking place. . . . [W]orkload management devices . . . . do not, either alone or in combination with caseload statistics, establish that the required review is not taking place.

Which leads me to wonder–would one minute of review be enough? Fifteen seconds? When would such nanoreview cease being a “matter committed to agency discretion,” and threaten our sense of the rule of law?

  May 31, 2007 at 5:11 pm   Posted in: Administrative Law, Immigration   Print This Post   3 Comments

Illegals

posted by Kaimipono D. Wenger

As noted earlier, Lou Dobbs is upset that more media outlets aren’t using the term “illegal alien,” instead often opting for the term “undocumented immigrant.” Dobbs suggests a conspiracy by the media. But the fact is that critics of the media don’t consistently use “illegal alien,” either. The term often gets shortened to merely “illegals.” (See, e.g., Wash Times, “Bush amnesty blamed for rise in illegals“; Wash Times, “Senate illegals bill near complete“; WorldNetDaily, “Arizona county helping illegals, critic charges“; KTAR, “Employer sanctions for hiring illegals stuck in Senate“; and the lovely article “Illegals go home” that has run in various outlets.)

Supporters of this term defend its use, pointing out that it carries some degree of descriptive accuracy. People labeled as “illegals” have indeed violated a law; therefore, suggest users, such people may accurately be called illegals. Is this reasonable?

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  April 26, 2007 at 9:31 pm   Posted in: Current Events, Immigration, Politics   Print This Post   9 Comments

The evils of immigration

posted by Kaimipono D. Wenger

Reader Marc B points out that a Utah state legislator has apparently identified the culprit behind recent illegal immigration problems. The source of the problem? Satan.

Don Larsen, a district chairman, has submitted a resolution equating illegal immigration to “Satan’s plan to destroy the U.S. by stealth invasion” for debate at Saturday’s Utah County Republican Party Convention. Referring to a plan by the devil for a “New World Order … as predicted in the Scriptures,” the resolution calls for the Utah County Republican Party to support “closing the national borders to illegal immigration to prevent the destruction of the U.S. by stealth invasion.”

The resolution is apparently having trouble getting much support in the legislature. Now some might blame politics, or the somewhat unusual nature of the resolution — but I kinda wonder if Satan’s not behind that, too. (It would make sense, no?)

Fortunately, Rep. Larsen and the other legislators will have the chance to ask Satan whether or not he’s really behind illegal immigration. Luck would have it that Old Scratch is visiting town to speak at a local university.

  April 26, 2007 at 7:22 pm   Posted in: Immigration, Politics, Weird   Print This Post   2 Comments