Immigration Law

6 Key excerpts on "Immigration Law"

• 

  eBook - PDF

  Writing Immigration

  Scholars and Journalists in Dialogue

  • Marcelo Suarez-Orozco, Vivian Louie, Roberto Suro, Marcelo Suarez-Orozco, Vivian Louie, Roberto Suro(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • University of California Press

    (Publisher)

  They tend to be intricate, technical, and self-referential. They are grist for lawyers, not laypeople — much less for immigrants, who tend to be unfamiliar with such things. Because the politics sur-rounding immigration is so difficult and convoluted, Congress only intermittently musters the will to change the Immigration Law on the books. Accordingly, the law’s responsiveness to changes on the ground is very episodic. Although the Obama administration has announced its support for so-called comprehensive immigration reform, the com-plex politics surrounding such reform efforts have pushed any serious efforts into the future, perhaps even after the 2012 elections. Although some elected politicians find it advantageous to raise such divisive and politically costly issues, the president and many members of Congress manifestly prefer to defer these bitter debates as long as politically possible. The last feature of Immigration Law on the books that I will men-tion is the importance of judicial review, which is designed not only to correct routine bureaucratic errors but to ensure that our rule of law values, including constitutional principles, are protected as they apply to immigrants. Yet the volume of immigration cases that are pending in the federal courts today is so great and constitutes so large a share of their caseloads that many federal appellate judges of all ideological persuasions have warned of a crisis and have denounced in no uncer-tain terms the quality of bureaucratic decision making that has gener-ated many of these appeals. The law in action differs from the law on the books in all areas of the law, but these differences may be particularly great with respect to immigration. Immigration Law in action is largely a matter of embed-ded bureaucratic routines and the working out of often narrowly con-ceived bureaucratic incentives.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Constructing Immigrant 'Illegality'

  Critiques, Experiences, and Responses

  • Cecilia Menjívar, Daniel Kanstroom(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  They locate rule-of-law concerns within the 14 “Illegal” People and the Rule of Law Donald M. Kerwin Jr. Donald M. Kerwin Jr. 328 historical ebb and flow of nativist rhetoric, scapegoating, and restriction- ist laws that, by accident or design, marginalize immigrants. Yet the rule of law cannot be so easily dismissed in the U.S. immigra- tion debate. The United States is home to seventy-three million foreign- born persons and their children, admits more than one million permanent residents each year (most from the Americas and Asia), and sponsors the world’s largest refugee resettlement program. It has never been – and his- tory has rarely seen – a more diverse or welcoming nation. Moreover, the rule of law plays a central role in U.S. political culture in part because the United States is not a racially, ethnically, or religiously homogeneous nation. At its best, it is a nation connected by a shared commitment to civic values that find expression in the law. Thus many worry that per- sons who enter without documentation or overstay their prescribed peri- ods of admission evidence scorn for the national enterprise as a whole and threaten a core feature of the nation’s identity and culture. The distinction between legal and illegal immigration resonates pow- erfully in the United States, as well as in Europe. A 2011 survey of U.S., U.K., French, German, Italian, and Spanish nationals (roughly 1,000 each) found that 67 percent of Europeans and 58 percent of Americans “worry” about illegal immigration, while 72 percent of Europeans and 82 percent of Americans do not worry about legal immigration (German Marshall Fund of the United States et al. 2011). A 2013 survey of 4,465 U.S. residents affirmed that Americans hold diverse and internally consis- tent opinions on how to address illegal migration and the unauthorized.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Theorizing Local Migration Law and Governance

  • Moritz Baumgärtel, Sara Miellet(Authors)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  61 Based on detailed exegeses of case law includ- ing from the US Supreme Court, they have engaged in complex legal debates concerning ‘pre-emption’ and ‘anti-commandeering’ doctrines to understand the authority of Congress, as well as its limits, in questions of immigration and alienage law. 62 Recounting such exchanges is beyond the scope of this introduction. We want to note, however, that while these debates have been immensely relevant for the US context (including for the situation of migrants), they have had little resonance elsewhere – and probably never intended to have any in the first place. In Europe, likewise, accounts of the legal regimes governing migration, asylum and integra- tion are usually ‘siloed’ into EU and national frameworks. 63 The result is that, although there is generally no shortage of scholarship on immi- gration law, the latter remains fragmented along jurisdictional lines. 64 Moreover, attitudes remain generally inward-looking from a disciplinary standpoint and hyper-focused on the (legal) questions at hand. 60 Von Benda-Beckmann and Von Benda-Beckmann, “Mobile People, Mobile Law”. 61 See, for instance, Motomura, Immigration Outside the Law and Ramakrishnan and Gulasekaram, The New Immigration Federalism. 62 See, amongst many others, Olivas, “Immigration-Related State and Local Ordinances”, Rodriguez, “The Significance of the Local in Immigration Regulation” and Armacost, “‘Sanctuary’ Laws: The New Immigration Federalism”. 63 Guild and Groenendijk, Illiberal Liberal States. It should be noted that concerns with local authorities and actors more generally have been less prominent with these authors. 64 However, see Baglay and Nakache, Immigration Regulation in Federal States, which offers a more comparative angle featuring chapters on several federal countries.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Contesting Immigration Policy in Court

  Legal Activism and its Radiating Effects in the United States and France

  • Leila Kawar(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  Among the first to call attention to the adjudication of immigration pol- icy issues as a new and significant development were liberal international relations scholars and political sociologists, who linked high-profile court deci- sions on immigration issues to shifting arrangements at the international level. According to one line of argument, propounded most prominently by James F. Hollifield, when national courts issue decisions that protect the rights of noncitizens, they are acting out their part in a postwar international system of embedded liberalism that ensures a commitment to free trade while demand- ing some level of demonstrated respect for individual rights (Hollifield 1992, Gomes 2000, Hollifield 2004). Others have suggested that it is the contempo- rary move toward transnationalism, visible in the “web of rights” contained in international human rights instruments and supranational treaties, that has cre- ated opportunities for judicial engagement with immigration policies by open- ing up legal avenues outside of the framework of national self-determination (Jacobson 1996, Jacobson and Ruffer 2003). Sociologist Yasemin Soysal like- wise sees the international legal order as a source of migrant rights, though she focuses relatively less on juridical developments (Soysal 1994). In these accounts, judicial interventions are noteworthy as a break from the past, but they are best understood as instantiations of normative regimes operating across national borders. Comparativist political science studies of immigration policy making have likewise called attention to the increased judicial role in migration governance Contesting Immigration Policy in Court 4 over time, and, in contrast to international relations scholars, they have empha- sized the distinct institutional characteristics of the judiciary.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Immigration and Refugee Law in Russia

  Socio-Legal Perspectives

  • Agnieszka Kubal(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  The migration law, in turn, primarily relies on the following domestic legislation (with their respective changes and amendments): • On the Attraction and Use of Foreign Labour in the Russian Federation (Decree of the President of the Russian Federation No. 2146 of 16 December 1993); • On the Order of Exit and Entry from the Territory of the Russian Federation (Federal Law No. 114 of 15 August 1996); 1 Russia ratified the convention on 13 November 1992. • On Citizenship (Federal Law No. 62 of 31 May 2002); • On the Legal Status of Foreign Citizens (Federal Law No. 115 of 25 July 2002); • On Migration Registration (Federal Law No. 109 of 18 July 2006). These different laws interact, to different degrees, with the Code of Admin- istrative Offences (Federal Law No. 195 of 30 December 2001), Code of Administrative Procedure (Federal Law No. 21 of 8 March 2015), Labour Code (Federal Law No. 197 of 30 December 2001) and the Criminal Code (Federal Law No. 63 of 13 June 1996). This complex legal architecture is also supplemented by the decisions of the Russian Constitutional Court or the Russian Supreme Court that clarify the interpretation of the various domestic and international normative acts and together shape the ‘law of the land’. Different ‘soft law’ policy documents – speeches and newspaper editorials by the president or the prime minister of Russia 2 or formal policy documents 3 – provide the necessary contextual background and are helpful in analysing (and sometimes predicting) the direction of forthcoming legal changes. This chapter highlights the major phases in the sphere of Russian migration and refugee laws, focusing particularly on those deemed most relevant to people’s everyday experiences. This is by no means an exhaustive survey of Russian immigration and refugee legal developments. Instead, the logic of this legal chapter is subsumed under the broader logic of the book.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Migration and Citizenship

  Legal Status, Rights and Political Participation

  • Rainer Bauböck(Author)
  • 2006(Publication Date)
  • Amsterdam University Press

    (Publisher)

  Migration control policies and reforms of the legal status of long-term foreign nationals often impact on each other in unexpected ways Yet, governments did not simply acquiesce to the demands of pressure groups or to the expansion of legal rights by the judiciary. They found ways to circumvent constitutional and other limits to migration control, shifting responsibilities downward (to regional and local levels), up-ward (to intergovernmental fora), and outward (to private actors such as transport enterprises, security companies, employers and others) (Guiraudon & Lahav 2000). In the new Member States, on the other hand, some of which host significant migrant minorities, the legal fra-mework governing immigration matters heavily drew on models from Western Europe (e.g. in the Czech Republic and the Baltic States). However, this adoption of supposedly liberal models of migration con-36 ALBERT KRALER trol resulted in quite different outcomes, depending very much on the target groups of the reforms and the policy issues involved. In the Bal-tic States with their large Russian minorities, international organisa-tions such as the Council of Europe, the OSCE and, through its 1993 Copenhagen criteria, the European Union significantly influenced leg-islation (Barrington 2000, Day & Shaw 2003, Vermeersch 2002, 2003, 2004). Assessing how international human rights norms shape domestic immigrant policies more generally, however, is more difficult and has been a relatively neglected area of research. A recent study by Guirau-don & Lahav (2000) concludes that even though the European Conven-tion for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (ECHR) has been increasingly invoked in the 1990s to challenge na-tional immigration legislation, the reasons why lawyers and judges alike challenge national policies by means of international law have more to do with national constitutional politics than with the existence of international human rights institutions.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book