The American Immigrant Policy Portal

The Morality of Law: The Case Against Deportation of Settled Immigrants,
Chapter 6 in Closing the Rights Gap: From Human Rights to Social Transformation, edited by LaDawn Haglund and Robin Stryker, Forthcoming, 20 pp.
Author: Doris Marie Provine
This chapter calls for a "transformation of immigration law"  through the introduction of the concepts of "forgiveness and repair," found in domestic law. "Immigration law must respect the dignity of the whole immigrant person, as modern legal systems do for citizens.," writes the author. The source of the "impenetrable line" that has been drawn between immigrants and citizens were the Chinese exclusion cases of the 19^th century, which asserted that the federal government had an absolute right to deport non-citizens. The reason why many American are uncomfortable with this position is that there is a "cognitive dissonance between how American treat each other in law and how we treat immigrants."  Rather than emphasizing the "injustice" or "impracticality" of mass deportation - the usual arguments for legalization, the author prefers to rely on a legal argument. She cites numerous examples in domestic law where "forgiveness" and "closure" are preferred solutions, such as declarations of bankruptcy, statutes of limitations, tax amnesties, the pardoning power of executives, and prosecutorial discretion. "These principles of forgiveness and closure have endured because they allow the system to save its resources for more serious misbehavior and because it seems to unjust to apply the heavy hand of law in cases where the defendant poses no threat to society." Although, the author writes, it may be "a formidable task to convince the American public that time in a place matters more than how one arrived in that place," she also asserts that the "law, in a real way, is on the side of repose for settled immigrants."

Paths to Lawful Immigration Status: Results and Implications from the PERSON Survey,
Journal of Migration and Human Security, 2:4 (2014), 17 pp.
Authors: Tom K. Wong, Donald Kerwin, Jeanne M. Atkinson, Mary Meg McCarthy
This paper may be the first published study that looks at the question of how many undocumented people may be eligible for permanent residence without knowing it.  The authors surveyed 67 immigrant-serving organizations that provide legal services to people eligible for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) Program.  The survey found that 14.3 percent of those found eligible for DACA were also eligible for some other form of immigration relief that preexisted the DACA Program.  The most common remedies were family-based petitions (25.5 percent), U-Visas (23.9 percent) and Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (12.6 percent). This surprising result highlights the importance of tapping into the experience of these organizations, not only for research purposes but also to expand their capacity to provide legal services to people who might not otherwise know what their options are. The paper concludes with a series of recommendations, including improvements in the screening process used by immigrant-service organizations to ensure that immigrants understand all options available to them. "DACA and DAPA will continue to lead many to ‘walk in the door' of immigrant-serving organizations that provide legal services-organizations should thus view each of these interactions as opportunities to identify paths to legal permanent residency for the immigrants they serve."

A Guide to the Immigration Accountability Executive Action
American Immigration Council, December, 2015, 9 pp.
This report summarizes available information about the full range of immigration-related Executive Actions announced by President Obama in November of 2014. These include the Deferred Action for Parental Accountability (DAPA) program, which provides deferred action and work authorization to qualified unauthorized parents of U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents; and an expansion of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which provides deferred action and work authorization to qualified young people brought to the U.S. as children (The expansion eliminates the age ceiling and extends the grant from two years to three years). The Guide points out that both programs are temporary measures "that do not meet either the technical or the political definitions of amnesty in use today" and that recipients will not be eligible for federal public benefits. Moving beyond these controversial and well-publicized programs, the Guide also describes other executive actions intended to improve visa processing, attract and retain high-skilled visa applicants, clarify enforcement priorities, reform the Secure Communities Program, and promote immigrant integration.  Finally, the Guide discusses the legal authority by which the President undertook these actions; the authors conclude that the President has not exceeded his authority: "the obligation of the executive branch to enforce the law also carries with it the discretion to determine when, how, and against whom the law will be enforced."

Children Fleeing Central America: Stories from the Front Lines in Florida,
Americans for Immigrant Justice, August, 2014, 43 pp.
Prepared by: Cheryl Little
Since 2009, thousands of unaccompanied children in the "Northern Triangle" - Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador - have fled their homes in search of a better life in the United States. Published by an organization that has operated an immigrant Children's Legal Program in Florida since 1999, this report identifies the factors that lead these children to seek refuge in the U.S. and recommends steps to protect them, legally and physically, upon entering the country. Replete with quotes, interviews and case histories, the report describe lives of desperation in Central America, harrowing border crossings and deplorable conditions in the "hieleras" (Spanish word for iceboxes), or detention centers run by the U.S government.  The author points out that Post-Traumatic Stress disorders and other mental health conditions "are disturbingly common in this vulnerable population." She also notes that many of these children can assert a legal right to stay in the U.S., if they are represented by attorneys or accredited representatives. The report explains the process of transferring these children to the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which enables them to stay in shelters and/or to be reunited with relatives in the U.S. To ensure the humane treatment of the migrant minors, the report recommends better conditions in detention centers, faster court processing without sacrificing due process,  access to refugee processing in countries of origin, and humanitarian relief in the form of Temporary Protected Status.  (Ariella Katz Suchow for The Immigrant Learning Center, Inc.'s Public Education Institute)

Warehoused and Forgotten: Immigrants Trapped in Our Shadow Private Prison System,
American Civil Liberties Union, June, 2014, 101 pp.
Over a four year period beginning in 2009, "a veritable army" of researchers from the ACLU of Texas and national ACLU investigated conditions in Texas detention centers run by private companies under contract to the federal government. Nearly 14,000 immigrants are held in these Texas centers. The researchers conducted 12 site visits and interviewed over 250 incarcerated individuals, in addition to advocates, attorneys, journalists, consular officials, and family members. This report found that inmates were subjected to "shocking abuse and mistreatment." Contracts were written in such a way as to ensure overcrowding and inordinate use of solitary confinement. Prisoners have limited access to emergency and routine medical care. They are far less likely than citizen prisoners in other federal facilities to have access to work and recreation opportunities. ACLU also reported that these prisons "operate in the shadows, effectively free from public scrutiny." Their records are exempt from the open records laws, and the Bureau of Prisons "fails to subjects its private prison contractors to adequate oversight and accountability."  The report concludes with a series of recommendations to Congress, the Bureau of Prisons, and the Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Justice. Congress, for example, is asked to close the loophole in the Freedom of Information Act exempting private prisons from disclosure and to request a report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) on existing private prisons.

New Directions in Research on Human Trafficking,
The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 653 (May 2014), 18 pp.
Author: Ronald Weitzer
Introducing an entire issue of the ANNALS devoted to human trafficking, Ronald Weitzer, Professor of Sociology at George Washington University,  laments the paucity of rigorous research on the subject.  As a result, "much of the popular writing on human trafficking has been anecdotal or sensationalistic..." Too much attention, according to the author, has been paid to the problem of sexual exploitation, to the neglect of labor trafficking - in agriculture, manufacturing, fishing, mining, and domestic service. Moreover, "definitional problems plague both scholarly and policy discussions on human trafficking." Some people, for example, claim that any illegal migration for the purpose of obtaining work, including prostitution, should be classified as trafficking, even if the migrant gave tacit or open consent to such an arrangement. The author disputes "four central claims" that are often made about trafficking: that the number of victims is huge; that the problem is growing in magnitude, that human trafficking is the 2^nd or 3^rd largest organized criminal enterprise in the world, after illegal drug and weapons trading; and that sex trafficking is more prevalent and/or more serious than labor trafficking. He is particularly harsh on the U.S. government and the International Labor Organization for greatly inflating the number of people victimized by trafficking. The research in this volume suggests that "the lived experiences of human trafficking and migration vary tremendously. They range from highly coercive and exploitative to cooperative, consensual, and mutually beneficial relationship between migrants and their facilitators, with more complex gray areas in between the two poles."

North America: Time for a New Focus
Council on Foreign Relations, Independent Task Force on North America, October, 2014,
138 pp.
Author: Shannon K. O'Neill
Co-chaired by David H. Petraeus and Robert B. Zoellick, the Independent Task Force calls for moving the partnership of the "three vibrant democracies" of North America (the United States, Canada, and Mexico) "to a new stage."  In its report, the Task Force calls for deepening cooperation and coordination in four areas: energy, economic competitiveness, security, and community.  Instead of being an "afterthought" of U.S. policy makers, North America should be the "pillar" of U.S. strength in the global economy. The Task Force also asserts that "a stronger and more united North America needs coherent policies for the movement of people within the region." North America enjoys a "demographic advantage" over other parts of the world, i.e. a relatively young and fertile population, but to use that advantage will require boosting the skill levels of its working age population, and bringing about greater harmonization of migration policies.  For this reason, the Task Force endorses comprehensive immigration reform "that secures U.S. borders, prevents illegal entry, provides visas on the basis of economic need, invites talented and skilled people to settle in the United States, and offers a pathway to legalization for undocumented immigrants now in the United States." The Task Force also calls for the creation of a "North American Mobility Accord to facilitate the movement and ensure the rights of North America's workers, in particular lower-skilled guest workers and professionals on temporary assignments."

There and Back Again: On the Diffusion of Immigration Detention
Journal on Migration and Human Security, 2:3 (2014), 32 pp.
Author: Michael Flynn
This paper analyzes the role that the United States played in promoting immigration detention as a world-wide policy response to irregular migration. Prior to the 1980s, detention was "largely an ad hoc tool, employed mainly by wealthy states in exigent circumstances and typically made use of prisons, warehouses, hotel rooms, or other ‘off-the-shelf' facilities."  During the 1980s, the U.S. established the first privately-run immigration detention facility in the country and began the process of externalizing immigration control when it created "one of the world's first offshore immigration detention facilities" at the U.S. naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Using concepts from diffusion theory, the paper traces how these policy innovations "traversed the planet."  In the European Union, for example, countries lying on the periphery of Europe were expected to shoulder the burden for the high immigration demand countries of the North, while externalization also went beyond the borders of the EU, as when Spain set up a detention center in Mauritania to deter migrants from reaching the Canary Islands. The paper also details the efforts of the Australian government to offshore immigrant processing. A clear theme of the paper is how wealthy countries try to evade the "normative pressure stemming from international human rights obligations (like the right to asylum) by seeking ways to circumvent, co-opt, or otherwise counteract this pressure through the diffusion of detention to upstream countries." The author, however, also points out how some transit countries use their status as way stations as bargaining chips to negotiate deals granting favorable immigration treatment of their own nationals. According to the author, all these practices should "spur questions over where responsibility for the wellbeing of migrants begins and ends."

Temporary Protected Status in the United States: A Grant of Humanitarian Relief that is Less than Permanent,
Migration Policy Institute, July 2, 2014, 9 pp.
Authors: Madeline Messick & Claire Bergeron
This essay discusses the history of temporary protected status (TPS), a form of relief created by Congress in 1990 and currently benefitting an estimated 340,000 people in the U.S.  TPS is granted to foreign nationals at the time of a national disaster or civil war or conflict in their home countries. The report discusses the conditions under which the Secretary of Homeland Security may designate a country for TPS and reviews some of the problems that occur when people are forced to remain in this status for long periods of time.  Finally, the report reviews conditions in the countries that currently have TPS designations:  Syria, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Sudan, South Sudan, and El Salvador. The authors expect that the number of people granted such status will grow in the future, noting that in 2012 alone, some 29 million people were displaced by extreme weather events.

Detention, Deportation, and Devastation: The Disproportionate Effect of Deportations on the Latino Community,
MALDEF, The National Hispanic Leadership Agenda, & The National Day Laborer Organizing Network, May, 2014, 6 pp.
The authors of Detention, Deportation and Devastation maintain that the U.S. immigration enforcement system is discriminatory and unfairly targets Latinos to the detriment of the wider Latino community in the U.S. Ironically, the report states, the crucial Latino vote in 2012 which went decisively to President Barack Obama signaled a call for action on immigration and yet the main response has been record levels of deportations of low-priority Latino immigrants. Using data from a variety of sources including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the report notes that in 2013, the top nine countries with the highest rates of deported nationals were all Latin American. And despite the Department of Homeland Security's stated policy of not targeting low-priority individuals, two-thirds of all deportees were convicted of traffic violations or had no criminal record at all. This increase in deportations, according to the report, contributes to higher rates of poverty, unemployment, single-parent households and parentless children in the Latino community. As such, the report argues for humanitarian steps to reduce this crisis in the Latino community caused by a broken immigration system. (Denzil Mohammed, The Immigrant Learning Center, Public Education Institute)

What Would an Unbroken Immigration System Look Like?
University of Virginia School of Law, March, 2014, 8 pp.
Author: David A. Martin
David A. Martin, Professor of International Law at the University of Virginia and former Homeland Security official in the Obama administration,  first presented this paper as the keynote address at the Miller Center's immigration reform conference in 2013. Miller believes in the importance of maintaining a generous immigration system to take advantage of the nation's historic capacity to attract and integrate talented, industrious, and creative people from around the world.  But in order to maintain this tradition, the U.S. must operate according to the "principle that migrants comply with the law." If the nation abides by this principle, it will avoid "periods of acute public alarm over illegal immigration" that have "often produced serious proposals to slash legal admissions."  Miller sees two ways to achieve greater legality in our system:  first, passing a "capacious" legalization program as a way of achieving  a new system of control and compliance; "legalization of long-stayers," he argues, "empowers vigorous, resolute enforcement against short-stayers."  Second, he advocates for "smart enforcement measures" and reminds opponents of legalization that "this is not 1986."  The nation has tools and resources available to it that simply did not exist at the time of the 1986 legalization program.  His preferred enforcement strategy is the E-Verify program, which allows employers to verify the immigration status of prospective employees. However, the program, as it currently exists, does not adequately guard against fraud. Thus, Miller urges Congress to redirect the billions allocated for border enforcement in the Senate bill, as well as the "lavish sums" of money set aside for a planned biometric exit system, to establishing a biometric program for E-Verify either using fingerprints  or photos on state-issued drivers licenses. "Getting completely serious about interior enforcement and about identity fraud in E-Verify are the most important enforcement investments Congress could make if it really wants to fix the immigration system."

Giving Voice to Unaccompanied Children in Removal Proceedings
Willamette Journal of International Law and Dispute Resolution, 34 (2013), 22 pp.
Author: Warren Binford
Although the author of this essay acknowledges that significant advances have been made in the treatment of unaccompanied children, i.e. children entering the U.S. without parents or guardians, she also believes that "the failure to appoint government-funded counsel...remains a significant children's rights concern."  Even though pro-bono counsel may be available for small number of these children, such representation, according to the author, is "ineffective." The fact that 93 percent of unaccompanied children fail to win their cases, even though legal remedies may be available to them, is symptomatic of a deep-seated problem.  The author reviews the gradual expansion of children's rights during the last century culminating with the universal adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child by the U.N. General Assembly in 1989. The convention codifies "the child's right to be heard in any judicial or administrative manner affecting the child."  Article 22 of the Convention obliges host countries to provide both a personal representative and legal counsel to unaccompanied children.  Although the U.S. is one of only 3 countries in the world not to have ratified the Convention, the U.S. Supreme Court has, according to the author, "relied on the near universal ratification of the U.N. Convention in considering juvenile jurisprudence." The root of the problem, she suggests, may be the fact that the U.S. legal system was late in recognizing the importance of legal representation for native-born children. For example, the need for representation of children in dependency proceedings was not addressed until the 1970s. Citing the "perfect storm" unfolding at the border, as the number of unaccompanied children continues to soar, the author urges Congress to take corrective action quickly.

Redressing the Shame of U.S. Immigration Laws and Enforcement Policies,
Forthcoming book chapter in Hidden Lives and Human Rights in America: Understanding the Controversies and Tragedies of Undocumented Immigration, Lois Lorentzen, Ed. (Praeger 2014), 30 pp.
Author: Bill Ong Hing
University of San Francisco Law School Professor Bill Ong Hing presents evidence in this essay for the "failure" and "inhumanity" of U.S. immigration enforcement efforts since the introduction of "Operation Gatekeeper" by the Clinton administration in 1994. Gatekeeper sought to beef up security in the 14-mile stretch of the southern border near San Diego - the preferred border crossing at the time for the vast majority of undocumented immigrants from Mexico.  Architects of the new policy, called "prevention through detention," believed that the construction of walls, barriers, and the stationing of more Border Patrol agents would deter would-be migrants, who would avoid more perilous crossings through the inhospitable terrain of dessert and mountain.  Instead, migrants chose other crossing routes, opportunities opened up for human smugglers, and deaths soared. "The number of migrant deaths increased 600 times from 1994 to 2000, and since then, about 400 deaths occur each year." The author also turns his attention to interior enforcement and the "silent raids," or audits of company records, preferred by the Obama administration. While such operations may be successful in getting workers fired, they don't generally lead to deportation, only to greater desperation and more exploitive working conditions for fired workers. For Hing, the entire panoply of U.S. immigration policy, including limitations on the number of legal immigrants from Mexico, suggests a pattern of "institutionalized racism" directed at Latinos. A system "molded by decades of racialized refinement" allows the racist intent of U.S. immigration law and procedure to be masked so that the entire effort can be portrayed as a law and order operation.  Despite his indictment of the current system, Hing believes that "the quiet majority of Americans who would not condone the callous or insensitive treatment of immigrants and the failure to implement smart integration strategies...have the power to redirect our government's commitments to moral and civil principles of justice and community."

Enforcing Masculinities at the Borders,
Nevada Law Journal, Vol. 13, No. 1, 2013
Author: Jamie R. Abrams
This article proposes a reinterpretation of U.S. immigration history from a "masculinities" perspective, rather than the "prevailing race and class accounts." The author describes masculinities as "the study of how men relate to each other and construct their identities..." This perspective "can be used as a powerful sociological and legal tool to understand institutions, power structures, and human relations." Applying the masculinities frame to immigration history, the author "unpacks" two paradigm shifts: the movement to exclude Chinese immigrants in the late 19th century, and the immigration restriction movement which culminated in national origins quota system of 1924. In both cases, men's identities were undergoing profound "destabilization," as the nation shifted from a predominantly agrarian to an industrial society. Referring to the pre-World War I period, the author notes that "measures of masculine power (shifted) from physical strength to wealth. It left men punching a time clock, working for corporations and dependent on them, and performing work that ‘every women (knew) she could easily undertake.'" In this environment, "hegemonic masculinity" resorts to nativism to prop up its threatened position in society. The author then cites two more recent examples of masculinities in action: the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which "reflected back the new cultural ideals emphasizing the nuclear suburban family and the American male's role in that family structure," and the recurring emphasis on military service as a path to citizenship.

Temporary Protected Status after 25 Years: Addressing the Challenge of Long-Term ‘Temporary" Residents and Strengthening a Centerpiece of U.S. Humanitarian Protection,
Center for Migration Studies, Journal on Migration and Human Security, 2014, 21 pp.
Author: Claire Bergeron
This paper reviews the purpose, legislative history, and use of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) since its enactment into law in 1990. TPS provides a mechanism to allow people who cannot qualify for refugee status but who cannot return to their countries of origin because of warfare, civil conflict, or natural disasters to legally remain in the United States for the duration of the emergency. Natives of 19 countries have been granted TPS since 1990. An estimated total of 340,310 people from 9 countries (El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, and Syria) currently hold TPS. According to the author, the workings of the law have been problematic for two reasons:  first, many people remain in this status for long periods of time, e.g. TPS holders from Honduras and Nicaragua have been residing in the U.S. for more than 15 years; and second, no provision has been made to facilitate repatriation once conditions improve in countries of origin. Noting that long-term grants of TPS status run contrary to Congressional intent while at the same time locking people into "legal limbo," the author recommends amending current immigration law to provide a pathway to permanent residents for TPS holders. A variation on this option would allow TPS holders to adjust status to permanent residence should they marry an American citizen or qualify for an employment-based visa (Most TPS holders who entered the U.S. without permission are barred from adjusting their status in this manner).  A complementary reform would establish procedures, such as providing financial assistance and/or social security tax payments, to incentivize TPS holders to return to their countries voluntarily. The author concludes that, "Given that the number of individuals seeking a TPS safe haven is likely to only increase in the coming years, fixing the program at this juncture could not be more critical."

Curbing the Influence of "Bad Actors" in International Migration: Council Statement,
Migration Policy Institute, February, 2014, 9 pp.
Author: Demetrios G. Papademetriou
This statement reflects the consensus reached at the 8th plenary meeting of the Transatlantic Council on Migration, held in Washington, D.C. in June of 2012. The theme of the conference was "Curbing the Influence of ‘Bad Actors' in International Migration." The statement notes that "despite massive investments in immigration controls over the past two decades, illegal migration and the unauthorized employment of migrants continue to thrive." The authors observe "that borders will never be impermeable" and outline "three traps associated with the quest for ‘perfection' in border enforcement." First, the volume of illegality "does not decrease anywhere near in direct proportion to the amount of money spent;" second, hardening the border may prevent voluntary or seasonal returns, in effect cancelling out the gains from increased enforcement; and finally, higher barriers may actually "empower " and strengthen bad actors. Bad Actors include recruiters, moneymen who supply loans to migrants, travel agents, transporters of land and sea passage, smugglers, traffickers, operators of safe houses, corrupt officials on both sides of the border, and family members who finance some of these activities. Organized-crime syndicates exact tribute from, or insert their tentacles into, many of these activities. The "bad actors" also include employers who exploit migrant workers and flout local labor laws in the process, and consumers who aren't concerned about the source of the goods and services they use. The authors then discuss the costs, benefits, and tradeoffs of the three principal approaches to enforcement: first, strengthening physical and virtual borders; second, attacking criminal operations themselves; and third, addressing the root causes of illegality by changing the market for illegal labor. The statement concludes with five broad policy recommendations: first, constantly assess and (re)evaluate enforcement efforts and trade-offs; second, foster confidence in the migration system by creating realistic expectations and communicating clearly and regularly with the public; third, increase incentives to operate within the law (by increasing penalties for operating outside it); and fourth, promote communication and cooperation across agencies and across borders "as the ultimate force multiplier."

A Strategic Framework for Creating Legality and Order in Immigration,
Migration Policy Institute, January, 2014, 25 pp.
Authors: Demetrios G. Papademetriou & Will Somerville
In this paper prepared for the 8th plenary meeting of the Transatlantic Council on Migration, held to discuss "Curbing the Influence of ‘Bad Actors' in International Migration," the authors urge government policy-makers to take a "strategic" approach to immigration enforcement. Such an approach involves marshalling all the resources of government, not just ministries or departments responsible for the management of migration, and prioritizing the allocation of these resources based on a cost-benefit analysis. The report suggests that this approach, common in other realms of government responsibility, has been noticeably absent in the migration field. The report describes and assesses the various policy tools available to governments, including: early interventions that disrupt illegal flows before they reach the border, cooperation between destination and origin countries, border security efforts, efforts targeting organized immigration crime, reforming immigrant selection systems and opening up legal migration channels, stricter enforcement of employer sanctions and labor standards, efforts to reduce the size of the informal economy, the removal and return of unauthorized migrants, legalization, and limitations on welfare benefits. In deciding which of these policy tools to use, governments should employ a "public interest test." They should also reach for "slingshots" that address a specific problem and avoid "boomerangs" that create new and unintended problems in the effort to correct the initial problem.

Trade-Offs in Immigration Enforcement,
Migration Policy Institute, January, 2014, 12 pp.
Authors: Elizabeth Collett & Will Somerville
In this paper prepared for the 8^th plenary meeting of the Transatlantic Council on Migration, held on the theme of "Curbing the Influence of ‘Bad Actors' in International Migration," Collett and Somerville argue that immigration enforcement must be "managed in the public interest."  Doing so requires addressing a range of concerns and often competing priorities, including maintaining "public confidence in the system." The authors steer clear of policy prescriptions, other than emphasizing the importance of a "balanced" and "careful" approach that "does limited (or zero) harm to a country's institutions of governance and to citizens' livelihoods, while fortifying public trust that the government is running an efficient and effective system." Among the direct and indirect constraints under which governments operate are: resource constraints which limit the size of enforcement budgets; the framework of international law which confers certain rights on international migrants; other public policy goals in the areas of health and welfare; market forces which propel labor, both legal and illegal, across international borders; and the "toxicity" of the public debate on immigration, which can sway and swing voters. The authors caution against "making rules that are unenforceable, applied inconsistently, or that the government does not intend to enforce."  The balance of the paper discusses the circumstances under which "return or regularization will produce the optimal outcome..."

Race and Immigration Reform, Then and Now
University of Baltimore, Legal Studies Research Paper (forthcoming in the Howard Law Journal),
Author: Elizabeth Keyes
In this paper, the author Elizabeth Keyes, Director of the Immigrant Rights Clinic at the University of Baltimore School of Law, traces the eclipse of the "egalitarian goals" of the 1965 Immigration Act, which promised to eliminate ethnic and racial preferences in immigration law and procedure. She sees this trend as reflective of a broader retreat from the goals of the civil rights era. Despite the formal abandonment of racial discrimination in U.S. law, she notes, disparate racial impacts persist in areas such as health, education, incarceration rates, voting, and immigration.  Two developments in immigration law hastened this retreat: first, the introduction of employer sanctions in 1986, which led to the growth of an underground economy where workers could be easily exploited, and second, the association of immigration with criminality, which was evident in the 1996 immigration laws, which made minor offenses grounds for deportation and greatly limited judicial discretion in deportation cases.  Regrettably, according to the author, immigration reform is not likely to reverse these trends.  Indeed, the tendency to confer legal status only on those who are "deserving," will likely lead to the exclusion of many millions of undocumented, including those who came after the Senate cut-off date of December 31, 2011; those whose work in the informal economy make it impossible to satisfy continuous work requirements; those who lack the time to master English; and those who cannot afford to pay the fines and fees associated with the legalization process.  The residual undocumented will become the "super-undocumented," who will be even more marginalized and exploited than the current cohort of undocumented workers.  "If the undocumented are the subject of controversy and even hatred pre-reform, those left out of reform are likely to be even more reviled, as their lack of status will signify their status as those least desired among the undocumented population." As our leaders pursue immigration reform, they should "beware of creating a new set of even deeper problems for the future."

Beyond Blood and Borders: Finding Meaning in Birthright Citizenship
Brooklyn Law Review, 835 (2013), 46 pp.
Author:  D. Carolina Núñez
This essay explores the concept of societal membership in the modern world with particular attention to the continuing relevance of "territoriality," or birthright citizenship, as a proxy for meaningful  civic ties. The author notes that " territorial presence is a waning proxy for substantive indicators of membership in other spheres of law," especially in a world of transnational ties and ease of travel. However,  the "underlying rationales" for birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants still apply. After examining a series of court cases dating back to the American Revolution, the author finds that "courts and legislatures have consistently focused on mutuality of obligation, community ties, and the need to preserve an egalitarian polity by avoiding the creation of a caste system."  Clearly, these children are "subject to the obligations and burdens of U.S. law," have developed ties with local communities by virtue of growing up in the U.S., and could easily become an exploited class if denied full citizenship rights. The author concludes that "denying citizenship to children of undocumented immigrants threatens to put our sense of what it means to be a just, egalitarian community at odds with what it means to be an American citizen."

At the Edge of US Immigration's "Halt of Folly:" Data, Information, and Research Needs in the Event of Legalization,
Journal on Migration and Human Security, 1(4), 2013, 14 pp.
Author:  Fernando Riosmena
In September of 2013 the Center for Migration Studies of New York, with support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, gathered together a group of immigration specialists, researchers, scholars and advocates to discuss research needs related to legalization.  This report summarizes the findings of the group.  The assembled experts used S-744, the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act, passed by the Senate in June, 2013, as the likely scenario for future immigration reform. They also reviewed the legalization provisions and implementation history of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) in order to draw lessons for policy makers today.  "S. 744 is a model of what a contemporary legislation program may look like, while IRCA offers still useful lessons on successes and failures in outreach, enrollment, and on the consequences of the program for applicants and others."  Participating experts defined two major goals for the research program:  "planning for effective local outreach and service delivery efforts," and "broadly assessing the effects of a legalization program."  Detailed objectives within each of these goal areas included determining:  the estimated eligible population for legalization; the geographical distribution of this population; potential barriers for individuals and/or groups; local capacity for outreach and service delivery; effects of legalization on immigrant incorporation; and anticipating the impact of legalization on services provided by state and local government. (Jade Flora-Holmquist)

Securing Borders: The Intended, Unintended, and Perverse Consequences
Migration Policy Institute, January, 2014, 15 pp.
Authors:  Randall Hansen & Demetrios G.  Papademetriou
This report discusses the complex challenges inherent in border security and gives examples of border security issues and strategies in various national and international contexts. Some of the challenges include: border governance, illegal migration, asylum policy, as well as smuggling and trafficking. The authors emphasize the intricate and interrelated nature of border security noting that, "policies in any one area have perverse, regrettable, and often unintended, consequences and feedbacks."  For example, "hard" border approaches often lead to escalating rates of human smuggling, as sophisticated criminal organizations seek to take advantage of the growing demand for illegal mobility.  The report offers four recommendations for effective border security:  (1) build up infrastructures within sending countries to improve a "weak" state's ability to enforce effective border security policies; (2) expand bilateral and regional cooperation on migration-related issues; (3) increase physical border enforcement in states where it is sparse; and (4) continue to expand border control outwards.  With regard to this last recommendation, the report finds that the "remote control" of migration, through such policies as forcing airline companies to scrutinize their passengers' passports and visas, or enticing neighboring countries to guard their own borders, is an effective approach to border management. "Although unpopular with activists, there is ample evidence that expanding borders outwards works." (Jade Flora-Holmquist)

The Criminal Alien Removal Initiative in New Orleans: The Obama Administration's Brutal New Frontier in Immigration Enforcement,
New Orleans Workers' Center for Racial Justice(NOWCRJ), December, 2013, 21 pp.
Authors:  Saken Soni, Jacinta Gonzalez, Jennifer J. Rosenbaum, & Fernando Lopez
NOWCR reports on how the recently established Criminal Alien Removal Initiative (CARI) has impacted the immigrant community in New Orleans. According to the authors, Louisiana leads the country in deportations per capita and has the highest immigrant arrest rate of any non-border state.  Under CARI,  Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)  agents  have conducted "a brutal program of race-based community raids... at apartment complexes, grocery stores, laundromats, Bible study groups and parks - often working with local law enforcement - based purely on racial profiling." The report contains fourteen first-person accounts of individuals affected by these raids, often with depictions of verbal and physical abuse by ICE officers. According to the report, "New Orleans ICE arrests people who appear Latino and uses high-tech mobile biometric devices...to conduct immediate biometric record checks. Most people are handcuffed before the fingerprinting begins, and based on the results, many are immediately separated from their families and transported to ICE detention centers for deportation." The report calls on the Obama Administration to put an end to these practices. (Jade Flora-Holmquist)

Tortured & Detained: Survivor Stories of U.S. Immigration Detention,
The Center for Victims of Torture & The Torture Abolition and Survivor Support Coalition, International (TASSC), November, 2013, 24 pp.
Author (Primary): Annie Sovcik
Current immigration law dictates that individuals seeking asylum in the U.S. should be held in "mandatory detention" until they pass a "credible fear" interview. This report finds that the detention of asylum seekers has negative psychological, emotional, and physical affects, and therefore advises authorities to reform the immigration detention system to improve the treatment of asylum seekers and other detainees. "The profiles in this report are comprised of self-reported information from the 22 individuals we interviewed in June and July of 2013, though the accounts described here are all consistent with secondary research into U.S. immigration laws, procedures, and practices." Interviewees share stories of being detained in adverse conditions without access to interpreters or information with regard to U.S. immigration procedures. "Detention is a daunting experience for anyone but particularly egregious for survivors of torture. For survivors, given the long-term impacts of torture and trauma, the fact of being detained at all is often retraumatizing." The report offers recommendations for Congress, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the Department of Justice (DOJ). Examples include: "Eliminate mandatory detention" and "Provide funding to support Community Based Alternative to Detention Programs" (Congress); "Promulgate regulations establishing basic minimum standards of care at all U.S. Customs and Border Protection facilities" (DHS); and "guarantee that all immigrants in detention receive a legal orientation presentation as soon as possible" (DOJ). (Jade Flora-Holmquist)

Expose and Close, One year Later: The Absence of Accountability in Immigration Detention,
Detention Watch Network, November 19, 2013, 12 pp.
Author:  Carly Perez
The Detention Watch Network (DWN) is a national coalition of organizations  opposed to the current U.S. immigration detention and deportation system. DWN produced this report as a follow-up to its original Expose & Close report which found "abuses and inhumane conditions" at 10 immigration detention facilities across the country.  The gatekeeper of this system is Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), responsible for maintaining the "largest immigration detention infrastructure in the world."  Although ICE announced ambitious plans for reform after release of the original report, DWN's research indicates that ICE has not followed through with these plans. In 2007 Congress mandated ICE to detain at least 34,000 immigrants per day, at a cost of $159 per bed each day. In 2011, 429,247 immigrants were detained throughout the 257 facilities nationwide, at an annual cost of 1.84 billion dollars. The report points to several areas of concern, including: dangerous and substandard medical and mental health care; limited access to legal aid; intentional isolation from family and community support; inedible food; and solitary confinement. The report concludes by urging ICE to take a number of "immediate steps" to rectify these problems, including  terminating contracts with facilities that are not complying with ICE standards, ending the use of solitary confinement, and urging Congress to eliminate the detention bed quota and repeal mandatory detention.  In the long run, "The U.S. government should move towards permanently terminating its immigration detention system." (Jade Flora-Holmquist)

Smoke Screens: Is There a Correlation between Migration Euphemisms and the Language of Detention?
Global Detention Project, Working Paper No. 5, September 29, 2013, 11 pp.
Author: Mariette Grange
This paper calls into question the "euphemistic" and "dysphemistic"  language used to describe immigration detention in countries around the world.  Such language, the author suggests, cloaks the practice from public view, acts to "demonize migrants and asylum seekers, and helps justify the at times harsh treatment meted out by authorities."  The effort to characterize migrants as criminals (dysphemistic) often exists side by side with an effort to whitewash the consequences (euphemistic), e.g. use of terms such as "reception center," "hospitality center," or "guest houses for foreigners,"  instead of prison.  The European Union also refers to its generous support for the construction and operation of detention facilities in countries at the periphery as part of its "Neighborhood Policy." The author also questions the "burgeoning discussion of ‘migration management'" on the international level, as exemplified by the motto of the International Organization for Migration (IOM): "Managing Migration for the Benefit of all." Little reference appears on the IOM's web site to its complicity in developing detention facilities in Australia and Armenia. In addition, the EUROSTAT statistics database fails to report data on detentions in the European Union.  The author concludes that the relationship between language and the denial of immigrant rights is "significant and troubling."

Immigration Controls and ‘Modern-Day Slavery'
Cornell Legal Studies Research Paper, July 16, 2013, 50 pp.
Author: Chantal Thomas
This essay asks the question: "Are immigration controls the single biggest legal factor contributing to modern-day slavery?" The author answers in the affirmative, and notes that policy makers often turn a blind eye to this reality. "Although legal as well as non-legal commentators have noted that migration controls often contribute significantly to the abusive conditions of modern day slavery, the focus of policy solutions tends to range from criminal law enforcement to the protection of the human rights of victims, but with little or no direct discussion of the destructive impact of strict immigration laws." The author devotes considerable attention to the scholarly controversy over whether modern forms of slavery are equivalent to chattel slavery. She distinguishes between the position of "minimalists," who see chattel slavery as the only real form of slavery because it was legally-sanctioned, and "maximalists," who define slavery by the degree of control exercised over the individual, whether legally sanctioned or not. Although she sees flaws in the minimalist position, her main concern is to "channel the intensity" of this debate into the "important adjacent issue" that undocumented status "leads directly to precarious and abusive conditions and treatment...amounting to enslavement."

America's Immigration Policy Fiasco: Learning from Past Mistakes
Daedalus, Summer, 2013, 10 pp.
Author: Douglas S. Massey
Activity at the border has increased in the past 30 years and it is a direct albeit unintended consequence of "failed" U.S. immigration and other policies, argues Princeton sociologist Douglas S. Massey in America's Immigration policy Fiasco: Learning from Past Mistakes. Massey chronicles the recent history of U.S. immigration policies and tactics to restrict unauthorized immigration. These actions, Massey argues, were political rather than prudent and paradoxically led to an upsurge in the country's undocumented population. In 1980, for instance, the Border Patrol comprised 2,500 officers with an $83 million budget. Today, the immigration enforcement industry costs $18 billion per year and employs more than 20,000 officers. The militarization of the border disrupted traditional cyclical movements of Mexican workers across the border.  Not only did undocumented workers decide to stay in the U.S., rather than risk the hazardous and increasingly costly border crossing, they brought their families as well. Even legal Mexican immigrants rushed to become naturalized, so that they could bring their spouses and minor children to the country and avoid the stigma of second-class status. As a result, the undocumented population rose from a few thousand in 1970 to 11 million by 2010, and legal immigration from Mexico increased from an average of 63,000 per year in the 1970s to 170,000 in the first decade of the new century. Mexican immigrants also fanned out to new destinations. The U.S.-Contra intervention in Central America, too, precipitated mass migration of displaced immigrants from Nicaragua, El Salvador and surrounding countries.  Massey concludes that shifting from "a goal of immigration suppression to one of immigration management" with an emphasis on integration and legalization of workers and residents is the only way to "break with the failed policies of the past." (Denzil Mohammed)

Thinking Regionally to Compete Globally: Leveraging Migration & Human Capital in the U.S., Mexico, and Central America
Migration Policy Institute and Woodrow Wilson International Center, May, 2013, 65 pp.
Authors: Demetrios G. Papademetriou, Doris Meissner, & Eleanor Sohnen
This is the final report of the Regional Migration Study Group, convened by the Migration Policy Institute and the Wilson Center. Scholars and public officials from the United States, Mexico, El Salvador, and Guatemala participated in the project. The report depicts regional migration less as a problem to be managed and more as a resource to be developed to enhance the competitiveness of North America in the global economy. As Mexico undergoes a major demographic transformation and as net Mexican migration slows to a trickle, the report notes that "the longstanding assumption that Mexico and Central America have an endless supply of less-educated workers for routine, physically demanding, and poorly paid jobs in the United States is becoming less and less accurate..." The report ponders the implications of major developments in the region, including the impressive growth of the Mexican middle class, improving educational levels among Mexican immigrants, and the effort to achieve comprehensive immigration reform in the U.S. The group's findings and recommendations encompass a wide range of issues. The report places emphasis on the importance of upgrading the skills of workers in all countries, ensuring the "portability" of credentials from one country to another, recreating the "circularity" that used to exist on the U.S.-Mexico border prior to the mid-1990s, and "normalizing the immigration relationships within the region" by eliminating the illegality produced by flawed policies.  The Study Group identifies four growing economic sectors that would benefit from a regional planning approach: logistics and transportation, nursing and associated health professions, advanced manufacturing, and agriculture. The Group also calls for the creation of a non-partisan federal immigration research agency to carry out independent demographic and labor market research and advise the U.S. Congress on regional migration needs.

What Makes the Family Special?
80 University of Chicago Law Review 7 (2013), 20 pp.
Author: Kerry Abrams
As Congress debates future immigrant admission criteria, this paper makes the case for the continuation of family-based immigration. Seeking to move away from the traditional human rights argument, the author presents three rationales for privileging family immigration: first, that it promotes the long-term integration of immigrants; second, that it fills important niches in the labor market; and third, that it allows the federal government to engage in "social engineering." With regard to immigrant integration, the author stresses the role of children, noting the reverse acculturative role of children ("children bring American culture home to their parents"). In discussing the nexus between family and work, the paper calls attention to the "screening functions" performed by families, as for example, when a naturalized immigrant chooses to sponsor a particularly deserving and entrepreneurial sibling. The author also discusses "the extensive, economically valuable care work that goes on inside the family that is largely unrecognized when we measure the economic output of people as individuals." Such unpaid work often makes it possible for other family members to participate in the regular labor market. Finally, the author discusses other broad purposes that might be served by family migration, including promoting gender parity in immigration. As women disproportionately use family categories to migrate, a family-based immigration system would supply more women to care for an aging U.S. population.

Defining American: The Dream Act, Immigration Reform and Citizenship
Nevada Law Journal (forthcoming), University of Baltimore School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper, April 18, 2013, 82 pp.
Author: Elizabeth Keyes
Although giving credit to the DREAM movement for a remarkable transformation of American attitudes on the question of whether undocumented youth should be granted citizenship, the author of this article worries that the narrative of "blamelessness" and "worthiness" may be "raising the bar" for other groups seeking to acquire or retain citizenship rights. Dreamers are often depicted as innocent, hard-working, well-educated, law-abiding and patriotic, but this portrayal "exposes a discourse of undesirability and unworthiness that is already vividly alive not just within immigration reform debates and citizenship law, but also in such civil rights issues as felon disenfranchisement and voter identification laws, both of which affect those who already have citizenship." The author traces the development of the illegality frame from the 19^th century,  "when it was all but impossible to immigrate illegally, to the relentless focus on illegality" today. Recent milestones include the 1996 immigration laws, which made almost all interactions with the criminal justice system grounds for deportation, and the attack on birthright citizenship, which seeks to penalize the parents of so-called "anchor babies." Even the parents of the virtuous dreamers are tainted with this frame ("the blameless child is contrasted to the ‘wrong-doing' parent"), as are those without the time and resources to learn English and pay stiff fines, two requirements for permanent residence under various immigration reform proposals. The author challenges the argument that progress for the Dreamers would create "a positive policy feedback loop." Evidence from recent history shows, in fact, just the opposite. She also warns of the dangers of "fluid conceptions of citizenship," which might "undo or limit the open clarity of our jus soli citizenship law that has been a laudable exception to the overall history of excluding people from citizenship by race."

Immigration in the United States: New Economic, Social, Political Landscapes with Legislative Reform on the Horizon,
Migration Policy Institute, April, 2013, 16 pp.
Authors: Faye Hipsman & Doris Meissner
This article provides a sweeping portrait of U.S. immigration history,  with special attention to post-1965 developments, as well as a succinct but comprehensive overview of the U.S. immigration system. Topics covered include: family and employment-based immigration, refugee admissions, temporary visitors, unauthorized immigrants, immigration enforcement, citizenship, and immigrant integration. The authors also probe today's economic, social and political issues as they relate to proposed comprehensive immigration reform. In looking at U.S. immigration history, the authors suggest a symbiotic relationship between economic development and peaks of immigration, namely the industrial revolution and today's transformation from a manufacturing to a knowledge-based economy. This relationship, however, is less deliberately crafted as it is determined by forces outside of Washington: "For a nation of immigrants and immigration, the United States adjusts its immigration policies only rarely... As a result, immigration policy has often been increasingly disconnected from the economic and social forces that drive immigration." (Denzil Mohammed)

Bride and Prejudice:  How the U.S. Immigration Law Discriminates Against Spousal Visa Holders,
February 28, 2013, Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law & Justice, forthcoming,  51 pp.
Author: Sabrina Balgamwalla
This article argues that U.S. visa law, rooted in antiquated, 19^thcentury notions of spousal relations, has had "devastating consequences for the day-to-day lives of H-4 spouses."  These are the spouses of H-1B visa holders, who are coveted by high tech firms for their technical skills.  Unable to legally work in the U.S., spouses are effectively confined to their homes.  They are unable to obtain a divorce, maintain custody of their children, and escape relationships of domestic violence. The article examines the origins of the spousal visa program in the gendered norms of "coverture," which "establishes a regime that subordinates one human to another." The situation of H-4 visa holders remains an anomaly in the field of U.S. immigration law, as dependents in other visa categories, such as spouses of intra-company transferees and exchange visitors, are permitted to work.  The author finds this exception to be peculiar, because H-1Bs and their spouses, unlike other non-immigrants, are considered "Americans in waiting," eligible to advance to permanent residence through employer petitions. The author recommends that the plight of these spouses be addressed in new immigration reform legislation.

Overcriminalizing Immigration,
The Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology, 2012, 39 pp.
Author:  Jennifer M. Chacon
This article seeks to bring immigration law into the broader conversation about overcriminalization. The author contends that state and local governments are creating "too many crimes and criminaliz(ing) things that properly should not be crimes." Immigration law is part of this pattern. Three trends converge to reinforce this pattern: the challenge to federal exclusivity in immigration regulation, sub-federal criminalization of migration, and increased federal enforcement efforts in response to charges that the federal government is "not doing enough" to enforce immigration law. In 1993, only 5.4 percent of federal criminal cases involved immigration offenses. By 2009, 46 percent of all federal arrests involved immigration, followed by drug (17 percent) and supervision (13 percent) violations. In 2009, two-thirds of all individuals prosecuted for individual crimes were "petty misdemeanants in...five Southwest border districts"  According to the author, the criminalization of immigration has had at best a "marginal effect on migration flows....(but) has come at huge cost and could likely have been attained through more effective migration policy outside of the criminal sphere." Moreover, "the cost of immigration enforcement is crowding out other investments in criminal justice, particularly during a time of scarce resources," and leading to other harms, such as increased reliance on racial profiling and systematic violations of Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure.

Making Legal: The Dream Act, Birthright Citizenship, and Broad-Scale Legalization,
Lewis & Clark Law Review, Winter, 2012, 21 pp.
Author: Hiroshi Motomura
This paper looks at the arguments for and against three types of policy initiatives to grant legal status or citizenship to persons who might otherwise be in the U.S. unlawfully:  the Dream Act, birthright citizenship, and a broad-scale legalization program. The author begins her analysis by identifying the major arguments used by the Supreme Court in its landmark 1982 decision Plyler v. Doe, which held that no state can limit a child's access to education based on immigration status. The three arguments were: the complexity of unlawful presence, the limited role of states and localities, and the need to integrate unauthorized immigrants, especially children. She shows how these three arguments remain pivotal in debates over the three legalization initiatives. She also analyzes the principal arguments used by opponents of these measures, which often echo the arguments of supporters through their reliance on concepts of "fairness" and "pragmatism." In general, she finds these arguments unpersuasive. Indeed, she turns the "rule of law" argument on its head by showing how "malleable" the rule of law actually is in immigration matters, referring specifically to measures adopted by Congress in 1996 that denied discretionary relief to immigrants, limited the jurisdiction of federal courts to review removal orders, and stripped immigrants of the right to counsel.  The author concludes that "rule of law arguments in favor of conferring status are stronger than rule of law arguments against doing so."

Amnesty in Immigration: Forgetting, Forgiving, Freedom,
Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 2013
Author: Linda Bosniak
This paper analyzes the meanings of "amnesty" in political discourse. The author identifies three separate, but sometimes overlapping, meanings, which she describes as forgive-and-forget, administrative reset, and vindication. "Forgive-and-forget" emphasizes the state's beneficence in granting pardon for the initial offense, as well as the seriousness of the original offense, often prompting the state to set qualifying conditions for amnesty, e.g. fines, loss of benefits, community services, public apology, etc. The second amnesty model called "administrative reset" is often predicated on the notion that the law in question is "largely unenforceable;" hence, it is in the state's interest to reach an agreement with transgressors. This sort of amnesty often occurs in a regulatory environment, such as tax collections or fines. The third model ("amnesty as vindication") carries with it an "acknowledgement by the government that either the violated rule or norm, or the beneficiary's prosecution for it, was not justifiable in the first place."  There is a "reframing" of the original behavior, such that it appears "comprehensible, excusable and, perhaps, justifiable."  In the context of the current immigration debate, the author sees the three models shaping the perspectives of participants and therefore "cut(ting) in various directions."  However, she feels that the "center of gravity" of the current debate lies somewhere between forgive-and-forget and administrative reset. Even among immigrant advocates, there is a general consensus that some form recompense must be paid for the original violation of immigration law. Although most political theorists also support immigration amnesty, they generally use a "time and ties" argument, rarely calling into question the legitimacy of the original laws; nor do they "interrogate the validity of the state's underlying border norm." The author concludes by laying out four arguments that could be used to frame immigration amnesty as "vindication."

Immigration Enforcement in the United States: The Rise of a Formidable Machinery,
Migration Policy Institute, January, 2013, 175 pp.
Authors: Doris Meissner, Donald M. Kerwin, Muzaffar Chishti, and Claire Bergeron
This report analyzes the current immigration enforcement system which dates back to the passage of the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986. It examines the evolution of the system in terms of budgets, personnel, enforcement actions and technology, and reviews the genesis and impacts of programs, such as Secure Communities, Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act Section 287(g), post-9/11 visa screening and new federal databases. It explains how all of these have combined into a complex, interconnected, cross-agency system, reflecting the development of a "strong, pro-enforcement consensus" in Congress.  Immigration Enforcement in the United Statesreveals that deportations have risen more than ten-fold between 1990 (30,039) and 2011 (391,953), totaling more than four million non-citizens over two decades. Less than half of the non-citizens deported from the U.S. are removed pursuant to a formal hearing before an immigration judge; the majority are removed instead by the Department of Homeland Security. The report also finds that the population of the immigration detention system in 2011 (nearly 430,000) exceeded the number of people serving sentences in federal prisons for all other federal crimes. In total, immigration enforcement spending has totaled nearly $187 billion in the 26 years since IRCA ($219 billion in 2012 dollars). The authors conclude that "the facts on the ground no longer support assertions of mounting illegal immigration and demands for building an ever-larger law enforcement bulwark to combat it."  Indeed, the use of enforcement resources must be reexamined in light of reduced migratory pressure in Mexico, and lowered pull factors in the United States, and the need to create an immigration system that better reflects economic and labor market needs. According to the authors, the country has succeeded with the "enforcement first" approach. The time has arrived to address fundamental immigration reform and "to mitigate the severest human costs of immigration enforcement thereby ensuring the integrity of the nation's immigration laws and traditions." (Denzil Mohammed)

Persons Who Are Not the People: The Changing Rights of Immigrants in the United States,
Valparaiso University Law School, Legal Studies Research Paper, December, 2012, 82 pp.
Author: Geoffrey Heeren
This paper examines the legal history of "immigrant rights" in the United States, with special attention to the distinction between rights of membership, which are restricted for those who lack legal status or citizenship in the country, and rights of personhood, which are guaranteed by the Equal Protection Clause of the 14^th Amendment. While rights of membership, including the right to vote, were easy to acquire in the 19^thcentury, often only requiring the filing of "first papers" indicating the intention to become a citizen, they have become increasingly restrictive in recent times. At the same time, the courts in the United States have grown reluctant to afford rights of personhood to immigrants, especially those who lack legal status. Instead, when federal courts have ruled in favor of immigrants, they have generally invoked a preemption argument. The author considers this a dangerous trend, as preemption doesn't work for immigrants when federal statutes are at issue, and preemption arguments can also be used to strike down pro-immigrant statutes. The "dissipating membership rights of immigrants," coupled with reluctance to use the equal protection clause as "a shield against majoritarian abuse," puts immigrants in a vulnerable position, inconsistent with the core values of the nation.  Indeed, "a loss in immigrant rights might be a bellwether for a broader reduction of American rights."

Study of the Outcomes and Impacts of the Global Forum on Migration and Development and Civil Society Days,
The MacArthur Foundation, October, 2012, 30 pp.
The Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) was established after the first UN General Assembly High Level Dialogue on Migration and Development in 2006. The Forum has been held annually since 2006, with host countries alternating between developing and developed countries. As the report notes, "migration and development as thematic areas were combined in an effort to ensure (that) both countries of origin and countries of destination would participate." Each year, the forum is preceded by "Civil Society Days (CSD)," a gathering of non-profit advocacy organizations, convened to "ground the discussions in the realities migrants were facing ... (and) to inform the state-led discussion and build off it." As the largest non-governmental donor to the GFMD process, the MacArthur Foundation commissioned this study to assess the impact of the GFMD "on policies, practices, issue framing, and government-civil society cooperation..." The study found considerable frustration with the ability of civil society organizations to impact the agenda of the GFMD and the government policy-setting process.  A major conclusion of the report is that stakeholders need to develop a "credible and validated theory of change" and restructure the participation of civil society organizations in a manner consistent with that theory.  Moreover, "if stakeholders believe enhanced access and interaction with government to be a key objective of the CSD, this need to be agreed at the State-led meeting and the structure and activities will have to be modified accordingly."

Stateless in the United States: Current Reality and a Future Prediction,
Emory University School of Law, September 30, 2012, 57 pp.
There are an estimated 12 million people worldwide who are "stateless," meaning that no nation-state recognizes them as being citizens.  This paper argues that the frequency of statelessness would be "exacerbated exponentially" if states were to institute "jus sanguinis" policies, i.e. not awarding citizenship to children born in a particular country ("jus soli"), but rather making citizenship dependent on the nationality of the parents. "This is because the location of one's birth is generally easier to prove than the nationality of one's parents..."  Written by Prof. Polly J. Price, the paper reviews the various international efforts to address this problem, beginning with the 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons. Despite these efforts, and the fact that most countries in the Americas, with the exception of the Dominican Republic, practice jus soli, "widespread failures to register existing citizens, displacement due to civil conflict and migration, and discrimination against indigenous groups and others have resulted in a substantial number of persons in the Americas who are effectively stateless." Among these persons are an estimated 250,000 children and adolescents in Nicaragua, a large numbers of indigenous and Afro-Colombian groups displaced by the Colombian civil war, and stateless Haitians in the Dominican Republic. She then turns to the landscape of statelessness in the United States, discussing recurring difficulties in deporting undocumented immigrants to countries that do not accept them as citizens or where diplomatic agreements covering repatriation do not exist. She concludes with an analysis of the potential adverse effects of the proposed Birthright Citizenship Act of 2011, which if enacted into law, would likely create a burgeoning "undeportable underclass" of stateless people.

Legalization of Undocumented Immigrants Can Reduce Crime,
Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, Policy Brief, September, 2012, 6 pp.
The author of this policy brief, Scott Ross Baker, predicts a significant reduction in crime as a result of President Obama's Deferred Action Program. He bases his conclusion on research showing sharp drops in crime after the implementation of the 1986 legalization program - a reduction apparently unrelated to any other possible explanatory variable. He speculates that this phenomenon may be caused by one or more of the following factors:  more legalized immigrants started families or brought their spouses or children to live with them (crime rates in general  tend to be lower among people living in families), newly legalized immigrants were no longer fearful of going to the police to report crimes, and they had more opportunities to obtain an education and enter the formal labor market.

Contested Ground:  Immigration in the United States,
Migration Policy Institute & Transatlantic Council on Migration, July, 2012, 21 pp.
In this paper prepared for the 7^thplenary meeting of the Transatlantic Council in November, 2011, Cornell Professor Michael Jones-Correa argues that the diversification of migrant streams to the United States, the growth in the size of the undocumented population, and the dispersal of immigrants to states and localities with little recent experience with migration, have "sparked anxiety among the American public." This anxiety is especially pronounced among the elderly population, who wield "disproportionate influence on the political system" and who grew up in an era when immigration was at a low point and when the racial complexion of the nation was quite different. Jones-Correa finds little correlation between public attitudes towards immigrants and economic conditions in states and localities, suggesting that unemployment rates and perceived competition for jobs are not significant factors in shaping public attitudes. He concludes that "it would be a mistake to interpret the debate around immigration as solely about economics." Instead, there is a widespread belief that "immigration is changing society, largely for the worse," and despite research to the contrary, this belief is hard to dispel.  Although Jones-Correa offers no prescriptions for allaying this anxiety, he does argue that "the central policy challenge" facing the country is quite different. By 2009, almost one-quarter of children under the age of 18, or 17.4 million youth, were immigrants or the children of immigrants. The future of the nation hangs on the ability of these young people to succeed in school and the workplace. Regrettably, however, "integration efforts at the national level have been almost nonexistent."

Unauthorized Immigrants in the United States and Europe: The Use of Legalization/Regularization as a Policy Tool,
Migration Policy Institute, May, 2012, 9 pp.
Drawing on previous MPI research, this paper provides a brief history of legalization programs  in the U.S. and Europe. More than 5 million unauthorized immigrants have been regularized in the European Union since 1996 -- the vast majority in the southern tier countries of Italy, Spain, and Greece. Although leaders in northern European countries now frown on regularization as a policy tool, policies of "toleration" have remained popular in these countries. In the U.S., more than 3.7 million unauthorized immigrants have been legalized since 1986, mainly through the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986, the Cuban Adjustment Program, Cancellation of Removal, and the Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act. Between 1929 and 1986, more than 1.5 million undocumented people, or people on temporary visas, acquired permanent residence in the U.S., some through the registry program.  This program allows people who have resided unlawfully in the U.S. for long periods and who meet other qualifications to adjust to permanent residence. Congress has advanced the registry year four times since 1929: in 1940, 1958, 1965, and 1986. The current year is 1972. In addition, since 1952 Congress has acted 16 times to grant permanent residence to persons in temporary legal status.  According to the authors, ever since Congress placed numerical restrictions on immigration in 1921, "Congress has regularly found it necessary to legalize discrete groups that have strong equitable and humanitarian claims to remain in the United States. Many argue that the current unauthorized population includes many residents who have similar claims and that Congress may find it necessary to pursue the legalization option once again."

The Relationship Between Immigration and Nativism in Europe and North America,
Transatlantic Council on Migration, May, 2012, 42 pp.
This paper, written by Cas Mudde of DePauw University for the 7^thplenary meeting of the Transatlantic Council in 2011, attempts to map the landscape of "radical right" and "nativist" parties and organizations in Europe and North America. Since 1980, such parties have had limited electoral success. They have gained more than 15 percent of the popular vote in only three countries:  Austria, Denmark, and Switzerland, but they have managed to shift the debate in many European countries. According to Mudde, "nowadays, virtually all but a few radical left and green parties consider immigration a fundamental challenge to their society at best and a threat at worst."  Yet, there has also been a strong countermovement of private organizations, such as SOS Racism in France and the British Anti-Nazi League, that have worked to discredit the racist propaganda of these parties.  Local and national governments have also utilized anti-discrimination legislation to curb the activities of these groups and to stimulate a pro-immigrant discourse.  Despite their impact on national policies, the author considers the relationship between immigration and "extremism" to be "unclear and complex ...rising numbers of immigrants do not automatically translate into increasing extremism in a country..." The best example is the United States, where "a powerful pro-immigrant lobby," made up of "big business, immigrant groups, and libertarians" stands as a counterweight to nativist forces.  Despite the role played by nativist organizations and parities in "the tightening of immigration laws, particularly those regarding asylum, they have lost the big  battle as both Western Europe and North American are increasingly multiethnic societies."

The Under-Registration of Births in Mexico: Consequences for Children, Adults, and Migrants,
Migration Policy Institute, April 12, 2012, 7 pp.
This article examines the causes and effects of the under-registration of Mexican births. Estimates indicate that more than 7 million people in Mexico currently lack a birth certificate, with approximately 30 percent of children under the age of  five going unregistered. Research suggests that the poorest and most marginalized groups within Mexico are the most likely to go unregistered due to costs, civic disengagement, and cultural barriers. The author notes that the lack of a birth certificate further increases vulnerability by limiting access to education, health care, labor markets, voting, and other human rights. Additionally, individuals without identity face a higher risk of being victimized and recruited by traffickers and criminal syndicates as their identity is nonexistent in government databases. The article also discusses the plight of those who are "doubly-undocumented," i.e.  Mexicans  who migrate to the U.S. in search of  the opportunities they are denied in their homeland.  Unable to obtain the matricula consular, an ID issued by the Mexican consulate and accepted by some institutions and local governments within the U.S.,  they face challenges beyond those of undocumented migrants who can claim at least one national identity. The author concludes by noting the progress Mexico has made in documenting all births, but observes that the country "is far from achieving universal registration," and that the unregistered living in the U.S. are likely to remain stateless for the foreseeable future. Dan McNulty

Rethinking National Identity in the Age of Migration: Council Statement
Transatlantic Council on Migration (Migration Policy Institute), February, 2012, 10 pp.
This statement emanated from the 7^th plenary meeting of the Transatlantic Council on Migration held in Berlin in November, 2011.  The Council is composed of public officials, business leaders, and academics from Europe, the United States, and Canada. The meeting "focused on what policymakers can do to mitigate the disorienting effects of rapid social change - especially change tied or perceived to be tiedto immigration..."  The statement offers 10 key recommendations, providing a policy blueprint for leaders in addressing questions of migration. Among the recommendations are:  "hon(ing) listening skills to truly understand their electorate's anxiety about immigration (and related issues)...emphasiz(ing) a process of belonging and ‘becoming' rather than a static sense of ‘being'" in discussions of national identity..." and creat(ing) clear and transparent pathways to permanent residence and citizenship... (to) encourage immigrants to make a long-term commitment to society." The statement also makes a number of striking observations, including the following: "efforts to curb plural identities are beyond the reach of state authority and will be counterproductive; accepting such identities does not erode social cohesion, whereas limiting their expression can make them more salient." The Council also proposes a strategy to gain broader public acceptance for public investments in immigrant integration by "gradually honing in on sets of circumstances that apply to broader swaths of society (particularly poverty and lack of education) as a means of building larger coalitions of support."

The Cost to Americans and America of Ending Birthright Citizenship,
National Foundation for American Policy, March, 2012, 25 pp.
The author of this paper argues against proposed changes to the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees citizenship to most U.S.-born children, including children of unauthorized immigrants.  Although a number of different proposals have been floated to restrict citizenship, all of them, according to the author, "will add more complexity and bureaucracy to the lives of all Americans."  Before any state can issue a birth certificate, the federal government will have to certify the status of the child's parents.  Given the complexity of immigration laws, the cost to administer such a program "will be roughly equivalent to a $600 baby tax on every child born in the United States." The author also questions the rationale for the change: "most illegal immigration to the united States is driven by economic factors (jobs), or a desire to reunite with family members, not the attraction of birthright citizenship." Finally, the paper cautions against the economic and social consequences of restricting citizenship, which will lead to a quadrupling of the number of young people without status, the shrinking of their economic potential, and their entry into the shadow economy. Portions of this paper originally appeared in an article commissioned by the Cato Institute and appearing in the winter 2011 issue of the Cato Journal.

Unintended Consequences of US Immigration Policy: Explaining the Post-1965 Surge from Latin America,
Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, March, 2012, 29 pp.
The authors of this article, Douglas S. Massey and Karen A. Pren, trace the evolution of U.S. immigration policy towards Latin America since the end of the Braceroprogram in 1964, which permitted ca. 450,000 Mexicans to enter annually as temporary workers during the fifties. In 1965, a cap was placed on Latin American migration to the United States, eventually leading to a per country cap of 20,000 (previously Latin Americans were exempted from numerical restrictions on immigration). These two policy changes sparked the rise of illegal immigration from Mexico. The authors then trace the rise of the "Latino threat" narrative in the media, which initially used marine metaphors, e.g. flood, tidal wave, inundate, etc., and later martial metaphors, e.g. attacks, invasion, etc., to describe illegal immigration on the southern border. "Politicians quickly discovered the political advantages to be gained by demonizing Latino immigrants and illegal migration" especially at a time of rising income inequality.  The authors also suggest this narrative was an important "factor in the rightward shift of American public opinion." Curiously, the rising tide of anti-immigrant legislation and increased border enforcement had little to do with the actual levels of illegal migration which tapered off after the late 1970s. The increase in the size of the undocumented migrant population in the U.S. occurred because of the decline in circular migration. "As the costs and risks of unauthorized border crossing mounted, migrants minimized them by shifting from a circular to a settled pattern of migration, essentially hunkering down and staying once they had successfully run the gauntlet at the border." Moreover, Mexicans who were legal residents of the U.S. naturalized in growing numbers after 1986 ("defense naturalization," it was called), fearful of possible deportation and loss of benefits, and thus were able to petition for their close relatives outside of numerical limits. In conclusion, if the goal of federal immigration initiatives "was to limit immigration from Latin America and prevent the demographic transformation of the United States, they achieved the opposite."

Amnesty or Abolition? Felons, Illegals, and the Case for a New Abolition Movement,
Boom: A Journal of California, Winter, 2011, 13 pp.
Author: Kelly Lytle Hernandez
This essay finds parallels between the development of immigrant criminalization and the "alienation of citizen offenders." According to the author, undocumented immigrants, as well as prisoners and ex-offenders, constitute a racialized (predominantly Black and Latino) caste denied equal rights and the full privileges of membership in society.  She traces the history of immigrant criminalization back to the Civil War. An important milestone occurred in 1893, when the Supreme Court ruled in Fong Yue Ting that the federal government's right to expel foreigners was "absolute" and "unqualified."  In effect, the Bill of Rights did not apply to these individuals and "for the first time since slavery, an entire category of people in the United States could be imprisoned without a trial by jury." The consequences of mass incarceration in the United States, which exploded during the 1980s, are similar. Even after the abolition of slavery, black "convicts emerged as legitimate subjects of involuntary servitude."  Today, two-thirds of the more than 2 million people behind bars are African-American or Latino.  The "collateral" consequences of a conviction, even for ex-offenders, are grave, including denial of the right to vote, a lifetime ban on welfare benefits for drug offenders, and difficulties in finding employment. One legal scholar refers to this situation as the "new Jim Crow."  The author opines that even a path to citizenship - while urgently needed for the undocumented - "may not be as valuable as it seems if pursued without a challenge to the inequities of mass incarceration."

Restoring Trust in the Management of Migration and Borders: Council Statement,
Transatlantic Council on Migration, 2011, 8, pp.
Written by Demetrios  G. Papademetriou, President of the Migration Policy Institute, this statement reflects the thinking of a group of high-level officials from Europe and North America who since 2008 have been meeting on a regular basis "to identify the best ways to bring greater order and legality to migration, border management, and labor market systems and thus restore public trust in government's ability to manage these complex tasks." The statement begins by making some recommendations to change the narrative on immigration, including setting realistic goals, articulating why immigration is in the national interest, and adhering closely to the rule of law. The Council then lays out a series of steps to implement a "whole-of-system" approach to controlling illegal immigration, involving a range of policy tools utilized in a coordinated manner.  Finally, the statement calls for "building a new architecture for border management," involving the effective and strategic use of technology and the allocation of resources based on risk.

World Migration Report 2011: Communicating Effectively About Migration,
International Organization for Migration (IOM), 2011, 158 pp.
The 2011 report (the sixth in a series begun in 2000) is divided into two parts. Part A examines how perceptions and attitudes about migration shape public opinion in immigrant-receiving countries, which in turn influence policies adopted by governments. The report calls for a "fundamental shift in how we communicate about migration" and stresses "the need for the promotion of a better understanding and recognition of the benefits of migration, more evidence-based policymaking and a more effective engagement with migrants themselves."  The report also provides some examples of effective communication strategies used by governments, civil society, international organizations, and the media. This section of the report also includes a review of major migration trends of 2010/2011, including policy and legislative developments, efforts to promote international cooperation and dialogue on migration issues, and the migratory impact of upheavals in the Middle East and North Africa.  Part B reflects on IOM's history on the 60^thanniversary of its founding in 1951, with particular attention to developments during the last decade. In commenting on the report, the director general of IOM suggested that providing accurate information to the public about migration might be "the single most important policy tool in all societies faced with increasing diversity."