ImmigrationProf Blog

From the Bookshelves: Conflicting Commitments: The Politics of Enforcing Immigrant Worker Rights in San Jose and Houston by Shannon Gleeson

Conflicting Commitments: The Politics of Enforcing Immigrant Worker Rights in San Jose and Houston by Shannon Gleeson, Cornell University Press (2012)

In Conflicting Commitments, Shannon Gleeson goes beyond the debate over federal immigration policy to examine the complicated terrain of immigrant worker rights. Federal law requires that basic labor standards apply to all workers, yet this principle clashes with increasingly restrictive immigration laws and creates a confusing bureaucratic terrain for local policymakers and labor advocates. Gleeson examines this issue in two of the largest immigrant gateways in the country: San Jose, California, and Houston, Texas. Conflicting Commitments reveals two cities with very different approaches to addressing the exploitation of immigrant workers—both involving the strategic coordination of a range of bureaucratic brokers, but in strikingly different ways. Drawing on the real life accounts of ordinary workers, federal, state, and local government officials, community organizers, and consular staff, Gleeson argues that local political contexts matter for protecting undocumented workers in particular. Providing a rich description of the bureaucratic minefields of labor law, and the explosive politics of immigrant rights, Gleeson shows how the lessons learned from San Jose and Houston can inform models for upholding labor and human rights in the United States.

KJ

From the Bookshelves: Immigrant Struggles, Immigrant Gifts by Diane Portnoy

 

“It is said that the quality of recent immigration is undesirable. The time is quite within recent memory when the same thing was said of immigrants who, with their descendants, are now numbered among our best citizens.” – Grover Cleveland, veto message to proposed literacy test to restrict immigration, 1897

Sadly, this statement is no less true in 2012 than it was in 1897. Seen from today’s vantage point, it can be easy to forget that Germans were once derided for not speaking English, Eastern Europeans were considered inferior to real “white” people, and Mexicans have been an integral part of the social and economic fabric of the U.S. for more than 200 years.

Immigrant Struggles, Immigrant Gifts chronicles the experience of 11 immigrant groups in the U.S. written by 11 experts in their respective fields. By showing how each of these immigrant groups have faced discrimination, struggled to assimilate and ultimately made significant contributions to American life from the country’s founding through today, the current immigration debate can be seen as an ongoing dialogue repeating the same themes down through history. This book is part of The Immigrant Learning Center’s ongoing efforts through its Public Education Institute to educate the American public about the contributions of immigrants.

KJ

From the Bookshelves: My Beloved World by Justice Sonia Sotomayor

My Beloved World by Justice Sonia Sotomayor

The first Hispanic and third woman appointed to the United States Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor has become an instant American icon. Now, with a candor and intimacy never undertaken by a sitting Justice, she recounts her life from a Bronx housing project to the federal bench, a journey that offers an inspiring testament to her own extraordinary determination and the power of believing in oneself. Here is the story of a precarious childhood, with an alcoholic father (who would die when she was nine) and a devoted but overburdened mother, and of the refuge a little girl took from the turmoil at home with her passionately spirited paternal grandmother. But it was when she was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes that the precocious Sonia recognized she must ultimately depend on herself. She would learn to give herself the insulin shots she needed to survive and soon imagined a path to a different life. With only television characters for her professional role models, and little understanding of what was involved, she determined to become a lawyer, a dream that would sustain her on an unlikely course, from valedictorian of her high school class to the highest honors at Princeton, Yale Law School, the New York County District Attorney’s office, private practice, and appointment to the Federal District Court before the age of forty. Along the way we see how she was shaped by her invaluable mentors, a failed marriage, and the modern version of extended family she has created from cherished friends and their children. Through her still-astonished eyes, America’s infinite possibilities are envisioned anew in this warm and honest book, destined to become a classic of self-invention and self-discovery.

A few days ago, Nina Totenberg interviewed Justice Sotomayor on NPR.  Dahlia Lithwack offers an interesting review, comparing Sotomayor's autobiography with Justice Thomas's.

KJ

From the Bookshelves: From Cape Town to Kabul Rethinking Strategies for Pursuing Women's Human Rights by Penelope Andrews

From Cape Town to Kabul Rethinking Strategies for Pursuing Women's Human Rights by Penelope Andrews, Albany Law School

Using her experience of living under apartheid and witnessing its downfall and the subsequent creation of new governments in South Africa, the author examines and compares gender inequality in societies undergoing political and economic transformation. By applying this process of legal transformation as a paradigm, the author applies this model to Afghanistan. These two societies serve as counterpoints through which the book engages, in a nuanced and novel way, with the many broader issues that flow from the attempts in newly democratic societies to give effect to the promise of gender equality. Developing the idea of ‘conditional interdependence’, the book suggests a new approach based on the communitarian values which underpin newly democratic societies and would allow women’s rights to gain momentum and reap greater benefits. Broad in its thematic approach, the book generates challenging and complex questions about the achievement of gender equality. It will be of interest to academics interested in gender and human rights, international and comparative law.

KJ

From the Bookshelves: A Wicked War by Amy S. Greenberg

A Wicked War by Amy S. Greenberg

Often forgotten and overlooked, the U.S.-Mexican War featured false starts, atrocities, and daring back-channel negotiations as it divided the nation, paved the way for the Civil War a generation later, and launched the career of Abraham Lincoln. Amy S. Greenberg’s skilled storytelling and rigorous scholarship bring this American war for empire to life with memorable characters, plotlines, and legacies. When President James K. Polk compelled a divided Congress to support his war with Mexico, it was the first time that the young American nation would engage another republic in battle. Caught up in the conflict and the political furor surrounding it were Abraham Lincoln, then a new congressman; Polk, the dour president committed to territorial expansion at any cost; and Henry Clay, the aging statesman whose presidential hopes had been frustrated once again, but who still harbored influence and had one last great speech up his sleeve. Beyond these illustrious figures, A Wicked War follows several fascinating and long-neglected characters: Lincoln’s archrival John Hardin, whose death opened the door to Lincoln’s rise; Nicholas Trist, gentleman diplomat and secret negotiator, who broke with his president to negotiate a fair peace; and Polk’s wife, Sarah, whose shrewd politicking was crucial in the Oval Office. This definitive history of the 1846 conflict paints an intimate portrait of the major players and their world. It is a story of Indian fights, Manifest Destiny, secret military maneuvers, gunshot wounds, and political spin. Along the way it captures a young Lincoln mismatching his clothes, the lasting influence of the Founding Fathers, the birth of the Daughters of the American Revolution, and America’s first national antiwar movement. A key chapter in the creation of the United States, it is the story of a burgeoning nation and an unforgettable conflict that has shaped American history.

Watch the author give a very interesting talk about the book on PBS.

KJ

From the Bookshelves: Love and Empire: Cybermarriage and Citizenship across the Americas by Felicity Amaya Schaeffer

Love and Empire: Cybermarriage and Citizenship across the Americas by Felicity Amaya Schaeffer

The spread of the Internet is remaking marriage markets, altering the process of courtship and the geographic trajectory of intimacy in the 21st century. For some Latin American women and U.S. men, the advent of the cybermarriage industry offers new opportunities for re-making themselves and their futures, overthrowing the common narrative of trafficking and exploitation. In this engaging, stimulating virtual ethnography, Felicity Amaya Schaeffer follows couples’ romantic interludes at “Vacation Romance Tours,” in chat rooms, and interviews married couples in the United States in order to understand the commercialization of intimacy. While attending to the interplay between the everyday and the virtual, Love and Empire contextualizes personal desires within the changing global economic and political shifts across the Americas. By examining current immigration policies and the use of Mexican and Colombian women as erotic icons of the nation in the global marketplace, she forges new relations between intimate imaginaries and state policy in the making of new markets, finding that women’s erotic self-fashioning is the form through which women become ideal citizens, of both their home countries and in the United States. Through these little-explored, highly mediated romantic exchanges, Love and Empire unveils a fresh perspective on the continually evolving relationship between the U.S. and Latin America.

KJ

From the Bookshelves: Randy Lopez Goes Home: A Novel By Rudolfo Anaya

Randy Lopez Goes Home: A Novel By Rudolfo Anaya

A new novel by the master storyteller that explores what it means to go home When he was a young man, Randy Lopez left his village in northern New Mexico to seek his fortune. Since then, he has learned some of the secrets of success in the Anglo world—and even written a book called Life Among the Gringos. But something has been missing. Now he returns to Agua Bendita to reconnect with his past and to find the wisdom the Anglo world has not provided. In this allegorical account of Randy's final journey, master storyteller Rudolfo Anaya tackles life's big questions with a light touch. Randy's entry into the haunted canyon that leads to his ancestral home begins on the Day of the Dead. Reuniting with his padrinos—his godparents—and hoping to meet up with his lost love, Sofia, Randy encounters a series of spirits: coyotes, cowboys, Death, and the devil. Each one engages him in a conversation about life. It is Randy's old teacher Miss Libriana who suggests his new purpose. She gives him a book, How to Build a Bridge. Only the bridge—which is both literal and figurative, like everything else in this story—can enable Randy to complete his journey. Readers acquainted with Anaya's fiction will find themselves in familiar territory here. Randy Lopez, like all Anaya's protagonists, is on a spiritual quest. But both those new to and familiar with Anaya will recognize this philosophical meditation as part of a long literary tradition going back to Homer, Dante, and the Bible. Richly allusive and uniquely witty, Randy Lopez Goes Home presents man's quest for meaning in a touching, thought-provoking narrative that will resound with young adults and mature readers alike.

KJ

Lack of Latino Role Models in Books for Young Latino Readers

Earlier this week, ImmigrationProf reported on the criticism of the hit film Argo for having Ben Affleck portray the Mexican-American hero of the spy caper and effectively erasing his Mexican ancestry.  Along similar lines, it appears that young Latino readers have a very difficult time finding any books with Latino characters.  Read on.

Why is it so hard to find Latino role models in popular American culture?  Finding Latinos in positive roles on television and film can be difficult.  By the way, skip the recent Oliver Stone film Savages if you want to see positive portrayals of Latinos.

KJ

From the Bookshelves: Five Grounds by Scott Rempell (A Novel)

Five Grounds by Scott Rempell

From distant corners of the globe, three strangers risk everything to reach the shores of the United States. In Ethiopia, Tesfaye abandons his post at the Ministry of Defense and attempts to escape the country while a crazed rebel commander hunts him down for reasons he will spend years trying to fully understand. Lin’s mother forces her to leave China to protect her from the same fate that led to her father’s disappearance. In Mexico, Sofia’s health rapidly deteriorates, so she leaves behind her two young children and the memory of a murdered husband. These three do not realize just how perilous their journeys will be, nor do they know that reaching U.S. soil will just be the beginning. The dire circumstances that cause them to flee their homelands follow them across oceans and deserts. As Tesfaye, Lin, and Sofia confront their pasts, a federal immigration agent seeks to unravel their new lives. In the process, their once divergent paths ultimately draw closer together. Although Five Grounds is a novel, the depicted story lines are based on a number of true historical events and ongoing circumstances.

KJ

Book Review: Kanstroom Reconsiders the Utility of Deportation as a Crime Control Strategy

By César Cuauhtémoc García Hernåndez

If immigration law is a political tinderbox and doctrinal mess, then deportation law is the clearly demarcated salve: at some point, the problem literally disappears beyond our borders. In his latest book, Aftermath: Deportation Law and the New American Diaspora, Boston College law professor Daniel Kanstroom tries to complicate our understanding of the “problem” that immigration law targets by chronicling deportation law’s increasing use as an adjunct of criminal law enforcement, attacking the federal government’s myopia regarding deportation’s social consequences, and challenges policymakers and advocates to reimagine the role of fairness and rationality in deciding who gets to remain in the United States and who is forced to leave.

The nation’s deportation regime, Kanstroom explains, is “massive” (ix): well over 300,000 people removed each of the last several years, another 700,000 or so returned informally, and a $17 billion immigration policing budget (12, 30-31). All of this naturally results in severe consequences for the people subjected to deportation and their families. Kanstroom poignantly tells the stories of individuals whose homes have been raided by immigration officials, people who have suffered abuse while in immigration prisons, United States citizens wrongly deported, and children torn from their parents.

Where Aftermath truly shines, though, is in Kanstroom’s ability to segue from his awareness of the human impact of immigration policy into a prolonged analysis of immigration law’s irrationalities and fault lines. “[D]eportation,” he writes, “has historically worked as a powerful and efficient government tool of discretionary social control and a key component of the national security state” (29). While deportation law’s target du jour has changed over the course of the nation’s history, today there is little doubt about its focus: noncitizens caught up in the criminal justice system (37).

But deportation as a solution to our own crime problems is wrongheaded. First, the underlying presumption that immigrants are prone to commit more crime than United States citizens is flatly contradicted by reams of evidence (85-89). In fact, immigrants commit less crime and are imprisoned at lower rates than United States citizens. If anything, we ought to be concerned about the fact that immigrants and their children become more involved in crime as they become more embedded in United States culture. This, Kanstroom suggests, is the true “Americanization” problem that should concern policymakers (87).

Second, Kanstroom powerfully argues that relying on deportation as a crime-control strategy is nonsensical. It may be easy to think of deportees as “someone else’s responsibility” once they leave the United States, but that type of social policy shortsightedness ignores on-the-ground realities (16-17). Flooding impoverished nations with individuals who frequently lack any meaningful ties to their country of citizenship creates a security and economic mess that affects people there and here (152-54).

No better example exists than the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), one of today’s largest and most violent gangs. MS-13 began in Los Angeles, made its way to El Salvador when many of its members were deported, then proceeded to destabilize Central American communities (153-54). Today, MS-13 is a thriving transnational operation—its affiliates are in 42 states, Washington, D.C., and México—that the FBI views as so problematic it has launched an international task force specifically targeting it and its leading counterpart Mara 18.

Furthermore, Kanstroom argues that the United States retains a normative interest in what happens to deportees because they are frequently subjected to repressive policies. In El Salvador, Kanstroom writes, “deportees have become scapegoats for worsening crime and other societal problems.” (149). Meanwhile, in Haiti deportees are imprisoned in disease-ridden jails where dying is a very real possibility (147-48). All without much care for whether these individuals are actually dangerous (149).

Kanstroom goes beyond deploring this treatment abroad. Writing with the insight available only to someone with his extensive advocacy history, he draws a clear line between these conditions and the United States’ treatment of individuals facing removal. Our immigration policing apparatus relies increasingly heavily on the federal government’s criminal prosecution power. Rather than view immigrants as individuals coming in search of a better life, today’s dominant immigration law enforcement narrative paints them as dangerous criminals. Immigration raids “tend to be large militaristic exercises that often seem disproportionate to the threat posed by the often terrified workers,” he explains (56), and enterprising federal prosecutors “bec[o]me engaged in the [deportation] enterprise with great energy and enthusiasm” (57), taking legal positions that federal judges have described as “inexplicable” and “disappointing, even shocking” (97).

All the while, 400,000 people cycle through immigration prisons annually--429,000 in fiscal year 2011 alone--where sexual abuse is rampant, deaths more common than they should be, and into which detainees seem to disappear: lawyers and family members, he recounts, are frequently unable to find out where a detainee is held (90-93). Not surprisingly, many individuals give up their fight to remain in the United States not because they lack a plausible argument to stay, but because they cannot bear the indignities of immigration imprisonment (94).

Once outside the United States they become devoid of legal remedies. Even individuals deported on a basis that was later deemed erroneous lack the power to return. The Board of Immigration Appeals steadfastly maintains that its jurisdiction ends where the rest of the world begins—at the country’s territorial boundaries. Such a position, Kanstroom argues, is historically inconsistent and doctrinally troubling: “Should the place where such a claimant happens to stand completely govern the resolution of powerful rights claims? The answer,” he adds, “has long been no” (172). Tax law, for example, reaches United States nationals living abroad, as do the prohibition against treason and military draft registration requirements (169).

All of these support his argument that, in some instances, noncitizens should be able to raise claims from abroad. None, however, is as surprising as his reliance on the legal history of slavery and, in particular, the Dred Scott case. Chief Justice Taney’s “constitutional method,” Kanstroom argues, is potentially useful to deportees: “Taney ironically relied on what might now be considered a rather protective and progressive idea: that the Constitution applied outside the existing states of the Union” (172-73). Taney’s specific application, protecting slavery, “has rightly been definitively repudiated,” he adds, but his understanding of the Constitution as reaching beyond the United States’ borders may help deportees make the claim that they too deserve to have their day in court (173).

Whether or not a particular person is allowed to enter or remain in the United States is a different and equally complicated question. Rather than rely on the misguided rhetoric of immigrant criminality or the one-size-fits-all fixation with territoriality, Kanstroom suggests a mix of “moderately flexible ideas of discretion, judicial oversight, and a humane understanding of basic human rights principles, especially those that mandate proportionality and reject arbitrariness whenever state power is brought to bear against people, regardless of their legal status or their location” (211).

There is nothing radical in these words. He does not propose a wholesale revamping of the rule of law or the end of the nation-state and its sovereign prerogatives. Instead, he merely proposes that deportation law join the family of law governed by principles of equity and the promotion of human dignity, and that unravels under the watchful eyes of the courts. Sadly, deportation law is so far afield, as Kanstroom distressingly exposes, that if these reforms were to occur we would experience a legal upheaval. Until that happens, those of us with much to learn about our nation’s deportation apparatus will do well to continue to rely on his insight and experience to disentangle the complexities of deportation law and shed light on its human impact.

César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández is an assistant professor at Capital University Law School and publisher of crImmigration.com, a blog about the convergence of criminal law and immigration law, which was ranked among the 100 best law blogs of 2012 by the ABA Journal. Take a minute to vote for crImmigration.com as your favorite source of legal information by going to the ABA Journal's web site and finding crImmigration.com listed in the "niche" category. A version of this article appears on crImmigration.com.

From the Bookshelves: The Boy Kings of Texas: A Memoir by Domingo Martinez

The Boy Kings of Texas: A Memoir by Domingo Martinez

Lyrical and gritty, this authentic coming-of-age story about a border-town family in Brownsville, Texas, insightfully illuminates a little-understood corner of America. Domingo Martinez lays bare his interior and exterior worlds as he struggles to make sense of the violent and the ugly, along with the beautiful and the loving, in a Texas border town in the 1980s. Partly a reflection on the culture of machismo and partly an exploration of the author’s boyhood spent in his sister’s hand-me-down clothes, this book delves into the enduring, complex bond between Martinez and his deeply flawed but fiercely protective older brother, Daniel. It features a cast of memorable characters, including his gun-hoarding former farmhand, Gramma, and “the Mimis”— two of his older sisters who for a short, glorious time manage to transform themselves from poor Latina adolescents into upper-class white girls. Martinez provides a glimpse into a society where children are traded like commerce, physical altercations routinely solve problems, drugs are rampant, sex is often crude, and people depend on the family witch doctor for advice. Charming, painful, and enlightening, this book examines the traumas and pleasures of growing up in South Texas and the often terrible consequences when different cultures collide on the banks of a dying river.

Finalist for the 2012 National Book Award.

KJ

From the Bookshelves: Lawless Capitalism: The Subprime Crisis and the Case for an Economic Rule of Law by Steven A. Ramirez

Lawless Capitalism: The Subprime Crisis and the Case for an Economic Rule of Law by Steven A. Ramirez

The subprime mortgage crisis has been blamed on many: the Bush Administration, Bernie Madoff, the financial industry, overzealous housing developers. Yet little scrutiny has been placed on the American legal system as a whole, even though parts of that system, such as the laws that regulate high-risk lending, have been dissected to bits and pieces.

In this innovative and exhaustive study, Steven A. Ramirez posits that the subprime mortgage crisis, as well as the global macroeconomic catastrophe it spawned, is traceable to a gross failure of law. The rule of law must appropriately channel and constrain the exercise of economic and political power. Used effectively, it ensures that economic opportunity isn’t limited to a small group of elites that enjoy growth at the expense of many, particularly those in vulnerable economic situations. In Lawless Capitalism, Ramirez calls for the rule of law to displace crony capitalism. Only through the rule of law, he argues, can capitalism be reconstructed.

KJ

From the Booskshelves: Juan in a Hundred: The Representation of Latinos on Network News by Otto Santa Ana

Juan in a Hundred:  The Representation of Latinos on Network News by Otto Santa Ana

Latinos constitute the fastest-growing and largest ethnic minority in the United States, yet less than one percent of network news coverage deals with Latinos as the focus of a story. Out of that one percent, even fewer stories are positive in either content or tone. Author of the acclaimed Brown Tide Rising: Metaphors of Latinos in Contemporary American Public Discourse, Otto Santa Ana has completed a comprehensive analysis of this situation, blending quantitative research with semiotic readings and ultimately applying cognitive science and humanist theory to explain the repercussions of this marginal, negative coverage. Santa Ana’s choice of network evening news as the foundation for Juan in a Hundred is significant because that medium is currently the single most authoritative and influential source of opinion-generating content.

In his 2004 research, Santa Ana calculated that among approximately 12,000 stories airing across four networks (ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC), only 118 dealt with Latinos, a ratio that has remained stagnant over the past fifteen years. Examining the content of the stories, from briefs to features, reveals that Latino-tagged events are apparently only broadcast when national politics or human calamity are involved, and even then, the Latino issue is often tangential to a news story as a whole.

On global events involving Latin America, U.S. networks often remain silent while BBC correspondents prepare fully developed, humanizing coverage.

The book concludes by demonstrating how this obscurity and misinformation perpetuate maligned perceptions about Latinos. Santa Ana’s inspiring calls for reform are poised to change the face of network news in America.

Otto Santa Ana is Associate Professor of Chicana/o Studies at UCLA. A sociolinguist and critical discourse analyst.  He is the author of the award-winning Brown Tide Rising, which was named Best Book of the Year on Ethnic and Racial Political Ideology by the American Political Science Association.

KJ

Immigration Article of the Day: Sources of International Migration Law by Vincent Chetail

Sources of International Migration Law by Vincent Chetail, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies November 13, 2012 FOUNDATIONS OF INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION LAW, pp. 56-92, B. Opeskin, R. Perruchoud, J. Redpath-Cross, eds., Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Abstract: Although migration is frequently considered as a matter of domestic jurisdiction, the movement of persons has been internationalized by a complex set of norms. The main sources of international law reveal a relatively dense picture. This chapter reviews the sources of international legal norms that govern migration by examining treaty law, customary law and general principles of law. It concludes by assessing the role of soft law on the traditional sources of international migration law.

KJ

From the Bookshelves: Arab America by Nadine Naber

Arab America by Nadine Naber.  Part of the Nation of Newcomers Series, NYU Press, 2012

Arab Americans are one of the most misunderstood segments of the U.S. population, especially after the events of 9/11. In Arab America, Nadine Naber tells the stories of second generation Arab American young adults living in the San Francisco Bay Area, most of whom are political activists engaged in two culturalist movements that draw on the conditions of diaspora, a Muslim global justice and a Leftist Arab movement. Writing from a transnational feminist perspective, Naber reveals the complex and at times contradictory cultural and political processes through which Arabness is forged in the contemporary United States, and explores the apparently intra-communal cultural concepts of religion, family, gender, and sexuality as the battleground on which Arab American young adults and the looming world of America all wrangle. As this struggle continues, these young adults reject Orientalist thought, producing counter-narratives that open up new possibilities for transcending the limitations of Orientalist, imperialist, and conventional nationalist articulations of self, possibilities that ground concepts of religion, family, gender, and sexuality in some of the most urgent issues of our times: immigration politics, racial justice struggles, and U.S. militarism and war.

KJ

From the Bookshelves: Soft Soil, Black Grapes The Birth of Italian Winemaking in California by Simone Cinotto

Soft Soil, Black Grapes The Birth of Italian Winemaking in California by Simone Cinotto NYU PRESS

Abstract: From Ernest and Julio Gallo to Francis Ford Coppola, Italians have shaped the history of California wine. More than any other group, Italian immigrants and their families have made California viticulture one of America’s most distinctive and vibrant achievements, from boutique vineyards in the Sonoma hills to the massive industrial wineries of the Central Valley. But how did a small group of nineteenth-century immigrants plant the roots that flourished into a world-class industry? Was there something particularly “Italian” in their success?

In this fresh, fascinating account of the ethnic origins of California wine, Simone Cinotto rewrites a century-old triumphalist story. He demonstrates that these Italian visionaries were not skilled winemakers transplanting an immemorial agricultural tradition, even if California did resemble the rolling Italian countryside of their native Piedmont. Instead, Cinotto argues that it was the wine-makers’ access to “social capital,” or the ethnic and familial ties that bound them to their rich wine-growing heritage, and not financial leverage or direct enological experience, that enabled them to develop such a successful and influential wine business. Focusing on some of the most important names in wine history —particularly Pietro Carlo Rossi, Secondo Guasti, and the Gallos—he chronicles a story driven by ambition and creativity but realized in a complicated tangle of immigrant entrepreneurship, class struggle, racial inequality, and a new world of consumer culture. Skillfully blending regional, social, and immigration history, Soft Soil, Black Grapes takes us on an original journey into the cultural construction of ethnic economies and markets, the social dynamics of American race, and the fully transnational history of American wine.

KJ

LexisNexis Immigration Law Community Podcast: Stephen Yale-Loehr and Stanley Mailman on 125 Years of Matthew Bender

On this edition, Dan Kowalski, editor of Matthew Bender’s Immigration Bulletin, talks with Stephen Yale-Loehr and Stanley Mailman, authors of the 21-volume Immigration Law and Procedure. They reflect on their time with the treatise and how it has changed over the years.

Immigration Law and Procedure is the "Bible'' of immigration law that has been cited in over 300 federal court decisions in cases from across the U.S. circuit courts of appeals, federal district courts, and the U.S. Supreme Court. Authors Stanley Mailman and Stephen Yale-Loehr are nationally respected immigration specialists whose professional expertise has made Immigration Law & Procedure the flagship Immigration treatise. Their analysis and opinions on undecided points of law have carried considerable weight with the courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court.

KJ

From the Bookshelves: Enslaved Women in America: An Encyclopedia, by Daina Ramey Berry and Deleso A. Alford, editors

Enslaved Women in America:  An Encyclopedia, Daina Ramey Berry and Deleso A. Alford, editors

ABSTRACT:  This singular reference provides an authoritative account of the daily lives of enslaved women in the United States, from colonial times to emancipation following the Civil War. Through essays, photos, and primary source documents, the female experience is explored, and women are depicted as central, rather than marginal, figures in history. One of the most harrowing periods in American history was undoubtedly the era of slavery and its devastating impact on people of African descent. Enslaved women, in particular, had challenging circumstances based on their gender, yet they persevered with strength and grace through extraordinarily difficult life experiences. Slavery in the history of the United States continues to loom large in our national consciousness, and the role of women in this dark chapter of the American past is largely under-examined. This is the first encyclopedia to focus on the daily experiences and roles of female slaves in the United States, from colonial times to official abolition provided by the 13th amendment to the Constitution in 1865.

Enslaved Women in America: An Encyclopedia contains 100 entries written by a range of experts and covering all aspects of daily life. Topics include culture, family, health, labor, resistance, and violence. Arranged alphabetically by entry, this unique look at history features life histories of lesser-known African American women, including Harriet Robinson Scott, the wife of Dred Scott, as well as more notable figures. Features

• Dozens of photos of former enslaved women

• Detailed historical timeline

• Numerous rare primary documents, including runaway slave advertisements and even a plantation recipe for turtle soup

• Profiles of noted female slaves and their works Highlights

• Provides a comprehensive examination of the role of enslaved women in United States history

• Includes contributions from some of the top scholars in the field

• Contains the most current and up-to-date research on enslaved women in the United States

• Addresses current historical debates on a variety of topics referencing slavery

Here is a review by Professor Hope Lewis on IntLawGrrls.

KJ

From the Bookshelves: Punishing Immigrants: Policy, Politics, and Injustice Edited By Charis E. Kubrin, Marjorie S. Zatz and Ramiro Martínez

Punishing Immigrants:  Policy, Politics, and Injustice Edited By Charis E. Kubrin, Marjorie S. Zatz and Ramiro Martínez (NYU Press, 2012)

Arizona’s controversial new immigration bill is just the latest of many steps in the new criminalization of immigrants. While many cite the presumed criminality of "illegal aliens" as an excuse for ever-harsher immigration policies, it has in fact been well-established that immigrants commit less crime, and in particular less violent crime, than the native-born and that their presence in communities is not associated with higher crime rates.

Punishing Immigrants moves beyond debunking the presumed crime and immigration linkage, broadening the focus to encompass issues relevant to law and society, immigration and refugee policy, and victimization, as well as crime. The original essays in this volume uncover and identify the unanticipated and hidden consequences of immigration policies and practices here and abroad at a time when immigration to the U.S. is near an all-time high. Ultimately, Punishing Immigrants illuminates the nuanced and layered realities of immigrants’ lives, describing the varying complexities surrounding immigration, crime, law, and victimization.

KJ

From the Bookshelves: WITHOUT SIN: A Novel By David S. McCabe

WITHOUT SIN: A Novel By David S. McCabe

 As a U.S. Border Patrol Agent and a former Navy Seal, Garrett Harrison is intimately familiar with the notion of duty and the necessity of upholding the law. However, his world is forever changed when he discovers two women brutally murdered and one man clinging to life in the desert wilderness of Otay Mesa. At the same time, Angelina Marguerite, an ill-starred seventeen-year-old prostitute working in a brothel in Tecate, Mexico desperately clings to her faith in God. She hopes for deliverance from the cruel, ambitious drug dealer known as El Cacique who lured her to el norte with the promise of marriage and prosperity, only to force her into prostitution. Meanwhile, the director of a parochial school serving primarily children from migrant families accepts donations from a priest that she suspects molests children. Amidst this corruption and exploitation, Garrett and Angelina fall in love and soon discover that the pursuit of opportunity, liberty and true love comes with a price.

David McCabe is the Coordinator of the Teacher Preparation Program at Pasadena City College and has been an educator in Southern California for twenty years where he has worked closely with migrant children and their families. During his career he has had to confront such serious issues as child abuse, drug use and molestation as well as help families gain access to the services they needed while coping with fears surrounding their immigration status. He currently serves as the advisor for Students Beyond Boundaries, a student organization advocating for the rights of all people. David lives with his wife and son on their small ranch in Southern California.

KJ