ImmigrationProf Blog

Attention Empirical Researchers: DOL's Employment-based Immigration Data

Immprof Lenni Benson (NYLS) recently introduced me to this truly epic resource for empirical researchers: The U.S. Department of Labor's collection of employment-based data.

As the DOL characterizes the data, you'll find:

• Selected statistics providing cumulative quarterly data by major immigration program;
• Cumulative quarterly and fiscal year releases of program disclosure data; and
• Historical fiscal year annual program and performance report information.

Y'all... there is SO. MUCH. DATA.

You want to see who's filing and getting PERM approvals? Done.

You want to see who's filing and getting H1Bs? H2As? H2Bs? E3s? It's all there.

Now, fair warning: The downloadable Excel spreadsheets are so huge just one pretty much took down my work laptop. But for those of you data monsters out there, I've no doubt you're prepared to take this on, dive into the information, and come out with an absolutely fascinating story that I, for one can't wait to read.

Happy digging!

-KitJ

Symposium: "Dred Scott: Beyond Black and White."

The current issue of the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law (Volume 24 (2022), Issue 3 (2022)) is a symposium on "Dred Scott: Beyond Black and White."  It focus on an article by Professor Jack Chin, 

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Dred Scott and Asian Americans

 

It also includes commentary on the article by

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The First Civil Rights Movement: Black Rights in the Age of the Revolution and Chief Taney’s Originalism in Dred Scott

Paul Finkelman

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Roger Taney: Intersectional Racist in an Age of Racist Differentiation

Michael Haggerty and Gregory P. Downs

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Dred Scott and Asian Americans: Was Chief Justice Taney the First Critical Race Theorist?

Kevin R. Johnson

KJ

Many Americans falsely think migrants are bringing most of the fentanyl entering U.S.

 

Sad (and not surprising) but true.  A new NPR/Ipsos poll shows that big numbers of Americans believe incorrectly that "most" of the fentanyl entering the U.S. is smuggled by migrants. It's not the only misleading claim getting traction.  The poll shows that misleading and false claims about immigration are widespread, and their reach may be growing. Large numbers of Americans hold a range of misconceptions about immigrants, from how likely they are to use public benefits to their role in smuggling illegal drugs into the U.S. NPR's Joel Rose reports.

KJ

Voice of America: Voices of Immigrants

Two segments from Voice in America tell the stories of recent migrants to the United States and the challenges (legal and otherwise) that they have faced.

After walking for four months across nearly half a continent, a pregnant Venezuelan citizen says she regrets migrating to the United States. Voice of America (VOA) reporter Divalizeth Cash met her twice in Delaware and Washington. In this first installment of a two-part series, this Venezuelan asylum-seeker and her partner tell their story, narrated by VOA's immigration reporter Aline Barros.

 

As migrants continue to arrive in Washington from Texas- and Arizona-chartered buses, a recently arrived Colombian asylum-seeker shared his story of the barriers he faced after he crossed the U.S.-Mexico border. This is the second installment of a two-part series by VOA reporter Divalizeth Cash and VOA's immigration reporter Aline Barros.

 

KJ

Republican senators challenge immigration rule change on "terrorist support"

Senator Bill Hagerty (Rep.- Tennessee)

Chloe Folmar for the Hill reports that ten Republican senators are demanding that the Biden administration explain a rule change that will allow noncitizens who have "materially supported terrorist organizations" to enter the United States.

Senator Bill Hagerty (Tennessee) and his colleagues wrote the letter to Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas and Secretary of State Antony Blinken.  Republican Senators Rick Scott (Florida), Kevin Cramer (North Dakota), Ted Cruz (Texas), Marco Rubio (Florida), Joni Ernst (Iowa), Roger Marshall (Kansas), Tommy Tuberville (Alabama), John Hoeven (North Dakota), and Steve Daines (Montana) joined the letter.

In June. the Departments of Homeland Security and State announced that noncitizens who have provided “insignificant” or “limited” material support to terrorist organizations in the past will no longer be barred from entering the United States.  The Secretaries have the authority to make exemptions from the general prohibition on the admission of noncitizens linked to terrorist activity.

The senators questioned the rule change, which according to the DHS was intended to help “vulnerable Afghans,” saying that its lack of limits to “certain conflicts, terrorist organizations, geographic regions, or time periods” is dangerous.  The letter sought answers to eight questions concerning the determination.

 

KJ

 

Maine farmers struggle with labor shortage, push for immigration reform

Official Seal of Maine (courtesy of Wikimedia Commons) 

Framers across the United States have long supported some form of immigration reform.  Inflation has added to agricultural support for reform and a bill pending in Congress, the Farm Workforce Modernization Act   A news story from Maine reports that its state's farmers and pushing for immigration reform.

Farmers in the state of Maine are joining a push for immigration reform that they say could help ease labor shortages, strengthen businesses and lower food prices. The farmers contend that a shortage of labor is making it difficult for them to plant and harvest crops and raise livestock.

A bill pending in the U.S. Senate could help relieve labor pressures in the agricultural industry. Last year, the House of Representatives passed the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, which would create a path to legalization for undocumented agricultural workers, reform the seasonal farmworker program, and seek to make employers more accountable for employing undocumented workers.

I found a comment on the story interesting and insightful:

"But wait...I thought we had a serious problem with immigration policy and we have porous borders and we need to seal them off to keep people from coming to America to use up our resources and take advantage of our social safety net programs and so forth? How can we be both under siege and at risk of being overrun and, at the same time, have a critical need for more immigrants? Could it be that there really isn't an immigration problem and that this is all political in nature? That immigrants have been turned into the boogey man to scare voters into doing the bidding of those who stand to benefit most from said bidding? Talk to a Maine farmer, hotelier and restauranteur. Ask them how their staffing levels have been since about...oooohhhh...2016. You'll find that they have been suffering due to politically motivated policy changes that make it extremely difficult for migrant workers to come and work. All under the guise of what? That these people are taking our jobs from us? HAHAHA! OK."

KJ

 

This Immigrant Entrepreneur Got His Start Hawking Jewelry in Houston Flea Markets. Now He’s Taking on Amazon

In this Texas Monthly Article, "This Immigrant Entrepreneur Got His Start Hawking Jewelry in Houston Flea Markets. Now He’s Taking on Amazon.", we hear a positive immigration story:

"Omair Tariq climbed into his gleaming black Tesla Model S one Friday this summer, cued up a ballad by a Pakistani pop singer, and drove from his minimalist white office in prosperous west Houston to a gritty north-side neighborhood, on a mission to explore the links between his past and his present. The founder and CEO of Cart.com, a tech start-up that’s raised nearly $400 million in venture capital, Tariq sold jewelry with his wife some twenty years ago out of flea markets in the Greenspoint area that he was visiting on this sizzling morning. Wearing pointy, buckled dress shoes, artfully faded jeans with an Hermès belt, and a black shirt unbuttoned halfway down his chest, he cut a rakish profile as he walked the windowless halls of the International Market Place, which occupies a yellowish two-story concrete edifice next to a welding school."

KJ

Your Playlist: Los Tigres Del Norte Ft Calle 13

Here's a heck of a song to open your semester of immigration law with: América by Los Tigres Del Norte and featuring Calle 13:

Here's the basic theme:

Porque América es todo el continente
Y el que nace aquí, es americano

Which means:

Because America is the whole continent
And whoever is born here is American

This is followed by a shout out to various American nations: Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Brazil, Chile and Costa Rica, Salvador, Uruguay, Venezuela, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, and the Bahamas.

My favorite bit comes a little later:

Soy la pesadilla del sueño americano
Soy América, soy lo que dejaron
Toda la sobra de lo que se robaron

Which translates to:

I'm the nightmare of the American dream
I am America, I am what they left
All the leftovers of what was stolen

This song is definitely making my playlist this year.

-KitJ

Trying to Find Places for Asylum Seekers in N.Y.C.’s Homeless Shelters

Texas Governor Greg Abbott has been in the news for, among other immigrant measures, busing migrants from Texas to New York City and Washington, D.C.  In "Trying to Find Places for Asylum Seekers in N.Y.C.’s Homeless Shelters" in the New Yorker, Eric Lach reports on a. immigrants’-rights advocate description of receiving busloads of migrants from Texas at the Port Authority Bus Terminal.

Governor Abbott brags about the busing program and what he has called "Operation Lone Star," in which state and local law enforcement have assisted in arresting migrants and suspected criminals.  It was reported in July (and here) that the U.S. Department of Justice is investigating Operation Lone Star for potential civil rights violations.

KJ

Immigration Article of the Day: Citizenship and Bleakness by Linda S. Bosniak

Citizenship and Bleakness by Linda S. Bosniak, "Citizenship Struggles: 25th Anniversary Special Issue" Citizenship Studies Volume 26, Issue 4-5, 2022 pages 361-725

Abstract

Responding to the editors’ prompt: ‘Has your relationship to the study of citizenship changed?’ I ask in this brief essay whether the language of citizenship possesses the resources to contend with the fairly dire set of circumstances we currently face. I suggest that the concept’s analytical and normative force relies on certain democratic and universalist horizons which are under siege or in some state of collapse, and I therefore wonder whether continuing to frame social analytics in citizenship terms might not presuppose as backdrop a political world that is vanishing. I also query, in preliminary terms, how much a conceptual project so often conceived and embraced as world-building in spirit can help make instructive sense of the proliferating devastations of this current moment.

KJ

Immigration Article of the Day: Colorblind Nationalism and the Limits of Citizenship by Ming Hsu Chen

Colorblind Nationalism and the Limits of Citizenship by Ming Hsu Chen. by 44 Cardozo Law Review, Forthcoming 2023

Abstract

Policymakers and lawyers posit formal citizenship as the key to inclusion. Rather than presume formal citizenship will necessarily promote equality, this Article examines the relationship between citizenship, racial equality, and nationalism. It asks: What role does formal citizenship play in excluding noncitizens and Asian, Muslim, and Latinx Americans racialized as foreigners? What effects does it have on the meaning of being American as a non-White citizen? The Article argues that commitments to colorblind equality and democratic self-governance of the nation stand in contradiction to aspirations to protect all persons within the nation. Consequently, individual rights designed to remedy racial inequality will not level citizenship inequalities. The institutional aspects of citizenship require reforms to the structural aspects of citizenship inequality as well – especially political inequality. This new approach requires rethinking the relationship between citizenship and the nation and how noncitizens can be involved in politics.

KJ

Speaker series on Race, Security, and Empire

ABA project aims to help Afghan legal professionals establish themselves in the United States

In the weeks following the one-year anniversary of the fall of Kabul to the Taliban on August 15, the ABA Journal is highlighting the ABA’s efforts to help judges and lawyers from Afghanistan resettle, obtain immigration benefits and secure jobs using their legal skills. This is part one in the series.

KJ

Is Pr3sident Biden's DACA Regulation Enough?

Official White House Photo

Earlier this week, the Biden administration issued a regulation "to Preserve and Fortify" the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy.  It goes without saying that DACA has been subject of litigation and controversy.  The policy has been in limbo sine the Supreme Court in 2020 rejected the Trump administration's effort to end the policy. After the decision the Trump administration stopped accepting new applications; a court rejected the Biden administration's attempt to again accept new DACA applications.  The current bar on new DACA applications has significantly limited the scope and impact of the policy.

Nicole Narea for Vox comments that the regulation

"is far from a perfect fix. While the more than 450-page final rule, effective October 31, would formally codify DACA as a federal regulation, it will offer current `DREAMers' — unauthorized immigrants who came to the US as children — little immediate protection. It also doesn’t allow any new DACA applications for now, narrowing its impact to the more than 600,000 people currently enrolled in the program."

Immigrant advocates were disappointed that the regulation does not permit new DACA applications and expressed the need for legislation to protect young immigrants.

The "Statement by President Joe Biden on Strengthening Protections for Dreamers" does not say anything about new DACA applications.

KJ

UPDATE (Aug. 28):  Here is a FAQ on the new DACA rule from Penn State and Cornell law schools immigration centers and the President's Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration. 

Call For Papers: St. John's L. Rev. Symposium on Plyler v. Doe

St. John's Law Review Symposium:

40th Anniversary of Plyler v. Doe and Immigration Law in the United States

November 4, 2022

About the Symposium

On Friday, November 4, 2022, the St. John’s Law Review is hosting a symposium marking the 40th anniversary of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in Plyler v. Doe and honoring the late Professor Michael A. Olivas, a leading authority and prolific scholar on U.S. immigration law. Symposium participants will examine the rights of undocumented children in their historical and current contexts. They will also explore broader legal and policy issues impacting asylum seekers and refugees in the United States, including those fleeing the crisis in Ukraine.

Program Overview

The symposium, which will broadcast on Zoom from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., will feature a morning and an afternoon panel. As a highlight of the day, Rachel Moran, Distinguished and Chancellor’s Professor of Law at UCI Law, will deliver the symposium’s keynote address.

Call for Papers

You’re invited to submit unpublished scholarly papers addressing the above immigration law and policy topics. We’ll select symposium panelists from submissions accepted for publication in the Spring 2023 issue of the St. John’s Law Review.

Submission Guidelines

Please email your paper proposal (500–750 words), a brief bio, and your contact information as a Word attachment to [email protected] by Friday, September 2, 2022. If we accept your paper for publication, we’ll need the full draft (1000–7000 words) by Friday, October 14, 2022.

-KitJ

Immigration Article of the Day: The Public Administration of Justice by Nicholas Bednar

The Immigration Article of the Day is The Public Administration of Justice by Nicholas Bednar, posted on SSRN here. 

Here is the abstract:

Adjudicatory agencies decide who receives social-welfare benefits, which inventions deserve patents, and which immigrants get to remain in the United States. Scholars have argued that agency adjudication lacks sufficient structural and procedural protections to ensure unbiased decision-making. Yet these critiques miss a key problem with agency adjudication: the lack of adjudicatory capacity. This Article argues that low-capacity agencies cannot satisfy the Due Process Clause’s demand for accurate decision-making. To produce accurate decisions, adjudicatory agencies need sufficient levels of capacity: (1) material resources, (2) expert adjudicators, and (3) support staff. When agencies lack these resources, their adjudicators rely on various coping mechanisms to manage their workloads. They shorten hearings, make assumptions about respondents’ claims based on appearance, or take other steps to reduce the cognitive burdens associated with a high workload. Yet these coping mechanisms introduce error into the decision-making process. Often, these errors are not random and, instead, bias against one party to the dispute.

This Article uses the Immigration Courts as a case study of this phenomenon. The Executive Office of Immigration Review (EOIR)—the agency charged with adjudicating the removal of noncitizens from the United States—suffers from severe understaffing and has amassed a backlog of over 1.7 million cases. Analyzing over 1.5 million removal proceedings and 32,000 personnel records, this Article uses causal and statistical methods to examine the effect that one element of adjudicatory capacity (i.e., law clerks) has on outcomes in the Immigration Courts. This analysis finds that providing an Immigration Judge with one law clerk decreases the likelihood of removal by 5.2 percentage points and increases the likelihood of an asylum grant by 4.4 percentage points. These effects are significant and exceed the effect sizes of other known contributors to bias, such as the IJ’s prior employment and appointing president.

Why do adjudicatory agencies, like EOIR, appear starved for resources? This Article argues that neither Congress nor the president have sufficient electoral incentives to invest in these agencies. As a result, adjudicatory agencies will continue to make systematic errors without intervention. However, the Due Process Clause demands accurate systems of agency adjudication. If Congress and the president will not uphold their duty to build capacity within these agencies, then courts must reform administrative-law doctrine to promote due process. By reimagining the law of agency adjudication from a public-administration perspective, courts can provide agencies with the flexibility they need to manage their workloads while protecting the due-process rights of the respondents who appear before agency adjudicators.

IE

How Immigration Policy Impacts the Hospice Workforce

Because immigrants are so important io health care (and my works for a hospice), I should have known this but did not.  Current immigration policies are straining hospices’ ability to grow and retain their workforce amid widespread shortages.

Hospice News reports that immigrant workers help to fill needs in the hospice and palliative care labor supply. But national policies are contributing to a diminishing pool of these workers, putting pressure on providers’ capacity to accept patients.  According to one expert in the industry, "[w]hat we’ve seen is that immigration policies aren’t helping, they are jeopardizing health care access without enough workers to provide care.”

National immigration policies are limiting the scope of hospice workforce growth nationwide.

The story states that "[f]oreign-born workers represent 38% of hospice and home health aides, a quarter of personal care aides and 28% of all `highly-skilled health care professionals' such as physicians and nurse practitioners, according to the National Immigration Forum."

KJ

Policy Brief | Prejudicial And Unreliable: The Role Of Police Reports In U.S. Immigration Detention & Deportation Decisions

The U.S. immigration system routinely detains and deports immigrants on the basis of an arrest or criminal conviction — tearing them away from livelihood, family and community. The weighty decision of who to detain and deport often turns on the contents of a single document: a police report.

In this National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC)  Policy Brief, NIJC analyzed the use of police reports in immigration decision-making, surveying our own legal teams and other legal service providers throughout the country. This analysis confirmed that, despite the criminal legal system’s recognition that police reports are prejudicial and unreliable, immigration decision-makers routinely operate on the assumption that they are accurate — with life altering consequences.

KJ

Yale Law School: Clinical Positions

Yale Law School invites applications for a full-time visiting clinical faculty position of one semester or an academic year to teach one or more law school clinics. The position would begin with the Fall 2023 or Spring 2024 Semester. A successful visit will lead to consideration for a tenure-track or tenured clinical faculty position. There is no limitation as to clinical practice areas.

Applicants should have a J.D. degree or its equivalent and a minimum of five years of practice experience. The ideal candidate will have, in addition to a record of, or demonstrated potential for, clinical teaching, a record of intellectual engagement; experience teaching, training, and supervising students or junior attorneys in a clinical or other experiential learning setting; excellent supervisory and communication skills; the ability to work effectively with students, project partners, and other constituents; an interest in developing clinical experiences for students within a community that supports interdisciplinary collaboration and innovative, passionate teaching; and a record of scholarly publication or creative applied work.

To apply, please submit a letter of interest, resume, and list of three references to Professor Anika Singh Lemar, Chair, Clinical Appointments Committee, at [email protected], and copy Nina Fattore, [email protected]. The letter of interest should include a description of the clinic you intend to teach. Review of applications will begin immediately and continue until the position is filled. More information about clinical legal education at Yale Law School can be found here..

KJ

Big News on DACA: DHS Issues Regulation to Preserve and Fortify DACA

The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy has been in limbo sine the Supreme Court in 2020 rejected the Trump administration's effort to end the policy. Since then, the Trump administration stopped accepting new applications; a court rejected the Biden administration's attempt to again accept new DACA applications.

Here is a press release from the Department of Homeland Security:

 

 

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY Office of Public Affairs DHS Issues Regulation to Preserve and Fortify DACA WASHINGTON – Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas today announced that the Department has issued a final rule that will preserve and fortify the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy for certain eligible noncitizens who arrived in the United States as children, deferring their removal and allowing them an opportunity to access a renewable, two-year work permit. Since its inception in 2012, DACA has allowed over 800,000 young people to remain in the only country many of them have ever known, with their families. Across the country, DACA recipients are doctors and nurses, working to ensure the health and safety of Americans; they are teachers, striving to give back to younger generations; they are members of our military serving to protect our country; they are our neighbors, friends, and family. “Today, we are taking another step to do everything in our power to preserve and fortify DACA, an extraordinary program that has transformed the lives of so many Dreamers,” said Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro N. Mayorkas. “Thanks to DACA, we have been enriched by young people who contribute so much to our communities and our country. Yet, we need Congress to pass legislation that provides an enduring solution for the young Dreamers who have known no country other than the United States as their own.” “DACA has transformed the lives of its recipients and has made us better and stronger as a nation,”said U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Ur M. Jaddou. “USCIS is proud to play an important role in implementing the DACA final rule and is committed to ensuring DACA recipients can continue to remain a vital part of their communities and contribute to this country that is their home.” The rule continues the DACA policy as announced in the 2012 Napolitano Memorandum and is based on longstanding USCIS practice. The rule embraces the consistent judgment that has been maintained by the Department—and by three presidential administrations since the policy first was announced—that DACA recipients should not be a priority for removal. A product of careful review and in response to the more than 16,000 comments received during the public comment period, the final review codifies existing DACA policy, with limited changes, and replaces the DACA policy guidance set forth in the 2012 Napolitano memorandum. The final rule: Maintains the existing threshold criteria for DACA; Retains the existing process for DACA requestors to seek work authorization; and Affirms the longstanding policy that DACA is not a form of lawful status but that DACA recipients, like other deferred action recipients, are considered “lawfully present” for certain purposes. The final rule is effective Monday, October 31, 2022. However, while a July 16, 2021, injunction from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas remains in effect, DHS is prohibited from granting initial DACA requests and related employment authorization under the final rule. Because that injunction has been partially stayed, DHS presently may grant DACA renewal requests under the final rule. For more information, visit USCIS’ DACA webpage. # # KJ