ImmigrationProf Blog

Call for Papers: AILA Law Journal

The brand-spanking-new AILA Law Journal has issued a call for papers. The journal is looking for lightly-cited papers in the range of 3,000 to 9,000 words. The topic, naturally, should be immigration law and policy.

The submission deadline is January 4, 2019. Proposed pieces should be sent, in Word format, to ailalawjournal@aila.org .

-KitJ

Immigration Article of the Day: Who Needs DACA or the Dream Act? How the Ordinary Use of Executive Discretion Can Help (Some) Childhood Arrivals Become Citizens by Susan B. Dussault

WHO NEEDS DACA OR THE DREAM ACT? HOW THE ORDINARY USE OF EXECUTIVE DISCRETION CAN HELP (SOME) CHILDHOOD ARRIVALS BECOME CITIZENS by Susan B. Dussault (Willamette), Lewis & Clark Law Review.

Over two million immigrants without legal status entered the country as children. These childhood arrivals have the constitutional right to attend public schools without charge, and billions of taxpayer dollars have been invested in their education. Offering these young people the opportunity to remain in the United States, use their education to contribute to the communities in which they have been raised, and become citizens would let the country realize its return on this investment. Yet thus far Congress, which has the exclusive power to create new paths to citizenship, has failed repeatedly to pass legislation that would enable childhood arrivals to earn some form of legal immigration status and eventually naturalize.

The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA), which the Obama Administration launched in August 2012, partially addressed this issue by letting eligible childhood arrivals stay and work in the country for two-year renewable increments. In September 2017, the Trump Administration rescinded DACA, citing the Attorney General’s conclusion that it was an unconstitutional exercise of authority by the Executive Branch. Less than eight hours later, Trump stated that if Congress failed to legalize DACA within six months he would reconsider the issue.

If Congress fails to codify DACA or enact some form of the DREAM Act (which would let childhood arrivals earn permanent residence and eventually citizenship), it seems highly unlikely that the Trump Administration could, or would, reinstate DACA, given that its attorney general has declared the program unconstitutional. But there are other steps the Executive Branch could take to make it easier for childhood arrivals to legalize. Moreover, neither DACA nor the DREAM Act offers a complete solution: codifying DACA gives its recipients no legal status, and every iteration of the DREAM Act Congress has considered imposes requirements that disqualify many childhood arrivals. Therefore, regardless of what Congress may do, it is worth examining the unilateral and uncontroversial steps that the current administration (or a subsequent one) could take to help childhood arrivals become citizens. This Article identifies the discretion that the Executive Branch has with the military, cancellation of removal, parole, admissibility waivers, deferred action, and surplus immigration application fees. The Article then assesses the various ways the Executive Branch could employ that discretion to improve childhood arrivals’ access to the paths to permanent residence and citizenship created by Congress.

-KitJ

Immigration Article of the Day: Citizenship for Sale? in The Oxford Handbook of Citizenship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017) by Ayelet Shachar

Citizenship for Sale? in The Oxford Handbook of Citizenship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017) by Ayelet Shachar 

Abstract

“There are some things that money can’t buy.” Is citizenship among them? In her contribution to the Oxford Handbook of Citizenship, Professor Shachar explores this question by highlighting the core legal and ethical puzzles associated with the surge in cash-for-passport programs. The spread of these new programs is one of the most significant developments in citizenship practice in the past few decades. It tests our deepest intuitions about the meaning and attributes of the relationship between the individual and the political community to which she belongs. This chapter identifies the main strategies employed by a growing number of states putting their visas and passports “for sale,” selectively opening their otherwise bolted gates of admission to the high-net-worth individuals of the world. Moving from the positive to the normative, the discussion then elaborates the main arguments in favor of, as well as against, citizenship-for-sale. Shachar draws attention to the distributive and political implications of these developments, both locally and globally, and identifies the deeper forces at work that contribute to the perpetual testing, blurring, and erosion of the state-market boundary regulating access to membership.

KJ

Immigration Article of the Day: Exporting Murder: US Deportations & the Spread of Violence by Christian Ambrosius and David A. Leblang

Exporting Murder: US Deportations & the Spread of Violence by Christian Ambrosius and David A. Leblang

Abstract

Existing literature on cross-national variation in violence has paid little attention to the transnational transmission of crime. One such channel are the forced returns of migrants with a criminal record in their countries of temporary residence. Responding to this research gap, we study the effect of US deportations of convicts on levels of violent crime in deportees’ countries of origin for a cross-country panel of up to 123 countries covering the years 2003 to 2015. We find a strong and robust effect of criminal deportations on homicide rates in countries of origin, that is to a large degree driven by deportations towards Latin America and the Caribbean. An additional inflow of ten deportees with a criminal history per 100,000 increases expected homicide rates by more than two. In addition to controlling for country specific fixed effects, we provide evidence on a causal effect using an instrumental variable approach, that exploits spatial and time variation in migrant populations’ exposure to state level immigration policies in the US.

KJ

Immigration Article of the Day: The Law and Policy of Refugee Cities: Special Economic Zones for Migrants by Michael Castle-Miller

The Law and Policy of Refugee Cities: Special Economic Zones for Migrants by Michael Castle-Miller, Chapman Law Review, Vol. 21, No. 2, 2018 

Abstract

Migration is quickly becoming one of the most pressing issues of our time. Conflict, persecution, natural disasters, and economic inequality are driving people from their homes in record numbers.

Meanwhile, traditional responses to mass migration are becoming increasingly inadequate. Recognizing this, some countries are exploring pragmatic pathways toward integrating migrants into economies. The special economic zone (“SEZ”) concept offers one potential path forward. SEZs are designated areas designed to promote development through a distinct policy and administrative framework. They can serve as vehicles for initiating beneficial policies when political obstacles stand in the way of nationwide reform.

Refugee cities would be a type of SEZ designed to facilitate migrant integration. They would be special-status jurisdictions in which displaced people — who would otherwise be barred from working — can be employed, start businesses, access finance, and rebuild their lives. Applying principles from SEZs, refugee cities could help countries benefit from migrants’ presence in a politically realistic manner. They could also deliver high-quality infrastructure, foreign direct investment, and improvements to the business environment.

Refugee cities would also serve as a pathway for countries to come into closer alignment with international law. Under the Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees (“Refugee Convention” and “1967 Protocol,” respectively), refugees are entitled to relatively strong rights regarding property, employment, and entrepreneurship. However, most countries’ domestic legislation falls well short of these rights.

This article explores these gaps to show how refugee cities could fill them by creating designated areas in which refugee rights are respected and the policy benefits of migrant integration are achieved. It covers the background of the global migration situation, the evolution and role of SEZs in the world, the refugee-cities concept and its policy benefits, and the international and domestic law pertaining to refugees, including a special focus on Turkey.

KJ

Jotwell: Fan on Koh's Shadow Removals

Fan and Koh

At the Journal of Things We Like (JOTWELL), Mary Fan (U-dub) reviews Jennifer Lee Koh's recent articles When Shadow Removals Collide: Searching for Solutions to the Legal Black Holes Created by Expedited Removal and Reinstatement, __ Wash. U. L. Rev. __ (forthcoming) and Removal in the Shadows of Immigration Court, 90 S. Cal. L. Rev. 181 (2017).

Fan writes:

Koh’s articles are a fascinating and macabre education on removal proceedings in the “shadows of immigration court,” as she terms it. She powerfully illuminates how the vast majority of people removed from the United States never make it into an immigration court. Her work dispels the conventional assumption that removals proceed by formal order following adjudication by an immigration judge. She gives us a primer on the five main ways people are removed with extreme expedition today.

Those include: expedited removal at the border, reinstatement of removal, administrative removal, stipulated removal, and in absentia removal.

Fan concludes that Koh's "overview of the abbreviated approaches that sidestep an already notoriously underprotective process is important reading to understand the fast muddy slide into our present mire."

-KitJ

Conference Announcement: CSLSA Registration Now Open

The Central States Law Schools Association 2018 Scholarship Conference will be held on Friday, October 12 and Saturday, October 13 at the Texas A&M University School of Law in Fort Worth, Texas. Law faculty from across the country are invited to submit proposals to present papers or works in progress.

The conference is not subject specific, but usually includes panels on immigration, international law, and criminal law. From experience, I can report that CSLSA provides a friendly, intimate, and collegial setting in which to present scholarship. It's open to both junior and senior scholars.

You can click here to register. And registration is free! The deadline for submitting your work-in-progress abstract is September 1, 2018.  

I hope to see some of you at the conference this year!

-KitJ

Pereira v. Sessions: A Jurisdictional Surprise for Immigration Courts

On June 21, 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a bombshell opinion regarding immigration court procedure: Pereira v. Sessions.

On its face, the case is a boon for certain noncitizens seeking relief from deportation. Yet, as I explore in this just-posted essay to SSRN, Pereira’s implications are far greater.

Although the Court’s opinion never mentions jurisdiction, Pereira necessarily means that immigration courts lack subject-matter jurisdiction over virtually every case filed in the last three years, plus an unknown number of earlier-filed cases. Here's why.

The Court’s opinion in Pereira, authored by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, held that “A notice that does not inform a noncitizen when and where to appear for removal proceedings is not a ‘notice to appear under section 1229(a).’” Shockingly, “almost 100 percent” of cases filed in the last three years were initiated by notice-to-appear documents that omitted the time and place of the proceeding.

How does that relate to jurisdiction? Under the regulations establishing and delimiting the authority of immigration courts, 8 CFR 1003.14(a), “Jurisdiction vests … when a charging document is filed with the Immigration Court[.]” “Charging document” is defined by 8 CFR 1003.13 as the “written instrument which initiates a proceeding before an Immigration Judge … a Notice to Appear.”

If, as Pereira clearly states, a document isn’t a notice to appear if it doesn’t have a time and place on it, then it cannot be a charging document. And, without a valid charging document, jurisdiction never vests in the immigration court.

Since subject matter jurisdiction can never be waived, each case currently pending that was initiated by an NTA lacking a time-and-place designation must be dismissed.

In the final portion of the essay, I argue that immigration courts should recognize that re-filed cases demand an immigrant-centered approach. Noncitizens should have the chance to re-litigate issues lost in the first litigation—but should be permitted to keep their wins. The government, in contrast, should be bound by its losses. This approach protects noncitizens from bearing the burden of the government’s choice to wander from the law’s requirements.

-KitJ

INA / USC Code Converter

Ever find yourself reading an INA-filled article/brief/case/blog on your computer with nary an INA supplement in sight? You'd like to look up the code on the internet but the easiest site, Cornell's Legal Information Institute, is keyed to the USC not the INA.

Messing Law Offices, P.L.C. has the answer for you: an INA to USC code converter. I've now got that baby bookmarked. Sweet.

-KitJ

Call For Papers: “New Voices in Immigration Law”

The Section on Immigration Law of the Association of American Law Schools invites papers and works in progress for its “New Voices in Immigration Law” works-in-progress session during the 2019 AALS Annual Meeting in New Orleans, LA, which will take place January 2-6, 2019. This session has been scheduled for Saturday, January 5, 2019, at 3:30pm. We particularly welcome submissions from individuals who have never presented an immigration law paper at the AALS Annual Meeting and from junior scholars. Submissions may address any aspect of immigration and citizenship law, and we are also open to receiving papers that explore these topics from alternative disciplines or perspectives. Please note that individuals presenting at the program are responsible for their own Annual Meeting registration fee and travel expenses.

Submission Guidelines: The deadline for submissions is August 15, 2018. Instead of a full-length paper, please submit a concept note of 5-15 double-spaced pages that contains a summary of the key ideas. If you have already written a full-length paper, please send an excerpt of the paper (not to exceed 15 double- spaced pages) with an explanatory introduction. Priority will be given to individuals who have never presented an immigration law paper at the AALS Annual Meeting and to junior scholars.

Please email submissions in Microsoft Word format to AALS2019ImmigrationLaw@kalhan.com (Subject: AALS 2019: New Voices in Immigration Law). In your email, please indicate whether you have previously presented your work at the AALS Annual Meeting, and if so when.

Inquiries: Please direct any questions or inquiries to Anil Kalhan (anil.kalhan@drexel.edu).

-KitJ

Call For Papers: “Immigration Law Values”

The Section on Immigration Law of the Association of American Law Schools invites papers for presentation at its principal session during the 2019 AALS Annual Meeting in New Orleans, LA, which will take place January 2-6, 2019. This session has been scheduled for Saturday, January 5, 2019, at 10:30am. Please note that individuals presenting at the program are responsible for their own Annual Meeting registration fee and travel expenses.

The session theme is “Immigration Law Values.” The values implicated by immigration law are complex and difficult to define. This program will identify the fundamental values of contemporary immigration law and policy and examine immigration law values past, present, and future. The United States has long proclaimed to be a “nation of immigrants,” but immigration law and policy have always sent conflicting signals. While welcoming and valuing immigrants, the United States used a racially-based immigration policy until the 1950s. While overseeing a robust legal immigration system, Congress vastly expanded the categories of individuals potentially subject to expulsion and otherwise increased the harshness of the removal system in the 1990s. While immigration law has operated since the 19th century under constitutional principles that formally purport to give Congress sweeping power it does not have in most other contexts, courts have often flinched from giving full effect to those doctrinal principles.

The Trump presidency’s immigration agenda has sought to comprehensively dismantle mechanisms that welcome, value, and integrate immigrants in favor of a stance that more unequivocally insists that the United States does not, in fact, welcome or value immigrants at all. The administration’s actions call into question basic principles that many have believed to have long since been resolved and settled. For example, the Trump presidency’s discriminatory executive order banning the entry of millions of Muslims into the United States knocks off balance a long-accepted principle that immigration law should not discriminate on the basis of race or religion.

In addition to examining immigration values past and present, the program will explore whether there are values that might not currently be understood as settled principles in contemporary immigration law that should be. For example, is immigration law immoral if it causes or results in the separation of families? Does immigration adjudication in its current configuration fail to meet basic norms of fairness? What would make contemporary immigration law closer to realizing immigration ideals?

Submission Guidelines: The deadline for submissions is August 15, 2018. We welcome submissions at any stage of development, although preference may be given to more fully developed papers over abstracts and paper proposals. Priority also will be given to individuals who have not recently presented a paper at the AALS Annual Meeting. Decisions will be made by mid-September 2018.

Please email submissions in Microsoft Word format to AALS2019ImmigrationLaw@kalhan.com (Subject: AALS 2019: Immigration Law Values). In your email, please indicate whether you have previously presented your work at the AALS Annual Meeting, and if so when.

Inquiries: Please direct any questions or inquiries to Anil Kalhan (anil.kalhan@drexel.edu) and Jill Family (jefamily@widener.edu).

-KitJ

Call For Papers: “Civil Rights, Liberty, and Immigration Control”

The Section on Immigration Law and Section on Civil Rights of the Association of American Law Schools invites papers for presentation at their cosponsored session during the 2019 AALS Annual Meeting in New Orleans, LA, which will take place January 2-6, 2019. This session has been scheduled for Sunday, January 6, 2019, at 10:30am. Please note that individuals presenting at the program are responsible for their own Annual Meeting registration fee and travel expenses.

The session theme is “Civil Rights, Liberty, and Immigration Control.” Recent events have highlighted the frequent conflict between individual liberty interests and the government’s migration control policies. The executive order banning the entry of Muslims into the United States has impinged on religious liberty, freedom to travel and the liberty interest in family. General heightened border security has undercut citizens’ liberty interest in family—particularly when the family members of U.S. citizens have been barred on nebulous or unspecified "security" rationales. Immigration detention, now greatly expanded, curtails bodily liberty. The recent detention of and denial of abortion access to noncitizen minors in government custody implicate overlapping liberty interests.

We seek papers that explore the doctrinal, practical and theoretical issues that arise at the crossroads of liberty and migration control. Papers might, for example, explore evolving constitutional conceptions of liberty, evaluate the exercise of plenary powers as it affects individuals’ liberty interests, or otherwise critically analyze how courts are assessing and weighing individual liberty interests in cases involving migration control.

Submission Guidelines: The deadline for submissions is August 15, 2018. We welcome submissions at any stage of development, although preference may be given to more fully developed papers over abstracts and paper proposals. Priority also will be given to individuals who have not recently presented a paper at the AALS Annual Meeting. Decisions will be made by mid-September 2018.

Please email submissions in Microsoft Word format to AALS2019ImmigrationLaw@kalhan.com (Subject: AALS 2019: Civil Rights, Liberty, and Immigration Control). In your email, please indicate whether you have previously presented your work at the AALS Annual Meeting.

Inquiries: Please direct any questions or inquiries to Kristina Campbell (kcampbell@udc.edu) and Jennifer Chacón (jchacon@law.uci.edu).

-KitJ

Throwback Thursday: Medical Repatriation

This Bizarro comic made me think of my very first law review article: Patients Without Borders.

The article focuses on the practice of medical repatriation, where hospitals arrange for a noncitizen in need of long-term care to be privately repatriated to their country of origin. That is, it's a system of private deportation. Return travel can be expensive, but hospitals are happy to bear the cost in order to halt potentially limitless and unreimbursed spending on noncitizen care. 

Immprof Lori Nessel of Seton Hall has also written about medical repatriation. Check out her articles Disposable Workers: Applying a Human Rights Framework to Analyze Duties Owed to Seriously Injured or Ill Immigrants and The Practice of Medical Repatriation: The Privatization of Immigration Enforcement and Denial of Human Rights.

-KitJ

The Immigration Nexus: Law, Politics, and Constitutional Identity

L to R: Profs Hammond, Hong, Parry, Dussault, Maltz, Stumpf, Frost, Wasserman, Johnson

Yesterday, I had the distinct pleasure of participating in the Lewis and Clark Law Review's Spring symposium, titled The Immigration Nexus: Law, Politics, and Constitutional Identity.

Our day started with an intimate lunch for the panelists as well as Juliet Stumpf, Stephen Manning, Jim Oleske, and the incoming and outgoing EICs. Juliet and Stephen facilitated discussion about sanctuary cities. We talked about the California lawsuit as well as local problems in Oregon with immigration enforcement actions.

The symposium officially began after lunch with the following lineup:

• Kit Johnson, Opportunities & Anxieties: A Study of International Students in the Trump Era
• Earl Maltz, The Constitution and the Trump Travel Ban
• Howard Wasserman, Universal Not Nationwide and Not Appropriate: On the Scope of Injunctions in Constitutional Litigation
• Amanda Frost, In Defense of Nationwide Injunctions

After a break, we heard these additional talks:

• Susan Dussault, Who Needs DACA or the DREAM Act?
• Andrew Hammond, The Immigration-Welfare Nexus in a New Era?
• Kari Hong, The 20-Year Attack on Asylum

The entire session can be viewed at this link, which I'm told works best with Chrome. Jump to 10:08 for the start.

-KitJ

Models, Medivacs, Moguls, and More

My first professor-in-action shot! Photo by Connor Murphy/UND Today.

On Wednesday, I gave a lecture to the University of North Dakota and Grand Forks communities -- Models, Medivacs, Moguls, and More: Finding the Curious in Immigration Law. UND has a write-up of the talk here.

It was a unique opportunity to present select portions of my scholarship as as a cohesive whole. I've written before in praise of written scholarship summaries such as the Virginia Journal's write up on Kerry Abrams. I tried to emulate that approach in developing my talk.

I started with what drew me to immigration -- a quest to understand my own history. Seven of my eight great-grandparents all came to the United States in a 15-year window between 1875 and 1910. They hailed from Poland, Russia, Sweden, and Germany. Each benefited from the lack of immigration quotas and quality controls at the time. One was fleeing conscription into the Russian Army, others came to join family members already here -- stories that resonate today with the debate over "chain migration" and questions of what we owe to those fleeing violence.

In terms of scholarship, I discussed:

• My work regarding the Disney visa, documenting the history of the Q visa -- legislation written by and for Walt Disney World in order to staff the World Showcase at Epcot. It's a fascinating tale of lobbying and advocacy that I'm revisiting shortly in a NYU Journal of Law & Liberty symposium issue (links coming soon).
• My work on foreign fashion models, which documents the history of the H1B3 visa for fashion models and discusses the failed legislative proposals to move fashion models out of the H1B sphere and into the P visa. The piece also talks about how it might be possible to use the visa for foreign fashion models to address the public health consequences of the modeling industry by restricting its availability on the basis of age and BMI.
• My work on proposals to fix the post-2006 housing crisis with a visa for home buyers. It's a story of legislation with a sound economic rationale (surplus homes can't be shipped overseas, but people can be invited from overseas to fill them), and it's also an example of trying to use immigration law to fix a non-labor-based economic problem.
• A Citizenship Market, which will be published by the Illinois Law Review this year. In it, I explore a thought experiment about whether whether individuals should be permitted to swap citizenships with each other.
• The private expulsion of uninsured noncitizens by U.S. hospitals - a practice known as "medical repatriation."
• An empirical study of international students at the University of North Dakota that I conducted for a contribution to an upcoming Lewis & Clark Law Review symposium on Trump's executive orders. (It will be held on Friday, March 9, if you're in the Portland, Oregon area.) Between March and October 2017, I interviewed 45 UND students to discuss the anxieties they had about studying in this country and the opportunities that drew them to pursue their education here. (One interesting tidbit: They were perhaps as worried about guns in the U.S. as they were about being denied re-entry by the CBP.)

It was a tremendous honor to share my passion for immigration with a diverse audience and to have the opportunity to take a broader look at my own work.

-KitJ

The Strange Bedfellows Supporting Free Movement of Labor

LtoR: Lori Nessel, Mario Rizzo, Michael LeRoy, Ilya Somin, Kit Johnson

On Tuesday morning, I had the pleasure of participating in a symposium put together by the NYU Journal of Law and Liberty. The topic of the day was Freedom versus Fairness: The Tension Between Free Market and Populist Ideals in Labor.

The panel I participated on was titled The Free Movement of Labor. My co-panelists lya Somin (George Mason), Michael LeRoy (Illinois), and Lori A. Nessel (Seton Hall)  and I discussed wide-ranging issues from the management of immigration historically to whether consumers are hurt by immigration restrictions.

The conference put in stark contrast the strange bedfellows who support greater labor mobility. As I discuss in soon-to-be-published paper A Citizenship Market (that's not on SSRN quite yet as it's still in the editing process), both the political left and political right favor reduced immigration restrictions, albeit for very different reasons. On the left, supporters tend to focus on the rights of migrants. On the right, supporters tend to focus on the benefits of letting the free market roam free.

What I found most enjoyable about the program was the ability to engage with the audience, most of whom really had no foundation in immigration law. It was a good opportunity to educate folks about the realities of immigration law - for example, the small numbers of LPRs admitted to work in contrast to the significant larger numbers of nonimmigrant workers in the United States. Every chance we immprofs have to dispel myths regarding immigration is a gift.

There will be papers forthcoming from the symposium. I'm excited to report that I'll be revisiting the Q visa in a piece titled Beauty and the Beast: Disney's Use of the Q and H-1B Visa. Michael LeRoy will also be tackling the H-1B visa in the context of Trump's Executive Order 13788 (Buy American and Hire American). Stay tuned!

-KitJ

Immprof 2018: Call for Papers & Commentators

Drexel University's Thomas R. Kline School of Law is located in Philadelphia, PA

2018 Immigration Law Scholars and Teachers Workshop at Drexel Law School, May 24-26, 2018

A major focus of the biennial Immigration Law Scholars and Teachers Workshop is the opportunity for immigration scholars to share scholarship in progress.  Opportunities will be available to receive feedback from colleagues on draft papers and on ideas in the formative stage during incubator sessions.

If you are interested in presenting a work-in-progress (WIP) or an incubator idea, or in serving as a commentator, please fill out this google form by Friday, March 23. 

(If you have trouble clicking on the link, you can also find the form here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd0xQqAQpm2aMDT6H2lPKazzgXNsSiVnjOvDK_QysaRmK5Oig/formResponse)

Your draft paper for a WIP session (50 pages maximum) or a brief description of your incubator idea (3 pages maximum) will be due by Friday, April 27.  You will receive further instructions about how to upload your paper to the password-protected conference website closer to the date.

After the committee receives submissions in response to this call for papers, the committee will assign commentator(s) for each work in progress based on shared scholarship interests.  The date and time for each work in progress session will be posted on the conference website in early May.

We hope to have room for all who express interest in presenting a work in progress.  If we face any constraints, we will give priority to junior scholars.

The members of the Works in Progress committee for the Workshop are:  Amanda Frost (American); Denise Gilman (Texas); and Jaya Ramji-Nogales (Temple).  If you have any questions, feel free to contact Amanda at afrost@wcl.american.edu.

-KitJ on behalf of Amanda Frost

"The Free Movement of Labor" @ NYU Feb. 27, 11:15AM

Calling all NYC-area immprofs. If you're free on Tuesday, February 27, consider heading over to NYU's Greenberg Lounge in Vanderbilt Hall. The NYU Journal of Law & Liberty is holding a one day conference on Freedom versus Fairness: The Tension Between Free Market and Populist Ideals in Labor.

The first session is a non-immigration panel on "Janus and ‘Fair Share’ Fees," but the second session (starting at 11:15 a.m.) is about "The Free Movement of Labor." I'll be there along with immprof Lori A. Nessel as well as prawfs Ilya Somin and Michael LeRoy.

You can find details, and an RSVP link, here.

-KitJ

Northwestern University Law Review: Exclusive Submission Window opens January 1, 2018

Christmas is just around the corner, but you still have time to finish off that work-in-progress. And just in time, too. The Northwestern University Law Review exclusive submission window is coming open in January. Here are the details from their website:

We will accept exclusive submissions from January 1, 2018-January 14, 2018 at 11:59 PM Central Time. For all articles submitted in accordance with the instructions outlined below, the Law Review guarantees Articles Board consideration and a publication decision by February 5, 2018.

Articles receiving a publication offer via the exclusive submission track will be published in Volume 113 in the fall of 2018. Participating authors must agree to withhold the article submitted through our exclusive submission track from submission to any other publication until receiving a decision back from us. Authors not receiving publication offers are free to submit elsewhere after notification of our publication decision, which will occur no later than February 5, 2018.

Please note that by submitting an article via the exclusive submission track, the author agrees to accept a binding publication offer, should one be extended.

To submit beginning January 1, 2018, please email your article manuscript, a cover letter, and CV to Brandon Johnson, Senior Articles Editor, at b-johnson2018@nlaw.northwestern.edu. Please kindly title the subject line "2018 Exclusive Submission Track."

Good luck!

-KitJ

The Politics of Immigration Enforcement

Ohio State University immprofs Inés Valdez, Mat Coleman and Amna Akbar question President Trump's rhetoric regarding the enforcement of federal immigration law in this thoughtful WaPo piece. Despite public statements to the contrary, the trio writes: "Laws don’t enforce themselves; people make decisions about how to enforce them."

The authors note that "whether a migrant has a legal right to be in the United States must be adjudicated in immigration courts." It's not a simple matter of enforcement.

Moreover, "locating migrants who may lack legal status requires surveillance and policing that are also constrained by laws." Regarding this piece, the authors offer some helpful background on Secure Communities and INA 287(g) agreements, both of which have been subject to civil rights challenges.

"These law enforcement approaches are not static," they write. Which is why then-DHS Secretary Kelly was so wrong when he said: "the law deports people. Secretary Kelly doesn’t.”

Want to read the long form version of these arguments? Check out the authors' article Missing in Action: Practice, Paralegality, and the Nature of Immigration Enforcement.

-KitJ