Immigration Law Stories
Authors:
Martin, David A. / Schuck, Peter H.
Edition:
1st
Copyright Date:
2005
19 chapters
have results for law stories
Introduction 15 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Immigration Stories
- In short, even in those areas where the plenary power doctrine reigns, the polity is not saddled forever with objectionable laws or practices. The doctrine is an invitation to roll up one’s sleeves and become active in the political arena in order to amend bad laws or defend good ones against amendments that would erode the hard-won gains of earlier campaigns. There is room in these stories to find both worry and inspiration at a time when many propose to trim protections in the name of the war on terror. The long struggle to assure fair process and sound substantive law continues.
- Plenary power, however, is not the whole immigration law story. Perhaps influenced by the almost universal academic criticism of the doctrine, the Supreme Court has occasionally reined in the political , recounted by Nancy Morawetz, reflects the former approach. Congress tried in 1996 to strip the courts of jurisdiction to consider challenges to removal filed by virtually any alien with a criminal conviction in the United States. The Supreme Court read the law quite narrowly, finding that it allowed the trial courts to entertain habeas corpus petitions filed by such aliens. The ruling resulted in thousands of new hearings.
- The reader will learn here that many of the stories did not end once the Supreme Court issued a decision decreeing judicial deference to a harsh congressional policy or executive branch ruling. seemed to leave the door open to restricting the access of undocumented children to our schools if Congress explicitly blessed such a state-law policy. But when certain members of Congress pushed for such a law in 1996, they were beaten back by a concerted political effort. As Margaret Taylor explains, some lower courts have interpreted in ways that narrow the categorical mandatory detention that the Court upheld. And of course (in a development not addressed here), Congress finally cleansed our laws of the national-origins quota system in 1965, even though numerous court decisions had previously upheld it against constitutional challenge.
- The other three stories in this volume are harder to classify but nevertheless reveal the operations of our immigration enforcement system, and, in some cases, the difficulty of balancing the demands of enforcement against other important societal goals. Daniel Kanstroom provides a rich and compelling account of the organized crime leader Carlos Marcello, a lawful permanent resident since infancy, whom the government tried to deport for decades, without success. One of the key markers in Marcello’s seemingly endless journey through the courts, ...Constitution for persons facing deportation. Other rounds of the government’s battles with Marcello and his extraordinarily resourceful lawyers led to changes in the laws governing judicial review—but not always with the impact that the government anticipated. David Martin’s chapter addresses political asylum, an issue in an increasing percentage of modern removal cases. It is the only chapter that does not focus on Supreme Court rulings;...
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Chapter 11. INS v. St. Cyr: The Campaign to Preserve Court Review and Stop Retroactive Deportation Laws 52 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Other stories also flooded the press. Anthony Lewis, a columnist with , wrote about people caught in the web of the new law and explained the significance of judicial review. Each profile told the story of an individual, such as Collado, whom no reasonable person would want to deport. Lewis also used his columns to obtain access to members of Congress and often quoted promises to seek reform.
- The Collado story immediately caught the attention of the media. ran several stories, and Collado was featured on , public radio, and fifty local newspaper stories outside the New York area. By the end of the month, the INS released him from custody. As attention centered on Collado’s case, Senator Abraham criticized the INS for pursuing cases against a persons with twenty year old convictions and promised to hold hearings.
- is the story of their ordeal and that of thousands of other LPRs. It is also the story of a remarkable litigation campaign to preserve judicial review and prevent the new laws from being applied retroactively. By 2001, when the Supreme Court issued its decision in
- is both a remarkable story of the potential of a well-orchestrated litigation campaign and a sober reminder of how difficult it is to protect immigrants from harsh and illegal deportation laws and legislation that curbs access to the courts.
- As the retroactivity issue reached the appellate courts, the government’s lawyers felt quite confident. They took to heart the implications of the plenary power doctrine and Supreme Court cases that had upheld retroactive deportation laws. Case law plainly supported Congress’ power to enact retroactive laws, even as to a person’s deportability. Furthermore, they did not view any change in a form of relief to be a “retroactive” effect. They drew confidence from their experience with litigation around the 1990 restrictions on 212(c) relief, where courts had concluded that changes in eligibility for 212(c) relief did not trigger a presumption against retroactive application of the law because the relief was discretionary.
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Contributors 14 results (showing 5 best matches)
- is Professor of Law at Duke University, where she teaches civil procedure and a range of labor and employment law courses. She graduated from Princeton University and from the law school of the University of California at Berkeley (Boalt Hall). After clerking on the federal court of appeals, she practiced labor law in Washington, D.C., before joining the appellate staff of the civil division of the U.S. Department of Justice. She has previously taught at the University of Wisconsin, Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, UCLA Law School, and the University of Southern California Law School. She has published articles and book chapters on union organizing among immigrant janitors, on the role of union lawyers in providing legal representation to individual employees, on wage and hour and other individual rights claims, and on a variety of other labor and employment-related topics. Her writings are included in work has appeared in the Stanford Law Review and the University of Chicago Law...
- is Chester H. Smith Professor of Law and Co–Director of the Law, Criminal Justice and Security Program at the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law. A graduate of Wesleyan University and the Michigan and Yale law schools, Professor Chin clerked for the Honorable Richard P. Matsch of U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado. With his students, he has sought to eliminate Jim Crow-era racial segregation laws still on the books; their work led to repeal of statutes in Kansas and Wyoming designed to prevent Asians from owning real property, and school segregation laws in Georgia, Louisiana, Missouri and West Virginia. In 2003, their work persuaded the Ohio General Assembly to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment. Professor Chin received the Outstanding Scholarly Paper Award from the Association of American Law Schools for
- is the Director of the Boston College Law School International Human Rights Program and Clinical Professor of Law. He teaches Immigration and Refugee Law, International Human Rights Law, the BC London Program, and Administrative Law. He was the founder and is the current director of the Boston College Immigration and Asylum clinic in which students represent indigent noncitizens and asylum-seekers. Together with his students, he has won several high-profile immigration and asylum cases and has provided counsel for hundreds of clients over more than a decade. He and his students have also written amicus briefs for the U.S. Supreme Court, organized public presentations in schools, churches, community centers, courts and prisons, and have advised many community groups. Professor Kanstroom has published widely in the fields of U.S. immigration law, criminal law, and European citizenship and asylum law in such venues as the Harvard Law Review, the Yale Journal of International Law, the...
- is the Herbert Wechsler Professor of Federal Jurisprudence at Columbia Law School, where he teaches immigration and nationality law, constitutional law, comparative constitutional law and human rights. He is the author of
- is Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Mabie–Apallas Public Interest Professor of Law and Chicana/o Studies at the University of California at Davis. He has published extensively on immigration law and policy, racial identity, and civil rights in national and international journals. Professor Johnson’s latest book, , was published in early 2005. A graduate of Harvard Law School, where he served as an editor of the
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Chapter 10. Adelaide Abankwah, Fauziya Kasinga, and the Dilemmas of Political Asylum 40 results (showing 5 best matches)
- American law, like that of most other nations, offers asylum to persons who demonstrate that they are unwilling to return to their home countries because of a “well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.” of immigration law, and can lead after a few years to full lawful permanent resident status and ultimately to U.S. citizenship. Asylum cases present significant challenges of both fact and law. How can adjudicators predict what would befall an individual upon return to a distant country? What proof should applicants offer? How can adjudicators tell if the applicant is embroidering the story, or making it up out of whole cloth? What sorts of harm amount to persecution? How great must the risk be to make the fear well-founded? When does persecution have an adequate nexus to one of the five grounds listed in the statute? What is one to make of the most vague or open-ended factor in that list,...
- The system’s susceptibility to fraud and stereotyping deserves greater attention, from refugee advocates as much as from government officials. But overreaction is also a danger. After all, Kasinga too was disbelieved. Yet she persevered in her claim, later amply vindicated, and thereby provided INS and the BIA the occasion to develop sound new doctrine to deal with issues that the drafters of classic refugee law did not foresee. The story that first publicly revealed the Abankwah fraud nicely captured both the delicate balance that our political asylum system requires and the ongoing dilemmas it faces:
- ...for cross-examination by the INS trial attorney, James Paoli. Trial attorneys carry heavy caseloads and typically have only an hour or two preparation time before a merits hearing in an asylum case, though complex or novel cases may give rise to longer allowances. Their research may consist only of reviewing the file and perhaps pulling together some readily accessible information about general conditions in the country of origin. Consequently, trial attorneys often must rely primarily on their litigator instincts, refined over the course of the numerous asylum cases each attorney handles, to develop their trial strategy on the spot. They probe for apparent inconsistencies in the story or other possible indications of falsehood, or home in on undeveloped issues that might call for a legal conclusion that the claim does not meet the standards. Properly trained and supervised trial attorneys, however, do not understand their mission to be to defeat the asylum claim at all costs. If...
- broke a stunningly different story on its front page. An INS investigation, confirmed by the had interviewed Danson in a New York coffee shop. She recounted her story, then disputed the chief’s version of tribal practices. The article continued: “Informed that police reportedly had found her mother alive in Biriwa, her eyes widened and she fell silent. After a lengthy pause, she reaffirmed her story, … [then] declined to discuss the matter further.”
- The lessons of the Abankwah saga have not penetrated very deeply into U.S. media consciousness. Remarkably, another Ghanaian tried a similar story in 2000 about FGM that would be inflicted because she was “a member of the Ghanian royalty.” The IJ rejected her claim, but she attracted strong local editorial support during her lengthy detention in York, Pennsylvania, while awaiting appeal. Viewpoints, York Daily Record 3 (June 27, 2004); Woman Says She Fled Mutilation, id. at 1, 14 (June 24, 2004). The ran the York news story verbatim, but under the caption, Another Ghanaian Woman Try the “FGM Trick,” General News of Friday, 25 June 2004, available at <www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/printnews.php?ID=60420>.
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Chapter 5. The Long, Complex, and Futile Deportation Saga of Carlos Marcello 34 results (showing 5 best matches)
- In one of the many ironies of his story, just as Marcello was experiencing an illegal deportation, he was inspiring new laws intended to make legal deportation easier for the government. Indeed, in his 1959 letter to Senator Ervin about Carlos Marcello, Attorney General Rogers had stated that for the previous five years, the administration had sought legislation to limit judicial review of deportation orders, “so as to avoid its repeated use as a delaying tactic.”
- The deportation story of Carlos Marcello offers a new perspective on Holmes’ famous axiom. With its many twists and turns, it is, without doubt, the story of a bad man; indeed, it involves many bad men. Dark tales of the Mafia, public corruption, murder, robbery, drug-dealing, and fraud abound. But it is also a cautionary tale about law. Around its edges lurk allegations of quasi-legal skulduggery by Attorney General Robert Kennedy, and shadowy activities by all sorts of people in Dallas, Italy, Guatemala, and even Formosa. We will find hints of how one of the longest, costliest, and ultimately most futile deportation cases in U.S. history was possibly connected to the assassinations of President Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. As if all that weren’t enough, Marcello’s deportation led to a fascinating Supreme Court case involving the Administrative Procedure Act, the Ex Post Facto Clause, due process,
- Now begins the strangest part of our story. A Senate committee had been formed to investigate labor and corruption, chaired by Senator John McClellan. Its chief counsel was young Robert F. Kennedy. His brother, then-Senator John F. Kennedy, was also a member. In March 1959, Marcello was called as a witness before the McClellan committee, where he was accompanied by Jack Wasserman. Before Marcello took the stand, former FBI agent Aaron Kohn, who had been the principal investigator looking at the Marcello organization, provided the committee with extensive testimony about the history of the Mafia in New Orleans and the rise of Marcello to his current position of power. No fan of understatement, Kohn asserted that he believed that the Marcello organization was poised to achieve virtually complete control of the political and law enforcement machinery of the state of Louisiana.
- Stories such as Marcello’s ultimately had powerful effects. Among its major provisions, the new law imposed stricter requirements for exhaustion of administrative remedies and channeled most review of deportation orders away from district courts.
- So we know that Marcello lost in court. But what actually happened on the ground? One version of the story, told by Frank Ragano, former attorney for Santo Trafficante, Jr., At least the last part of this story seems likely, as Marcello was soon indicted for illegal entry and using an invalid passport.
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Chapter 4. Harisiades v. Shaughnessy: A Case Study in the Vulnerability of Resident Aliens 20 results (showing 5 best matches)
- The story of American law has been an ever-expanding circle of political membership, characterized by the establishment of democracy, relatively generous naturalization, the end of slavery, the banning of racial discrimination in access to the ballot, the political emancipation of women, the enfranchisement of eighteen-year-olds, the abolition of literacy
- Finally, as we shall see, if the circle is drawn in an irregular, arbitrary manner, the lives of LPRs exhibit a baffling mixture of legal protection and extreme vulnerability. This is the story of how the Supreme Court drew the circle very narrowly in
- Justice Jackson displayed a mastery of international law during his service as chief American war crime prosecutor at Nuremberg. But his deployment of international law in as a justification for the banishment of LPRs on flimsy grounds betrayed the very purpose of international law, which exists to protect the weak, not to reinforce their vulnerability.
- is delivered from the Furies to the citizens of Athens for human judgment, notions of man-made law and the merge, paving the way for the modern state. Ever since, although we have argued bitterly about how law should be made and what it should say, the intellectual partnership between law and the
- McKinley’s assassination led, in 1902, to the passage of the first state sedition law, New York’s so-called criminal anarchy statute, making it a crime to join any organization advocating the overthrow of organized government by force or violence. N.Y. Laws of 1902, ch. 371. The New York statute was the model for the 1918 federal deportation statute in
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Chapter 12. Hoffman Plastic Compounds, Inc. v. NLRB: The Rules of the Workplace for Undocumented Immigrants 39 results (showing 5 best matches)
- The story of reveals the efforts of unions, employers, civil rights advocates, legislatures, executive branch agencies, and ultimately the Supreme Court to reconcile immigration and labor laws, to make sense of the sometimes contradictory legislative impulses these twin regimes manifest, and to develop a framework for the humane and effective regulation of both borders and labor markets.
- Soon after the Supreme Court granted certiorari, attorneys for civil rights groups, the AFL–CIO, and others began to coordinate the preparation of amicus briefs. It was quickly agreed that the AFL–CIO and its outside counsel would approach the case from a labor law perspective, including a close analysis of the case and an emphasis on the tradition of deference to the Board’s broad remedial authority. The ACLU would analyze the case from an immigration law perspective, including an exhaustive examination of the legislative origins of IRCA, to argue that Congress did not intend IRCA to alter the outcome in , nor to limit labor law remedies. If possible, the ACLU would also argue that IRCA only confirmed Congress’ intent that undocumented workers be eligible for backpay. Several civil rights advocacy organizations would organize a “Brandeis brief,” collecting stories of exploitation ..., tort, contract, and insurance law must be left undisturbed. Last, if possible, would... ...laws....
- , five justices of the U.S. Supreme Court viewed the labor and immigration laws as fundamentally at odds with one another. This majority held that an employer who unlawfully discharges a worker for union organizing activities is immune from ordinary labor law liability for backpay, if the worker lacks work authorization under immigration law and the employer learns this only after the illegal discharge. Four dissenting justices viewed the labor and immigration laws as fundamentally harmonious. They would have allowed the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to enforce its backpay award, notwithstanding an immigration law that prohibits employers from knowingly hiring or employing unauthorized workers.
- To an immigration lawyer familiar with immigration law’s “plenary power doctrine” and the notion of an ascending scale of rights that privileges legal immigrants over undocumented ones, the intuitive answer might be, “of course; there are frequently different rules for immigrants and citizens, and for legal immigrants and the undocumented.” To a labor lawyer familiar with labor law’s embrace of collective action and private rights enforcement to achieve public deterrence, the instinctive response might be, “of course not; there are no statutory exceptions to labor law coverage based on immigration status, and the fate of all workers depends on the treatment of each.”
- In important ways, laws regulating our nation’s borders and its labor markets share an ancestry that traces to early colonial rules on slavery, the slave trade, and indentured servants. Although modern lawyers are accustomed to thinking of “labor law” and “immigration law” as separate fields, current proposals for mammoth new guestworker programs, “earned legalization,” and a new paradigm for U.S.-Mexico relations reflect the deep connections between these two bodies of law. This common heritage is apparent as well in the competing political pressures embodied in both schemes—at times and in places protectionist, nativist, bigoted, and designed to favor the interests of management, at other times and in other places open, non-discriminatory, inclusive, and designed to favor the interests of working people.
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Chapter 3. Wong Kim Ark: The Contest Over Birthright Citizenship 38 results (showing 5 best matches)
- In their response to the government’s case, Wong Kim Ark’s attorneys, Maxwell Evarts and J. Hubley Ashton, sought to empty “allegiance” of its cultural and racial content and return to the basic understanding of that concept under the common law as connoting obedience to the law. They relied on Justice Story’s formulation in 1830 that “allegiance is nothing more than the tie or duty of obedience of a subject to the sovereign under whose protection he is.” They emphasized the “remarkable unanimity of opinion in every quarter” in American jurisprudence that birth within the territorial jurisdiction created citizenship and that allegiance naturally followed. The law of descent had never been accepted, nor, argued the attorneys in their own republican rhetoric, did it suit American principles. “A man cannot inherit his citizenship from his father as he does his property. It is something between himself and the country of his birth, and in no way connected with the relations of the...
- had been the practice in the United States, they contended, birthright citizenship was neither a wise policy nor a correct interpretation of the law binding the country. George D. Collins, a young lawyer from San Francisco, precipitated a flurry of exchanges in legal journals when, in 1884 (while still a law student at California State University Law School, now Hastings College of the Law), he boldly challenged the common law rule as wrong and “manifestly impolitic.” , the law of descent, he argued, was the rule the United States should follow. Collins and other critics acknowledged the long line of precedents to the contrary, the most prominent being There, the court had held that in the absence of explicit congressional or constitutional provisions, the principles of the common law should govern; hence, the English common law rule of ...States. Here, Collins argued, was the beginning of a long line of bad law. The New York court was wrong, Collins and others argued,... ...law,...
- The Constitution, as originally ratified, had not defined citizenship. It gave Congress the power to create uniform laws for the naturalization of aliens, limited the office of the presidency to “natural born” citizens, and spoke of the “privileges and immunities” of “citizens of each state.” But nowhere did it define “citizen.” In that absence, American jurists had turned unhesitatingly to the British common law as the authoritative source in determining who were citizens of the United States. Under the common law, or the “law of the soil” provided that anyone born within the nation’s territory was its citizen. This contrasted with the Roman civil law definition of citizenship, , or the law of descent. Under
- opinion represented a significant victory for Chinese Americans, but it would be only the first skirmish in the legal battle over birthright citizenship. The case was decided in the midst of a bitter fight over the enforcement of the Chinese exclusion laws. Though Congress had severely limited the immigration of Chinese laborers, the Chinese American community had made skillful use of litigation to limit the reach of the exclusion law and to keep avenues open to their immigration. Congress responded with successive laws in 1884, 1888, 1892, and 1893 to tighten the exclusion laws, and the Department of Justice pursued a litigation strategy to restrict Chinese access to the federal courts, which had proven to be unexpectedly favorable arenas for the Chinese litigants. ...and the Department of Justice succeeded in making the laws more onerous and difficult to evade, they found the claims of Chinese American citizens to be particularly difficult to contest. Justice Field had ruled that...
- The heart of the government’s argument, however, rested on policy grounds, stressing the inability of birthright citizenship to ensure the allegiance of those it made citizens. Collins, carrying the weight of the policy arguments, argued that the common law of birthright citizenship was “anti-republican, anti-national, … anti-American, and antagonistic to the principles of the Revolution.” He stressed the feudal origins of the English common law, in which allegiance bound the subject forever in obedience to the King in exchange for protection and the ability to hold lands in tenure. Such a law had no place in a republic, thundered Collins. In a republican nation such as the United States, allegiance was neither natural nor compulsory, but rather a voluntary and conscious declaration of one’s loyalty to the nation, made after a period of education. A child’s allegiance did not attach immediately to the soil upon which he was born; national identity and affection depended on the...
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Chapter 8. Plyler v. Doe, the Education of Undocumented Children, and the Polity 35 results (showing 5 best matches)
- , both Vilma Martinez and Peter Roos left MALDEF, she to a Los Angeles law firm and he to the San Francisco-based public interest organization, META, where he continued education litigation on bilingual rights and immigrant rights. The original MALDEF San Antonio lawyer who had written the first memo, Joaquin Avila, succeeded Martinez as President and General Counsel. In 1996 he won a MacArthur Foundation “genius” fellowship after several years in private practice concentrating on voting rights; he now is a law teacher at Seattle University. Whatever became of the undocumented schoolchildren from Tyler, Texas? According to a newspaper story following up on them, nearly all of them graduated and, through various immigration provisions, obtained permission to stay in the United States and regularize their status.
- at every turn. To be sure, good fortune appeared to have intervened at all the key times: sympathetic clients with a straightforward story to tell confronting an unpopular state statute that never had had its own compelling story, flying under big-city legal radar and lucking into poor opposing local counsel, federal and state officials at the early stages who were responsive and helpful, continuity in federal support for the plaintiffs despite a change in the national administration, the ability to keep the Tyler case on track and for the Houston-based cases to prevail at their own speed and upon their own legs, and the right array of judges hearing the cases as they wended their way through the system. This issue could have foundered at any one of the many turns, winding up like
- twenty-plus years since it was decided, the educational significance of the case is still clear, even if it is limited to this small subset of schoolchildren—largely Latinos—in the United States. Given the poor overall educational achievement evident in this population, even this one success story has significance.
- “No State shall … deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” U.S. CONST. amend. XIV § 1.
- record included considerable statistical testimony, including the data in this paragraph, prepared by then-law student Laura Oren and Houston lawyer Joseph Vail; I found copies of the original hand-tabulated data in the Oren files on this subject. (Copies on file with author.) Both Professor Oren and Professor Vail are now my colleagues at the University of Houston Law Center, where both migrated after local law careers, including Professor Vail’s later service as an immigration judge.
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Chapter 13. Demore v. Kim: Judicial Deference to Congressional Folly 33 results (showing 5 best matches)
- The background story of Hyung Joon Kim’s convictions and rehabilitation exposes the misrepresentations and misunderstandings that clouded the Supreme Court’s judgment in In addition, the nature of Kim’s crimes and the strength of his ties to the community are precisely what an immigration judge would consider (albeit in less detail) if the statute allowed for a bond hearing. Most importantly, Kim’s story shows the steep human cost and the government waste incurred when detention is mandated for virtually all non-citizen offenders facing deportation, without an individualized assessment of whether any purpose is served by their continued incarceration.
- In a nutshell, the record of Kim’s cancellation proceeding discloses the following story.
- This criticism is aptly illustrated by Hyung Joon Kim’s life story. The statute at issue in
- majority made it seem. This chapter recounts the twists and turns in that battle. It also considers the impact of mandatory detention on lawful permanent residents like Kim, who must relinquish their freedom as the price of contesting deportation, and on the Department of Homeland Security, the INS’s successor agency, which must devote scarce bed space to detain individuals who do not present a risk of flight or a danger to the community. Given these costs, it is difficult to understand why Congress would enact such a sweeping detention mandate. We turn now to that part of the story.
- Things began to change in the late 1980s when—at the impetus of state officials and a few key congressional leaders—the “criminal alien problem” became a hot political issue. Over the next decade, numerous congressional hearings, government reports, and newspaper stories recounted the failures of the system for removing noncitizen offenders from the United States.
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Chapter 9. Maria and Joseph Plasencia’s Lost Weekend: The Case of Landon v. Plasencia 34 results (showing 5 best matches)
- After the testimony of the three INS witnesses, Plasencia elaborated on the story that she had previously laid out for the immigration judge:
- Maria testified that her husband agreed to bring the Salvadorans across because he “just felt sorry for them” and “did it just for pity.” When the INS trial attorney persisted with this line of questioning, she stood by her story: “[T]here was no mention of money, I swear it. There was only the mention of gasoline.” When pressed another time, she relented a tiny bit and mentioned that some of the passengers took her and Joseph to dinner the night before the attempted border crossing.
- See Stephen H. Legomsky, Immigration Law and the Principle of Plenary Congressional Power, 1984 S. Ct. Rev. 255, 260 nn.25–26; Peter H. Schuck, The Transformation of Immigration Law, 84 Colum. L. Rev. 1, 62–63 & n.342 (1984).
- Had Maria been represented by an attorney, her story almost certainly would have been developed in greater detail. We might have learned about the role of “Uncle Arturo” and the grandmother in arranging for the Plasencias to bring the Salvadorans to Los Angeles. An attorney could have emphasized that Maria Plasencia was a lawful permanent resident and with strong equities for being permitted to remain in the United States. The record contains little about her, her motives, or her family and community life. What had she done for five years in the United States in addition to setting up a household? What were her ties to the community? What hardships would the family, including a U.S. citizen husband and four lawful permanent resident children, suffer if she were denied re-admission? In essence, why should we want to allow her to return to the United States?
- ...story of Maria and Joseph Plasencia shows a rather ordinary couple—one an immigrant, the other a native-born U.S. citizen—caught up in larger national and international tides. Far from a passive observer, Maria Plasencia refused to concede removal, but pressed her claim to return to her family in the United States. Legally, the Supreme Court decision in the case was a partial loss for Maria, but, released pending appeal and never pursued by the INS after the Supreme Court’s decision, she returned to normal life in the United States with her family. This at the time was not that uncommon in immigration cases, even those in which the government claimed legal victory. Uneven enforcement, and the ability of immigrants to delay removal from the United States, often worked to their advantage. Since 1982, however, the federal government has made the deportation of non-citizens subject to removal—particularly those with criminal convictions—a priority, with the result being that...
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Civil Rights Stories 2 results
Title Page 3 results
Chapter 7. Kleindienst v. Mandel: Plenary Power v. the Professors 35 results (showing 5 best matches)
- The controversy over Mandel’s exclusion took a new twist as stories emerged that State and Justice disagreed about the issue at the highest levels. A front-page article in editorial inveighed against the exclusion of Mandel on ideological grounds and the law that made this possible.
- Telephone Interview by Celia Whitaker with David Rosenberg, Professor of Law, Harvard Law School (Oct. 22, 2003) (“Rosenberg Interview (Oct. 22, 2003)”).
- Burt Neuborne recalls that it was Boudin who asked the ACLU, not vice versa. Interview by Author and Celia Whitaker with Burt Neuborne, John Norton Pomeroy Professor of Law, New York University Law School, in New York, NY (Oct. 21, 2003) (“Neuborne Interview (Oct. 21, 2003)”).
- Telephone Interview by Celia Whitaker with David Rosenberg, Professor of Law, Harvard Law School (Nov. 5, 2003).
- U.S. Dept. of Justice, 1998 Statistical Yearbook of the Immigration and Naturalization Service 226, Table 67 (2000); Charles Gordon, Stanley Mailman, & Stephen Yale–Loehr, Immigration Law and Procedure § 63.04 n.27 and accompanying text (“Gordon et al., Immigration Law and Procedure”).
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Chapter 6. Afroyim: Vaunting Citizenship, Presaging Transnationality 13 results (showing 5 best matches)
- See Nationality Law of the United States: Message from the President of the United States Transmitting a Report Proposing a Revision and Codification of the Nationality Laws of the United States, House Comm. Print, 76th Cong. at 67.
- decision also came under attack in the law reviews; most notably, University of Chicago Law Professor Philip Kurland concluded that the “case is probably now moribund” in the 1964 Foreword to the annual Supreme Court issue of the
- See the State Department Board of Appellate Review cases cited in Note, United States Loss Of Citizenship Law After
- . The brief noted the lack of any corresponding provision in the nationality laws of any foreign state, and offered a theoretical justification for voting as “not an unnatural concomitant” of the acknowledged “temporary and local” allegiance that arises under international law from the simple reality of residence.
- Until the beginning of the twentieth century, expatriation against an individual’s will had been addressed in administrative practice, rather than under any formally codified regime. Debates and litigation in the earliest decades of national life had focused on a sharply different question: whether a willing individual had the power to renounce citizenship (in the absence of specific consent by the sovereign), or whether the entrenched British doctrine of perpetual allegiance would govern U.S. law.
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Chapter 1. Chae Chan Ping and Fong Yue Ting: The Origins of Plenary Power 31 results (showing 5 best matches)
- that for noncitizens, living in the United States is a privilege rather than a right, continues to accurately state the law. As Justice Frankfurter explained, if federal immigration law has been “based … in part on discredited racial theories [and] whether immigration laws have been crude and cruel, whether they may have reflected xenophobia in general or anti-Semitism or anti-Catholicism, the responsibility belongs to Congress.”
- The court concluded that the 1888 law was not ex post facto, for it created no crime and imposed no penalty. The court noted that in the past, it had discharged its duty, “however unpleasant,” to protect the rights of the Chinese under the law: “[a]s we faithfully enforced the laws, as we found them, when they were in favor of the Chinese laborers, we deem it, equally, our duty to enforce them in all their parts, now that they are unfavorable to them.”
- The Court agreed with the circuit court that certain rights under a treaty or other law would continue even if that law were superseded: “Of course, whatever of a permanent character had been executed or vested under the treaties was not affected by it. In that respect the abrogation of the obligations of a treaty operates, like the repeal of a law, only upon the future, leaving transactions executed under it to stand unaffected.” However, the right to re-enter was not like the right to own real property; it did not survive cancellation of the law creating it. “Between property rights not affected by the termination or abrogation of a treaty, and the expectation of benefits from the continuance of existing legislation, there is as wide a difference as between realization and hopes.”
- The level of community organization that allowed the Chinese to obtain legal counsel gave them the opportunity for organized resistance to a law they detested. In California, the Chinese Six Companies organized a boycott of the registration program; nationally, perhaps 15% of the eligible Chinese registered, leaving over 80,000 in violation of the law. Every Chinese person in America was asked to contribute a dollar to a legal defense fund. Meanwhile, in New York, the Chinese Equal Rights League was formed in part to organize resistance to the law.
- Otherwise law-abiding Chinese Americans were willing to oppose the exclusion policy, reasoning, as did Martin Luther King, Jr., that there was no duty to obey unjust laws. Professor Wigmore sympathetically noted that the law excluding Chinese testimony “was itself breaking solemn treaty-faith with the very nation whose members it thus condemned as oath-breakers; and that the supposed special danger of perjury by Chinese attempting to evade those statutes of exile was precisely what might be expected from the people of any country when a hostile measure is attempted to be enforced by the harshest means.”
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Chapter 2. Wong Wing v. United States: The Bill of Rights Protects Illegal Aliens 30 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Shiras observed that the Chinese exclusion laws “operate upon two classes,—one consisting of those who came into the country with its consent, the other of those who have come into the United States without their consent, and in disregard of the law.”
- The contention that persons within the territorial jurisdiction of this republic might be beyond the protection of the law was heard with pain on the argument at the bar,—in face of the great constitutional amendment which declares that no state shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
- See Lucy E. Salyer, Laws Harsh as Tigers: Chinese Immigrants and the Shaping of Modern Immigration Law 40–48 (1995).
- Elizabeth Gasper Brown, Legal Education at Michigan, 1859–1959, at 471 (1959); George L. Canfield and George W. Dalzell, The Law of the Sea: A Manual on the Principles of Admiralty Law for Students, Mariners, and Ship Operators (1921).
- To me, sir, it does not seem quite the thing to provide that a Chinese laborer coming here is either to be indicted or to be subjected to a long investigation, to give bail and to have thrown around him those provisions of law which from their very cumbersomeness involve in their execution an invitation to attempt to evade the law and violate its provisions. So far as the Chinese laborers who are here are concerned I am in favor of there being an investigation in reference to each particular case that will develop the fact whether he is here lawfully or not. But I do not believe that it is necessary that we should construct a law upon that palladium of our liberties, the grand jury, or the right to bail, or any of the provisions which have been accustomed to be enacted in respect to criminals, either in regard to delay or punishment….
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Copyright Page 1 result
- Foundation Press, of Thomson/West, has created this publication to provide you with accurate and authoritative information concerning the subject matter covered. However, this publication was not necessarily prepared by persons licensed to practice law in a particular jurisdiction. Foundation Press is not engaged in rendering legal or other professional advice, and this publication is not a substitute for the advice of an attorney. If you require legal or other expert advice, you should seek the services of a competent attorney or other professional.
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- Publication Date: August 11th, 2005
- ISBN: 9781587788734
- Subject: Immigration Law
- Series: Law Stories
- Type: Overviews
- Description: This publication includes cases that depict the Supreme Court’s broad deference to the political branches in the immigration realm, the so-called “plenary power doctrine.” Selected cases are presented in chronological order, beginning with the Supreme Court’s consideration of the Chinese Exclusion Acts of the 1880s and 1890s. The book then examines how the Cold War tested the constitutional limits of the government’s plenary power over immigration, and how “phantom constitutional norms” were later used to defeat the government’s broadest claims. Other cases explore the immigration enforcement system and the difficulty of balancing the demands of enforcement against other societal goals.