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While aiming to preserve domestic security, the Department of Homeland Security is also influenced by the humanitarian concern of making immigration interviews a social space where aliens have a fair chance of demonstrating their fear of persecution. Immigration policy has been schizophrenic in its aims, vacillating between opening and closing the door to new arrivals. The restrictionist sentiment that provided the basis of America's earliest immigration laws provided a template for the creation and administration of refugee policies and asylum law. This paper examines the role of ideological biases in judgments about the credibility of applicants for asylum. This study focuses on how officers think about cases and the situational and cultural influences on the decisions asylum adjudicators render. For persons attempting to enter this country for asylum, certain social group memberships such as nationality, make it more or less likely that their case will be referred to an asylum officer. For those that do get as far as an asylum interview, a host of social psychological phenomena ranging from perceptual biases to attribution processes shape how these individuals who come in contact with the asylum system are viewed and ultimately treated. Several areas are given particular consideration in this analysis of asylum decision-making: (a) schemas and the processing of claimant information, (b) culture and attributions made regarding claimant behavior, and (c) external constraints officers face in processing cases. This paper is based on a variety of qualitative methods including, ethnographic observations of asylum hearings and interviews, and in-depth interviews with claimants and asylum attorneys. It is hoped that this paper illuminates the extrajudicial factors that affect asylum claimant's ability to establish a credible fear of persecution, and some of the difficulties refugees face in gaining legal entry to America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores federalism in the context of immigration through the specific issue of marriage fraud. The paper focuses on a 1950's United States Supreme Court case, Lutwak versus United States, involving a prosecution of American naturalized citizens, one of whom was a World War II veteran, who enabled their relatives, Jewish displaced persons, to be admitted to the United States as spouses of World War II veterans. Three persons were convicted for defrauding the United States by engaging in what the government called marriage fraud. At the time, there was no statute expressly prohibiting the use of marriage to facilitate immigration into the United States. The defendants served two years imprisonment. Their convictions were upheld by the Supreme Court in the only Supreme Court opinion to date to deal with marriage fraud. The paper examines how the case fits into the context in which it arose - the massive post-World War II problem of displaced persons - and one of the underlying issues in the case - the federalization of an issue - what constitutes marriage or marriage fraud - that traditionally had been subject to state control. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the inherent conflict between the growing re-entry movement in the United States and the deportation of immigrants for the commission of a wide variety of often minor offenses. In light of the large numbers of prisoners who are released from incarceration annually, the federal and state governments have increasingly funded efforts to facilitate the return and reintegration of criminal offenders into their communities. While the scope of the programs remains limited, their rhetorical and symbolic value has been high. The attempt to incorporate released offenders, however, has had the negative side-effect of creating two groups of offenders - those who are a part of the community, i.e., citizen offenders, and those who are not, i.e., non-citizen offenders. Ultimately, this has led to the increasing exclusion of non-citizen offenders. Because of the threat of deportation and immigration retainers, non-citizen offenders are precluded from participation in a host of in-prison programs that would facilitate reintegration and are precluded from accessing community assistance. The most dramatic example of this further exclusion of non-immigrant offenders are voting rights. As organizations are focused on gaining voting rights for ex-offenders, they implicitly further exclude those who do not have citizenship claims and can make no claims to such rights. This separates the non-citizen and citizen group of offenders yet further: To allow for the integration of some offenders, non-citizen offenders will be further stigmatized and excluded from all services and ultimately from the territory, without regard to their actual community and family ties. This paper will detail the dilemma inherent in the re-entry movement and its unintentional effects, and will attempt to develop some strategies to mitigate this negative fallout from the re-entry movement. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2006, over a million immigrants and their allies rose up in cities across the United States to denounce the now famous Sensenbrenner bill (HR4437) that introduced controversial measures to criminalize immigration. The historic mass mobilizations exposed an important paradox. Since the 1960s, there has been a growing convergence between criminalization on the one hand and the expansion of rights for immigrants on the other. This paper traces the development of this paradoxical convergence, which I refer to as a rights/crime nexus, over three periods: 1965, 1986, and post-9/11. It argues that the formal recognition of rights for migrants in the post-civil rights era led to a greater intersection between immigration and crime control. Thus, the logic underlying the intersection between rights and criminalization is less about restricting movement and ultimately about policing citizenship and membership within a post-civil rights context. The paper stems from a year and one half of ethnographic research of immigration law enforcement at the U.S.-Mexico Border.   ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the origins and consequences of contemporary immigration rules governing deportation. The presentation begins with a brief over-view of immigration rules since 1990, rules that have set much lower thresholds for deportation and removal from the United States, especially among persons who have been convicted of crimes. The paper then outlines the rate and scope of removals from the United States since 1990, and then concludes with a discussion of the preliminary impact of removals on countries in Asia, and South and Central America. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since September 2001, the Bush administration has developed a series of mechanisms, by-passing due process protections, to indefinitely detain Middle Eastern men on a civil immigration pretext. This paper will argue that the nation's immigration laws have been misappropriated to craft a system of preventive detention giving rise to imprisonment without charge for weeks and months, denial of access to lawyers or family visitation, interrogations and threats during the period of detention, physical and psychological abuse and ultimately deportations without a fair initial hearing or the exhaustion of available appellate recourse. This new system of civil detention is specifically designed to weaken constitutional due process protections. U.S. officials may have borrowed a page from illiberal regimes that are "war on terror" allies in developing their administrative detention strategies, a contention that this paper will also consider. Civil detention has also been correlated to the practice of "renditions," whereby individuals detained in the U.S. are deported to countries more willing to engage in traditional torture practices in continued interrogation post-deportation. The combination of detention practices within the U.S. and the "rendition" of detainees to countries known to engage in torture, makes explicit the link, under the Bush administration, between the violations of procedural rights in the U.S. and the violations of the laws of war outside of the U.S. This paper will contribute to an understanding of how the war on immigrants -- and attendant domestic detention practices -- is an integral part of America's war on terror strategy. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper traces the effects of the refugee rights movement on workings of the U.S. asylum system, focusing on the processes used in the initial adjudication of asylum claims. It offers an institutionalist explanation for the increased proceduralism in U.S. asylum adjudication, despite changes in the tenor of U.S. immigration politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is an emerging notion of 'citizenship by fate' in recent discourse over the status of undocumented immigrants. The traditionally strong liberal notion of citizenship in the United States was one in which citizenship was recognized by contract. If one matched a series of criteria established by existing citizens, one was eligible to be admitted to citizenship. A contrasting notion is communitarian citizenship, where citizenship is generally not 'tradable'- it is acquired only through long-standing ties with the community. However, the massive number of undocumented immigrants in the United States has pushed accepted notions of citizenship to its limits. The American society has particularly struggled with the question, 'are undocumented immigrants who were brought here when they were only young, still illegal and deportable?' Increasingly there are signs that people are unwilling to treat individuals, who by no choice of their own had come to live in the United States since their youth, simply as 'illegal aliens'. For example, recent debate over the DREAM Act, granting in-state tuition to high school graduates who are undocumented, shows that this notion has become significant enough to influence national policy. Even the Supreme Court cases, analyzed under this light, seem to reflect this emerging notion. For example, in Plyler v. Doe, the Court held that the exclusion of undocumented children from support for public education was unconstitutional. In its opinion, the Court expressed the notion that children could not be held responsible for the decision of their parents to come to the United States. In this paper, I will examine the development of this discourse through primary sources including legislative and judicial transcripts, and consider the implication of the emerging notion on existing immigration law and policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Immigration laws and policies, like other nation- and state-building activities, have helped to determine the racialized character of the United States. This paper examines the interplay between race, gender, immigration, labor needs, and reproduction in nation-state building projects, illustrating processes of gender construction, racialization, and ethnic differentiation. I consider how notions of race and gender are used in aiding and abetting nation-building claims and projects. Specifically, I question why the United States banned nearly all Chinese immigrants with passage of the Page Law in 1875 and the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 though it permitted Japanese immigration, in particular Japanese wives, with the Gentlemen's Agreement of 1907 and 1908. Though the U.S. eventually excluded Japanese immigration in 1924, the differential treatment, albeit short, was hugely consequential. Whereas many Chinese were unable to form families and settle permanently, the Japanese did, which led to a sizable Japanese American community. Using archival evidence, I explain that geopolitics, competing tensions between labor needs and permanent settlement, along with state and national fears over miscegenation and desires to maintain the imputed racial purity of a 'white' national identity, led to differing responses. This research suggests that nation-building is not simply the 'imagining' of a community but is instead a negotiated process between geopolitics, economic development, politics of immigration, and cultural meanings of gender, race, and reproduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is interested in the legal regulation of low-skilled undocumented migration to the United States. Taking Mexican migration as a case study, I will examine 'remittances' (i.e. money that the immigrant earns in the U.S. and sends to his or her home country) and the market's institutional response to remittances. I will argue that there is an economic and social basis for conceiving of a category of 'undocumenteds' rights' under the U.S. immigration laws, and I will explore how this membership might be reflected in specific policy initiatives [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The apparent debordering of the Western under the aegis of economic globalization has been systematically associated with a parallel process of rebordering against global migrations. Border enforcement policies and administrative detention across Europe and the United States are seen here as elements of an increasingly globalized strategy of categorial control aimed at the selective criminalization of migrants. Following a materialist approach, this paper suggests that these punitive strategies should be viewed in light of the current transformations of the economy: the criminalization of migrations appears to be functional to the "subordinate inclusion" of immigrants thus contributing to the reproduction of an ontologically insecure population whose social, political, and economic vulnerability makes it a crucial segment of the post-Fordist labor force. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People around the world are on the move, pushed by external events such as civil war, political upheaval, and increasingly environmental disasters and pulled by the lure of a better life, a better job, a better way to provide for their families. The United States has created an inconsistent legal framework for responding to the exploitation of immigrants, dependent on the degree of victimhood, with the label of victim only frugally bestowed upon those who are also viewed as essential to sustaining the US economy. US law would suggest that trafficked persons are not useful to legitimate US businesspersons, and are accordingly protected. Agricultural and factory workers are very useful to businesspersons whom we regard as legitimate, and so these migrants go unprotected.Part I of this paper looks at the psychology of migration, migration theory, and the human rights framework as a protection tool designed for migrants. Part II explores the notion of exploitation, and in particular the extent to which people in transit, migrants, are particularly vulnerable due to the very human nature that drives them to wish to improve their circumstances. It looks at the characteristics of exploitation, from the perspective of the exploiter and the exploited, and proposes that part of the reason migrants are so vulnerable to exploitation is the private sphere nature of the movement through and into new cultures and legal systems in which the migrant lives and works on the fringes of society, not fully embraced by it. Part III looks at two specific forms of exploitation, human trafficking and the abuse of agricultural laborers and "guestworkers", and the international and domestic US legal responses to exploitation in those two contexts, theorizing that Americans and countries adhering to free market economies have very mixed feelings about exploitation. On the one hand we believe that exploitation is morally, and past a certain degree even legally wrong, but on the other accept it as a necessary characteristic of doing business in the global market. Part IV digs more deeply into principles of democracy and capitalism to search for answers, suggesting that legal responses to exploitation alone will never be sufficient, and that civil society, wielding human rights arguments and tools may be the most effective counterforce to exploitation. Part V offers a prescription for change, recommending that civil society and immigration law responses be bolstered to protect against exploitation in particular. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contemporary form of refugee policy in Canada and the United States emerged from the post-World War II era, when policymakers confronted growing displaced persons populations in Europe, as well as increased refugee dislocations around the world with the advent of the Cold War. This paper will begin by briefly reviewing the development of postwar policy in both countries up to the Hungarian Refugee Crisis in 1956, and will then discuss refugee politics in the context of 1960s legislative reform. Worldwide refugee crises forced legislators to rethink their entrance requirements and were partially responsible for the liberalization of immigration law in the United States in 1965, and in Canada in 1967. Still, while refugee politics could be mobilized to press for more expansive immigrant rights, legislators seized upon this moment of reform to divorce humanitarianism from immigrant admissions, relegating it solely to the refugee arena. This shift allowed leaders in both countries to define only those arriving as refugees in terms of their individual need, and to select immigrants instead by their possible contribution to the nation. The relegation of humanitarianism to refugee admissions would in turn shape the debates over future immigration policy in both countries. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current debate in the United States over undocumented immigrants, the controversy over a Spanish version of the national anthem, and congressional proposals declaring English the "national" or "unifying" language all point to a growing identity crisis sweeping the country. The media abound with public intellectuals and political pundits pondering, "Who are we?" For a nation built in large part on immigration, the language question in particular has been a recurrent lightening rod in the movement toward ongoing compulsory nationalization. An often overlooked yet important factor is the critical role that public schooling has played in that effort. In recent years, transnationalism and globalization have added distinct challenges both here and abroad to a new wave of mass migration across the globe. This paper uses language policy and schooling as the prism for exploring how these trends have given rise to "dual identities" and attachments, and what the potential consequences might be for educating and integrating the children of "new immigrants." It suggests that the United States, as a nation, reassess the prevailing assimilation ideal, and that policy makers and educators consciously reshape policy on language and culture in the schools, for both native-born and newcomers, to reflect the changing demographic, political, and economic landscape. It further compares and contrasts the United States experience, both in the past and the present, with immigration problems now confronting western European nations like France, Germany, and the Netherlands, where different historical circumstances may demand unique educational solutions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the United States, legislative changes to immigration law over the past two decades increasingly have resulted in the criminalization of migration. The trend is visible in three ways. First, Congress has attached harsh criminal sanctions to acts of migration outside of authorized channels and to related activities such as document fraud. Second, Congress has radically expanded the category of criminal offenses that will render a noncitizen - including a lawful permanent resident - subject to removal provisions under immigration law. Finally, immigration enforcement efforts have been expanded, both at the border and in the interior of the country. The expanded enforcement efforts have conflated criminal law and immigration law enforcement.As Congress debated immigration reform proposals in the 2006 legislative session, both chambers of Congress developed proposals that would have further expanded the category of "criminal aliens." Both chambers included provisions that would have resulted in the increased enforcement of immigration laws through the use of criminal sanctions. In short, the criminalization of migration has become the default strategy for dealing with the perceived immigration crisis in the United States.My paper will challenge this default strategy of increasingly criminalizing migration as a means of achieving improved regulation of migration and "border security" in the United States. I argue that effective border regulation and sound social policy requires large-scale decriminalization of migration. I explain why the decriminalization of migration is desirable even in a society that rejects an open borders approach to migration. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

American officials have repeatedly declared that the "war on terror" is not a war on immigration. Nevertheless, it is clear that the war on terror has disproportionately affected recent immigrants. In in-depth interviews with 90 East African immigrants to the United States, we ask how immigrants themselves perceive the war on terror. Using a framework that combines an institutional perspective with theories of legal consciousness, we find that immigrants perceive the war on terror more broadly than lawmakers or legal experts and try to decrease its effects by seeking citizenship. We also find that immigrants are generally most concerned with actions that target them indiscriminately (bureaucratic slowdowns) or randomly (hate crime), but are more acquiescent to legislation targeted at distinguishing 'good' immigrants from 'bad' immigrants (such as putting visa expiration dates on drivers licenses). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the United States, popular discourse around immigration positions unauthorized immigrants as desperate to enter the United States, which in turn is depicted as far superior to migrants' countries of origin. In contrast, interviews with Salvadorans who entered the United States as young children and grew up in the U.S convey loss and uncertainty. These migrants live with a sense of what might have been, of the trajectory along which their lives might have continued had they not immigrated, of the selves that they might still be. These alternatives are both desired for their promise of wholeness, and rejected for their danger (many migrated during the Salvadoran civil war) and alienness. At the same time, these migrants' positions within the United States may not be secure, as some still hold temporary statuses that can be rescinded and that may not permit naturalization. Even those who are U.S. citizens may have parents and siblings who are undocumented and who face possible removal. Alternative pasts therefore have the potential to be superimposed on the present, interrupting the future. The complex life narratives of migrants who immigrated as young children therefore challenge more linear accounts of migration and national identity. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 1990's witnessed increased border enforcement in the United States and in Europe, and with it the smuggling of humans. As human smuggling turned into a multi-million dollar enterprise, the business became increasingly organized, with financing and operations crossing international borders. The growing involvement of organized crime in human smuggling has triggered dramatic law-enforcement efforts on part of the United States and the European Union. Both have moved their borders farther out, paying neighboring countries to patrol their outer borders. Since September 11, 2001, the fear has also grown that organized criminal groups may attempt to smuggle not only hapless economic migrants and asylum-seekers into the country but also potential terrorists. As terrorism and organized crime have been linked, European and U.S. governments have used the connection to justify yet increased border controls and enhanced enforcement measures against organized crime groups. Those have had a negative impact on potential migrants, as they are being treated like criminals. The hunt for terrorists and the fear of open borders has led to an increased callousness and disrespect for the lives of migrants, on the part of organized crime and governments. With the European Union and the United States applying punitive and oppressive measures against migrants, no government has championed the human rights of migrants. Rather migrants have become expandable at the expense of a war on terrorism which has become synonymous with a war on organized crime and undocumented migrants. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]