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Tag Archives: Immigration

Undocumented Status and Slavery: Examining the Parallels

Feb 5, 2014 Jaya Ramji-NogalesLexImmigration

Chantal Thomas, Immigration Controls and “Modern-Day Slavery” (Cornell Law Sch. Legal Studies Research Paper Series, Paper No. 13-86, 2013), available at SSRN.

Jaya Ramji-Nogales

Jaya Ramji-Nogales

In the heat of the debate over comprehensive immigration reform last spring, Marco Rubio’s press secretary likened undocumented migrants to slaves, noting that Americans have not “had a cohort of people living permanently in US without full rights of citizenship since slavery.” The parallel between slavery and undocumented status is drawn often, but rarely with precision or analytical rigor.

Chantal Thomas’s new paper, Immigration Controls and “Modern-Day Slavery”, takes on the challenge of bringing hard-nosed logic to bear on the concept of “modern-day slavery” and its interface with immigration law. In my view one of the most interesting authors out there on questions of international law, immigration, and labor, Thomas’s analysis of the slavery debate does not disappoint. Continue reading "Undocumented Status and Slavery: Examining the Parallels"

Local Prosecutors as Deportation Gatekeepers

Jan 8, 2014 Jill FamilyLexImmigration

Stephen Lee, De Facto Immigration Courts, 101 Cal. L. Rev. 553 (2013).

Jill Family

Jill Family

In De Facto Immigration Courts, Stephen Lee untangles part of the thicket that is immigration law. Immigration law is a dense and unique fusion of administrative law, constitutional law, criminal law, and more. It is these intersections, in the context of the very human story of migration, which give immigration law its essence. Professor Lee’s article identifies and explores an underexposed phenomenon arising from immigration law’s dependence on criminal law and criminal procedure.

Professor Lee’s article focuses on how events in state and local criminal law proceedings affect eventual federal civil law agency removal (deportation) proceedings in immigration courts. Specifically, he looks at the impact of state and local prosecutors’ charging and plea choices in criminal cases in eventual agency immigration law proceedings. He argues that criminal court systems are functioning as de facto immigration courts. Continue reading "Local Prosecutors as Deportation Gatekeepers"