J C Salyer

Court of Injustice

Law Without Recognition in U.S. Immigration

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

Based on author's thesis (doctoral - City University of New York, 2014) issued under title: Law without recognition: the lack of judicial discretion to consider individual lives and legal equities in United States immigration law.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Stanford University Press
• Seitenzahl: 216
• Erscheinungstermin: 2. Juni 2020
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 231mm x 157mm x 20mm
• Gewicht: 476g
• ISBN-13: 9781503611405
• ISBN-10: 150361140X
• Artikelnr.: 57171995

Autorenporträt

J.C. Salyer is Assistant Professor of Practice in Anthropology and Human Rights at Barnard College, Columbia University. Salyer is Director of the Human Rights Program at Barnard, and also a staff attorney for the Arab-American Family Support Center, a community-based organization in Brooklyn, where he runs the organization's immigration clinic.

Inhaltsangabe

Contents and Abstracts
Introduction: The Paradoxes of U.S. Immigration Law and Deportation
chapter abstract
By introducing the anti-immigrant policies of the Trump administration,
this chapter explores the broader nature and history of anti-immigrant
policies and the deprivation of the rights and interests of immigrants. It
introduces the main arguments of the book, which are that immigration law
fears migrants in a manner that is so overbroad that it punishes, detains,
and deports immigrants who bear little resemblance to the stated fears used
to justify the laws and that these practices go unchecked by the courts,
which defer to the political branches of government under the plenary power
doctrine. Finally, the introduction argues that we can learn a lot about
the potential for resistance and reform by understanding how lawyers
advocating for their clients in immigration courts are sometimes able to
achieve just results for their clients even within this unfair system.
1Migrants, Criminal Aliens, and Folk Devils
chapter abstract
This chapter uses the ethnographic example of a young man named Omar to
illustrate how history, political and economic changes, and race are
intertwined in the production of sweeping immigration laws aimed at the
perceived dangers of criminal aliens and explores how the 1996 amendments
to immigration laws were a manifestation of a neoliberal ideology that
constructed "aliens and citizens as different kinds of persons" (Greenhouse
2013, 104). The chapter shows how a key aspect of these changes was
removing discretion to make individualized judgments from immigration
judges and how the restoration of this discretion is necessary to reach
just results.
2A Social History of the Development of U.S. Immigration Law
chapter abstract
This chapter addresses how the contemporary position of migrants relates to
the historical development of U.S. immigration law. The chapter explores
how more than a century of immigration legislation and judicial
interpretation created both substantive and procedural limits on the
protection of migrants' rights. In particular, the chapter shows that the
trend has been for perceived threats to be projected in the form of an
abstract alien, who embodies those dangers, but for the laws that are
passed to be so broad that they affect actual individuals who do not
present those threats.
3The Role of Lawyers and Judges in U.S. Immigration Law
chapter abstract
This chapter draws on participant observation and interviews to examine
current immigration law and focuses, in part, on areas in which immigration
judges still retain some discretion: asylum cases and
cancellation-of-removal cases. The chapter explores how, even within the
relatively rigid system of laws that make up current immigration law,
immigration lawyers are able to retain and exploit some flexibility to
achieve favorable outcomes for the individuals they assist.
4Law Without Recognition: Excluded Equities and Judges Without Discretion
chapter abstract
This chapter explores the particular provisions of contemporary immigration
law and the effects they have on individuals. Drawing on participant
observation and the experiences of immigration lawyers who were
interviewed, the chapter illustrates areas where current immigration law is
inflexible and fails to account for individual circumstances and equities
and focuses on examples that illustrate both the possibility of a more
humane immigration law and the process by which that possibility has been
lost under current law.
5The New York Immigrant Family Unity Project: A Revolution Such as Lawyers
Would Mount
chapter abstract
This chapter provides a detailed account of NYIFUP, which is the first
government-funded assigned counsel system for indigent detained migrants
facing deportation. The chapter shows how NYIFUP is able to not merely
improve access to counsel for individual clients but also use its
institutional structure to make broader challenges to existing laws and
practices and to systematically document abuse, mistreatment, and injustice
suffered by migrants in detention and in removal.
Conclusion: The Limitations and Possibilities of U.S. Immigration Law
chapter abstract
This chapter concludes the book by arguing that one of the main failings of
the current immigration system is its refusal to recognize individual
equities, such as family relationships, hardships, and social participation
and contributions. By examining the Supreme Court's rationale in Trump v.
Hawaii, this chapter analyzes how the socio-legal position of migrants is
conceptualized. The chapter argues that although immigration law is not
itself the sole or main cause of (or solution to) issues of inequality and
injustice that relate to migration, its current formalistic and inflexible
nature should not be allowed to reduce complex individual, historic,
political, and economic events and relationships to narrow legal categories
that limit the ability to provide justice to people in precarious positions
not of their own making. The chapter ends by recommending areas for reform.