The Battle to Stay in America: Immigration’s Hidden Front Line. By Michael Kagan

Abstract

With his thoughtful and engaging book, The Battle to Stay in America: Immigration’s Hidden Front Line, Professor Michael Kagan offers a clear picture of what restrictive U.S. immigration policies have meant for long-time immigrant residents. The purpose of the book is “to clarify issues for Americans hungry for a better way to govern immigration, one that does not offend basic American values, one that incorporates principles of fairness, balance, and proportionality” (p. 6). On these terms, the book certainly succeeds. Kagan’s urgent stories about the lives of immigrants in his city are unlikely to sway those whose hatreds have been nourished on a steady diet of misinformation about immigrants. But the book offers plenty of information and inspiration for people interested in identifying the flaws in U.S. immigration laws and seeking meaningful solutions to them. In this book, Professor Kagan does three important things well. First, he does an excellent job of illuminating many of the surprisingly harsh effects of contemporary immigration law. From restrictions placed on undocumented residents seeking to regularize their status, to the limits of the asylum law framework, to the capricious operations of the Secure Communities program, to the procedural deficiencies of the immigration courts, Kagan takes abstract legal concepts and programs and makes them real for the reader by introducing us to the people in his law practice, and in his neighborhood, who are contending with these realities in their everyday lives.