Family-based Immigration Research Articles

The Right to Family Unification for Refugees

A handful of scholars have offered explanations for why states with otherwise restrictive immigration laws should relax their demands for people applying to immigrate for family reasons. However, much less has been said about the family unification rights of refugees. This paper extends the existing discussion on family-based immigration to refugees, arguing that: (1) states have stronger duties to reunite refugee families; (2) some refugees should be entitled to reunite with their “extended” family; (3) refugee family reunion should not be subject to financial conditions; and (4) the right to family reunion is especially strong for refugee children.

Contributors

Other| August 01 2021 Contributors positions (2021) 29 (3): 657–658. https://doi.org/10.1215/10679847-8978400 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Contributors. positions 1 August 2021; 29 (3): 657–658. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/10679847-8978400 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter Books & JournalsAll Journalspositions Search Advanced Search Allison Alexy is assistant professor in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures and the Department of Women's and Gender Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Her research explores gender, kinship, intimacy, and law in contemporary Japan. She has recently published Intimate Disconnections: Divorce and the Romance of Independence in Contemporary Japan (2020) and Intimate Japan: Ethnographies of Closeness and Conflict (2019, coedited with Emma E. Cook).Amy Brainer is associate professor and director of women's and gender studies at the University of Michigan–Dearborn. She is the author of Queer Kinship and Family Change in Taiwan (2019). Her current research follows queer and trans individuals and couples as they navigate family-based immigration to the United States and Taiwan.Yi-Chien Chen is professor in the Graduate Institute for Gender Studies at Shih Hsin University, Taiwan. She is the author of numerous articles on topics related to gender and law,... Issue Section: Contributors You do not currently have access to this content.

Navigating legality: transnational mixed-status families and the U.S. family-based immigration system

ABSTRACT As ‘legal’ immigrants, Mexicans with U.S. lawful permanent resident status have the rare opportunity to petition for immigrant visas for certain eligible family members. This article draws on multi-sited ethnographic research carried out over six years in Guanajuato, Mexico and Connecticut, United States, to examine the experiences of transnational mixed-status families with access to the U.S family-based immigration system. For some families, legalisation is perceived as a crucial resource. For others, legalisation poses a threat to family and community ties. Legalisation is not an inevitable or natural outcome of access to the family-based immigration system. Rather, it entails a complex process of negotiation among family members with different degrees of influence, and divergent and shifting goals. Families often find that engagements with the family immigration system yield unintended repercussions for children’s social mobility. Legalisation decisions have temporal dimensions, as intimate family decisions must be made according to a timeline imposed by U.S. immigration law. This transnational approach to mixed-status family experiences reveals that legality is a status worthy of study in its own right, and that legal statuses – while they may not be enforceable beyond the borders of the state that creates them – have power that shapes transnational family life.

The Effects of Immigration Enforcement on Faith-Based Organizations: An Analysis of the FEER Survey

Executive Summary The effects of US immigration enforcement policies on immigrants, US families, and communities have been well documented. Less attention, however, has been paid to their impact on faith-based organizations (FBOs). Faith communities provide a spiritual home, and extensive legal, resettlement, social, health, and educational services, for refugees and immigrants. This report presents the findings of the FEER (Federal Enforcement Effect Research) Survey, which explored the effects of US immigration enforcement policies on immigrant-serving Catholic institutions.1 Many of these institutions arose in response to the needs of previous generations of immigrants and their children (Kerwin and George 2014, 14, 74–75). Most strongly identify with immigrants and have long served as crucial intermediaries between immigrant communities and the broader society (Campos 2014, 149–51).2 During its first two years, the Trump administration has consistently characterized immigrants as criminals, security risks, and an economic burden. Among its policy initiatives, the administration has supported major cuts in family-based immigration, attempted to terminate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, reduced refugee admissions to historic lows, instituted admission bars on Muslim-majority countries, attempted to strip Temporary Protection Status (TPS) from all but a fraction of its beneficiaries, erected major new barriers to asylum, and proposed new rules regarding the public charge grounds of inadmissibility that would make it more difficult for poor and working-class persons to obtain permanent residence. US immigration enforcement policies have separated children from their parents, criminally prosecuted asylum seekers, expanded detention, increased arrests of noncitizens without criminal records, and militarized the US–Mexico border. These policies have failed to stem the flow of migrants and asylum seekers: instead, these flows have increased dramatically in recent months. These policies have succeeded, however, in devastating children, instilling fear in immigrant communities, blocking access to the US asylum system, and undermining immigrant integration (Kerwin 2018).3 The Federal Enforcement Effect Research (FEER) Survey points to a paradox. On one hand, US enforcement policies have increased the demand for services such as legal screening, representation, naturalization, assistance to unaccompanied minors, and support to the US families of detainees and deportees. Many Catholic institutions have expanded their services to accommodate the increased demand for their services. On the other hand, their work with immigrants has been impeded by federal immigration policies that effectively prevent immigrants from driving, attending gatherings, applying for benefits, and accessing services due to fear that these activities might lead to their deportation or the deportation of a family member. Among other top-line findings, 59 percent of 133 FEER respondents reported that “fear of apprehension or deportation” negatively affected immigrants’ access to their services, and 57 percent of 127 respondents reported that immigrant enforcement very negatively or negatively affected the participation of immigrants in their programs and ministries.

Fixing What’s Most Broken in the US Immigration System: A Profile of the Family Members of US Citizens and Lawful Permanent Residents Mired in Multiyear Backlogs

Executive Summary The US Department of State (DOS) reports that as of November 2018, nearly 3.7 million persons had been found by US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to have a close family relationship to a US citizen or lawful permanent resident (LPR) that qualified them for a visa, but were on “the waiting list in the various numerically-limited immigrant categories” ( DOS 2018 ). These backlogs in family-based “preference” (numerically capped) categories represent one of the most egregious examples of the dysfunction of the US immigration system. They consign family members of US citizens and LPRs that potentially qualify for a visa and that avail themselves of US legal procedures to years of insecurity, frustration, and (often) separation from their families. Often criticized in the public sphere for jumping the visa queue, it would be more accurate to say that this population, in large part, comprises the queue. While they wait for their visa priority date to become current, those without immigration status are subject to removal. In addition, most cannot adjust to LPR status in the United States, but must leave the country for consular processing and, when they do, face three- or 10-year bars on readmission, depending on the duration of their unlawful presence in the United States. This population will also be negatively affected by the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) proposed rule to expand the public charge ground of inadmissibility ( Kerwin, Warren, and Nicholson 2018 ). In addition, persons languishing in backlogs enjoy few prospects in the short term for executive or legislative relief, given political gridlock over immigration reform and the Trump administration’s support for reduced family-based immigration.

Defending Family Unity as an Immigration Policy Priority

In this article, I make a policy argument in defense of family and relationship-based immigration preferences in U.S. immigration law that accounts for economic objections and calls for solidarity among socioeconomically disadvantaged U.S. residents on this issue. I begin with a historical account of policy arguments for limiting family-based immigration. I challenge the view that family-based immigration is a fiscal burden on the nation as a whole and acts against the interests of disadvantaged native-born workers. Then, I present and respond to perception-based objections to family-based immigration by disadvantaged citizens who believe that they are suffering from competition with mixed-skilled immigrants, including those sponsored by family members. Advocates of family unity in immigration policy are fighting the perception of zero-sum competition between immigrants and disadvantaged citizens by organizing together for improvements in wages and working conditions, leveraging arguments from the U.S. civil rights struggle to advocate for inclusive immigration policies.

Legalizing Parents and Other Caregivers: A Family Immigration Policy Guided by a Public Ethic of Care

In this article, I consider the implications of an ethic of care for reforming U.S. family-based immigration admissions and waiver policies. Using an ethic of care as a starting point, I make a normative argument for extending family-based immigration benefits to the primary caregivers of resident and citizen-children. This policy reform would provide a basis for recognizing the social membership of the children of immigrants and rewarding the dependency work of their deportable parents or other primary caregivers. It would also broaden the definition of family in immigration law to encompass a wider range of caregiving relationships beyond blood and kinship relations.

U.S. Immigration Policy at a Crossroads: Should the U.S. Continue Its Family-Friendly Policy?

An ongoing debate is whether the U.S. should continue its family-based admission system, which favors visas for family members of U.S. citizens and residents, or adopt a more skills-based system, replacing family visas with employment-based visas. In many ways, this is a false dichotomy: family-friendly policies attract highly-skilled immigrants regardless of their own visa path, and there are not strong reasons why a loosening of restrictions on employment migrants need be accompanied by new restrictions on family-based immigration. Moreover, it is misleading to think that only employment-based immigrants contribute to the U.S. economy. Recent immigrants, who have mostly entered via kinship ties, are economically productive, a fact hidden by a flawed methodology that underlies most economic analyses of immigrant economic assimilation.

Migration as International Trade: The Economic Gains from the Liberalized Movement of Labor

Although those who currently seek to reduce the level of employment-based and family-based immigration into the United States often advance the economic welfare of natives and distributive justice as reasons to restrict such immigration, neither objective provides a sound justification for reductions in such immigration. This article argues instead that the maximization of national economic welfare would more likely require levels of employment-based and family-based immigration that are higher than those allowed by current U.S. immigration laws. This article sheds light on this issue by taking economic principles commonly applied to international trade and applying them to trade in labor services. This analysis derives the optimal immigration policy from the standpoint of national economic welfare, including both economic efficiency and distributive justice as objectives, and draws upon the latest empirical studies of the economic impact of immigration. In particular, this article describes the immigration policy that would maximize the welfare of natives. Trade principles indicate that the United States should eliminate its immigration quotas and other nontariff protectionist barriers and use immigration tariffs instead. A tariff could take the form of an income tax that discriminates between citizens and aliens. The optimal tariff is positive for immigrants with low incomes but is likely to be negative for immigrants with sufficiently high incomes. These results suggest that skilled immigration should be permitted (indeed encouraged) without quantitative or other protectionist restrictions and that unskilled immigration should be permitted without quantitative restrictions but subject to less generous fiscal policies than those applied to natives. The article concludes with proposals for liberalizing U.S. immigration laws. The article suggests that reciprocal concessions in international negotiations for liberalized trade in services can help overcome the political obstacles to the liberalized movement of labor into the United States.

Should the U.S. Continue its Family-Friendly Immigration Policy?

An ongoing debate is whether the U.S. should continue its family-based admission system, which favors visas for family members of U.S. citizens and residents, or adopt a more skills-based system, replacing family visas with employment-based visas. In many ways this is a false dichotomy: family-friendly policies attract highly-skilled immigrants regardless of their own visa path, and there are not strong reasons why a loosening of restrictions on employment migrants need be accompanied by new restrictions on family-based immigration. Moreover, it is misleading to think that only employment-based immigrants contribute to the U.S. economy. Recent immigrants, who have mostly entered via kinship ties, are economically productive, a fact hidden by a flawed methodology that underlies most economic analyses of immigrant economic assimilation.

Establishing Identity: Documents, Performance, and Biometric Information in Immigration Proceedings

This article explores the politics of identification in immigration proceedings by examining the struggles over family-based immigration in South Korea in the context of ethnic Korean “return” migration from China. It focuses on micropolitical struggles in bureaucratic settings, analyzing how migrants and immigration bureaucrats struggle to establish kinship and marital status in order to secure or limit migrants' access to the labor market and citizenship. Drawing on fieldwork in both the sending and receiving communities, it shows how migrants and bureaucrats use various types of “identity tags” (official documents, performance, and biometric information) to establish the authenticity of family relations and to accept or reject particular understandings of personhood, belonging, and entitlement. It also highlights the multiple normative orderings that inform migrants' strategies (including their use of “fraudulent” identity) and their implicit or explicit challenge to the criminalizing and stigmatizing view of the immigration state.

Immigration, Association, and the Family

In this paper I provide a philosophical analysis of family-based immigration. This type of immigration is of great importance, yet has received relatively little attention from philosophers and others doing normative work on immigration. As family-based immigration poses significant challenges for those seeking a comprehensive normative account of the limits of discretion that states should have in setting their own immigration policies, it is a topic that must be dealt with if we are to have a comprehensive account. In what follows I use the idea of freedom of association to show what is distinctive about family-based immigration and why it ought to have a privileged place in our discussion of the topic. I further show why this style of argument neither allows states to limit nearly all immigration nor requires them to have almost no limits on immigration. I conclude by showing that all states must allow some degree of family-based immigration, and that this is a duty owed not to ‘outsiders’ seeking to enter, but rather to current citizens.

Theoretical Frameworks for Studying Female Marriage Migrants

Transnational marriages account for a significant proportion of family-based immigration to North America. An increasing number of immigrant men are choosing to marry women from their countries of origin, and an increasing number of nonimmigrant men are choosing to marry women from other countries. Existing studies on the experiences of foreign brides entering North America have highlighted their vulnerability to spousal maltreatment, including unique forms of immigration abuse (e.g., threats of deportation). Their vulnerability to maltreatment has been attributed to the gender-insensitive nature of family immigration policies, the women's lack of awareness of their rights and immigration status, and their husbands' cultural beliefs about women's roles. This article describes three interrelated theoretical frameworks that can inform further research, practice, and policy development related to female marriage migrants. The frameworks draw on cross-cultural models of gender-based violence, seminal work on the psychology of women, and international human rights research.

Immigration and the U.S. Economy: Labor-Market Impacts, Illegal Entry, and Policy Choices

Since the 1960s, the United States has undergone a surge in immigration. The share of the U.S. population that is foreign born surpassed 10% in 2000, with new immigrants accounting for nearly half of recent U.S. population growth. Three policy issues are central to the current debate about immigration. One is what should be the level and composition of legal immigration. The United States admits relatively large numbers of immigrants with low levels of education and other discernible skills. Rising immigration of the less skilled may lower wages of native workers. A second issue is what to do about illegal immigration. Illegal aliens account for one third of new U.S. immigrants. An open question is whether U.S. policy should attempt to replace illegal immigration with large-scale temporary immigration of foreign workers. A third issue is whether immigrants should be eligible for public assistance. Denying eligibility could reduce immigration and lower fiscal transfers from natives to immigrants. In this paper, we examine immigration in the United States over the last several decades in order to gauge the potential for and the consequences of changes in U.S. immigration policy. Our study has six main sections, following an introduction. In section 2, we review U.S. immigration policy and trends. Current U.S. policy sets a quota on overall immigration, with first priority for admissions given to family members of U.S. citizens and legal residents. In recent years, fewer than 15% of new immigrants have been admitted based on their skill level. Whether intended or not, this policy favors immigrants with relatively little schooling. Recent immigrants tend to concentrate in specific regions and industries, and tend to earn much less than natives. In section 3, we consider how U.S. regional economies adjust to immigrant inflows. Despite the geographic concentration of recent immigrants, wages have not fallen perceptibly in the gateway communities in which immigrants settle. Regions have adjusted to immigrant inflows through other mechanisms, including skill upgrading of the native labor force, outmigration of native workers, and shifts in output mix towards immigrant-intensive industries. If education levels of the U.S. labor force stabilize, as they are expected to do, the wage impacts of immigration may be more pronounced. In section 4, we examine the factors that influence U.S. illegal immigration. Most illegal immigrants enter the country either by crossing the Mexico-U.S. border or by overstaying entry visas. Mexico is the largest source country for illegal immigration and illegal entry tends to surge following economic downturns in the country. The U.S. government impedes illegal immigration by policing borders and monitoring employers, with the vast majority of resources dedicated to border enforcement. These efforts appear to have had limited success, as the inflow of illegal immigrants continues unabated. In section 5, we examine the fiscal impact of immigration. Prior to U.S. welfare reform in 1996, immigrants were more likely than natives to receive public assistance. New laws restrict immigrant access to many benefits, one important exception being costly public education. For some types of public assistance, individual U.S. states have the discretion to offer benefits after an individual has been in the country for at least five years. Excluding immigrants from public assistance has been subject to numerous judicial challenges. Despite immigrant use of public assistance, the net fiscal transfer from natives to immigrants appears to be very small at the national level, though it is higher in a few specific states that have both generous welfare benefits and large immigrant populations. In general, the older and the less educated the adult immigrant population is, the larger are native-to-immigrant net fiscal transfers. In section 6, we examine the political economy of U.S. immigration policy. We find that individual opinions about immigration policy are influenced by expectations about its impact on outcomes in the labor market and on public services and the welfare state. In particular, less-skilled workers and political conservatives are among those most opposed to freer immigration. Congressional representatives seem to respond to these concerns in their districts when voting on legislation. In section 7, we conclude by discussing current policy choices facing the United States. Key decisions for U.S. policy makers include whether to replace family-based immigration with skills-based immigration, whether to continue to exclude immigrants from access to public assistance, whether to expand temporary immigration, and how to balance border and interior policing in enforcing against illegal immigration.