ABSTRACT This contribution to the special issue studies the history of the White Australia Policy through an exploration of the intersections between national security, immigration restriction and social reform. This is achieved through an examination of Australian Security Intelligence Organisation’s surveillance of immigration reformers, their organisations and their advocacy for the end of race-based immigration restriction. Informed by the extant historiography on Australian security intelligence, the paper delves into ASIO’s initial assumptions about communism and immigration reform, reflecting broader Cold War fears which support recent scholarly conclusions that ASIO was always predisposed to equate dissent with communist-inspired disloyalty. The study, however, discovers that ASIO’s findings at the time problematise such an analysis, providing further insights into both who the immigration reformers were and how they made their case, and ASIO’s organisational culture in the early 1960s.

¡Dale!: How the Deferred Action for Labor Enforcement (DALE) Program Protects Immigrant Workers and Addresses the Need for Immigration Reform

ABSTRACT What drives individuals to become immigration attorneys? Although much has been written about what motivates people to become lawyers broadly, little is known about the motivations and backgrounds of immigration attorneys. It has been suggested that immigration attorneys are “cause lawyers,” motivated by a desire to engage in immigration activism, advocacy, and reform. Drawing upon a national study of immigration attorneys conducted during Donald Trump's first presidential term, this paper explores the role of these and other established motivations for practicing law in the immigration context—including law school socialization, economic incentives and working conditions, and the social backgrounds, personal values and identities of lawyers. Interview findings reveal that immigration attorneys are not cause lawyers, at least not as traditionally defined in the sociolegal literature. Implications for the immigration bar and the future of immigration reform are discussed.

This paper examines the economic implications of demographic transitions in China and the United States, focusing on three key dimensions: declining birth rates, population aging, and immigration. Drawing on secondary statistical data, international reports, and existing scholarly research, the study employs a comparative analytical framework to highlight both shared challenges and divergent policy responses. The findings indicate that Chinas sharp fertility decline, partly shaped by past birth control policies, has accelerated its aging process, leading to labor shortages and rising fiscal burdens. The United States, while also facing lower fertility, benefits from immigration flows that help mitigate demographic imbalances and sustain innovation. In both countries, aging populations exert mounting pressure on pension systems, healthcare, and labor markets, though the pace and severity differ significantly. The analysis further shows that policy interventions such as tax credits, family support measures, delayed retirement, and talent-oriented immigration reform may provide partial relief but cannot fully offset structural demographic trends. The paper concludes that demographic change will remain a critical determinant of long-term economic resilience in both nations.

Executive Summary For many non-immigrants in the United States, adjusting one’s legal status to lawful permanent residence through employment-sponsorship is a unique and attractive pathway to permanent residence and prospective citizenship in the United States. However, amidst an uncertain future for non-immigrant temporary work visas, tech layoffs, and stalled legislative immigration reform, many non-immigrant visa-holders are leaving the United States and taking their talent with them. This paper specifically examines visa and immigration processing delays for employment-sponsored adjustments of status to lawful permanent residence in the United States between 2007 and 2019. Based on descriptive analysis and discrete time event history models of data posted to an online immigration forum I call “Immigration Journey,” I document how immigrant visa-holders’ waiting in the U.S. immigration bureaucracy for employment-based immigrant visa processing reflects and reproduces racial, educational, and socioeconomic hierarchies and inequities. I find that immigrants from countries of origin with smaller populations, higher skill levels, and those able to pay for premium processing have higher likelihoods of a quick adjustment of status decision. Conversely, immigrants from countries of origin with larger populations or those with lower skill levels are left waiting longer for their adjustment of status decisions — even when they pay for premium processing of their petition for an immigrant visa. Based on this finding, I introduce the concept of a hierarchy of waiting to illustrate the ways in which legislation and inequitable administrative policies in U.S. immigrant visa processing become mechanisms of waiting. By doing so, this paper makes a theoretical contribution for understanding stratification within the employment-based immigrant visa pathway and highlights how this hierarchy of waiting exacerbates inequalities in immigration more broadly. The empirical findings and conceptualization of a hierarchy of waiting inform policy recommendations for: 1. legislative reform of country caps for lawful permanent residence; 2. legislative reform of preference category caps for lawful permanent residence; 3. increased funding for United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) processing; and 4. increased transparency and communication of USCIS processes. Such policy changes would make immigrant visa availability and USCIS processing more equitable for future lawful permanent residents and citizens who are eligible to adjust their status through employment-based and other immigrant visa preference categories. Streamlined changes to the U.S. immigration legislation and administrative processes are critical for the United States’ future innovation and growth.

Abstract Immigration is one of the most contentious issues of our time. Prior research about immigration reform discourse in Western Europe and the United States has focused primarily on the important role that populist rhetoric has played in recent years. The rise of the populist radical right has led to a shift in what is sayable and has normalized explicitly racist and xenophobic statements that were formerly taboo. President Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric, in particular, has received a lot of scholarly attention. This article contributes to this scholarly discourse by focusing on congressional debates about immigration. More specifically, this article is interested in understanding how the Republican party appealed to voters that were not swayed by Trump’s populist rhetoric and argues that their emphasis on traditional values and compassionate conservatism was a particularly important rhetorical strategy.

Persistent shortages of workers providing long-term services and supports (LTSS) for more than a dozen years have led to increased reliance on foreign-born workers to meet the growing demand. However, there is a dearth of empirical data on long-term changes in the composition of the direct care workforce by nativity status and care setting. Using data from the American Community Survey (2012-22), we examined the extent to which foreign-born workers contributed to LTSS workforce growth and how their participation was distributed across care settings. We found that foreign-born direct care workers have increasingly filled workforce gaps, particularly in the home and community-based services (HCBS) sector. The HCBS workforce grew by more than 24percent during the period 2012-22, while the institutional workforce declined by 23percent; this decline was primarily due to the exodus of native-born workers. Foreign-born workers accounted for approximately half of the increase in the direct care workforce in HCBS settings during this period. To address continued workforce shortages in LTSS and meet the demand for HCBS, policy makers should consider immigration reforms to support a sustainable supply of foreign-born workers, investments in training and career pathways, and improvements in job quality through higher wages and opportunities for career advancement.

Amid growing political polarization, human trafficking remains one of the few social causes that retains universal bipartisan support. Nowhere was this clearer than Florida in the spring of 2023, when Governor Ron DeSantis passed widely popular human trafficking reforms. Despite a legislative session marked by national controversy over the state’s extreme anti-immigrant proposals that year, DeSantis’ rhetoric on human trafficking specifically called for the protection of immigrant victims. The story behind the 2023 reforms reveals not a benevolent change of heart or momentary hypocrisy, but an ominous call towards racist tropes plaguing human trafficking and immigration reform for centuries. This Article conducts an extensive legislative history and argues that DeSantis’ legislative efforts tap into theories popularized by QAnon, a far-right decentralized web of conspiracies. In doing so, Florida echoes historical racial narratives and utilizes dog whistles to further justify an expansion of its immigration enforcement powers. The strategy behind Florida’s efforts to generate anti-immigrant hysteria has extended to other states and is now being carried out on a national stage under the new Trump administration. This Article contends that advocates must meet this growing threat by crafting multidisciplinary counter-narratives that directly confront the role of race and reject the respectability politics dominating mainstream trafficking discourse.

Abstract The 1980 census signaled the emergence of a US Latino constituency and a new phase in the national immigration debate. Following a decade of pressure from Latino advocates and officials, the Bureau of the Census introduced a question asking Americans if they were of “Spanish/Hispanic origin or descent.” To bring political representation and federal resources to their communities, Latino leaders campaigned to convince their co-ethnics, regardless of their citizenship and legal status, to answer yes. The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), a new immigration restriction group, pushed back, claiming that a census that included undocumented immigrants “diluted” the rights of citizens. Drawing on congressional, presidential, and executive agency sources, as well as FAIR records, this essay explores how the census required that US Latinos seeking to exercise their citizenship rights fashion new hierarchical partnerships with undocumented immigrants. It reveals how FAIR used the participation of both Hispanics and non-citizens in the census to build support for immigration restriction, even in places with negligible Latino populations. It also demonstrates how the clash between these two forces shaped the passage of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 and set the stage for a struggle over immigrant political influence that continues to this day.

The problem of low investment efficiency in Indonesia as reflected by the high Incremental Capital Output Ratio (ICOR) value. The condition is exacerbated by corrupt practices, inefficient bureaucracy, declining labor productivity, and inadequate immigration governance, which overall hamper economic growth. Through historical analysis and empirical data, this essay identifies the important role of various elements government, industry sector, society, academia, mass media, and the legal and regulatory system in creating a conducive investment climate. As a strategic solution, the author proposes the HEXAHELIX collaborative model, which is a development of the Triple and Quadruple Helix concepts, to improve investment quality, reduce corrupt practices, reform immigration policies, and optimize capital utilization. This model emphasizes the need for synergy between various stakeholders to realize bureaucratic and immigration reform, transparency in investment management, and equitable development between regions. Thus, the implementation of the HEXAHELIX collaborative strategy is expected to reduce the ICOR rate, increase productivity, and encourage inclusive and sustainable economic growth, while realizing political stability and community welfare.

This research explores the intricate relationship between immigration policy reforms, national security, and humanitarian concerns. While governments worldwide strive to maintain national security, it is equally imperative to uphold humanitarian principles. This article critically examines the historical evolution of immigration policies, their impact on national security, and the necessity of a balanced approach that considers the human rights of immigrants and refugees. Through statistical analysis, case studies, and policy evaluation, this paper aims to propose viable immigration reforms that align security imperatives with humanitarian obligations.

Surging child labor violations incited the U.S. Department of Labor under President Joseph Biden’s administration to ramp up enforcement against corporations from poultry processors to fast food joints. Most minors working dangerous factory jobs, often overnight, are unaccompanied immigrant children from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, as the federal government has repeatedly acknowledged. This Note contends that prosecuting companies is toothless and insufficient to curb this practice, due to severe federal understaffing, paltry civil fines, and major manufacturers’ use of subcontractors to shield them from liability. Furthermore, merely imposing corporate fines ignores the immense and enduring financial pressures that unaccompanied immigrant children face. This Note argues that, given the inevitability of regional migration, the only ways to curb abusive child labor are to enable families to immigrate together and to afford immigrant children with a quicker path to legal stability. It proposes a litany of immigration reforms that would tackle this child labor epidemic at the root by fulfilling these objectives.

Abstract Following the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 New York City has undergone challenges to its status as a refuge to the teeming masses of the globe. Based on recent research in New York City, we trace the policing of its migrant communities as the US state has resorted to punitive measures to regulate non-citizens regarded as deportable aliens. While the city has resisted the exclusionary pressures of the security state, its criminalized black and migrant communities still produce the highest rates of removal, described as the deportation pipeline. We argue that the city, while presented as a model of immigrant integration, is a contested space caught between the forces of exclusion and inclusion and overdetermined by processes of crimmigration (Stumpf 2006). Such processes expand the criminological concept of ‘social bulimia’ (Young (1999a), a characteristic of late modern capitalistic society—examining how a broader dialectic between cultural assimilation and structural punitiveness is navigated by multilayered networks of contradicting actors, processes, and policies at the municipal level.

In fall 2023, Arizona State University’s Musical Theatre and Opera program produced the Arizona premiere of the musical Miss You Like Hell by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Quiara Alegría Hudes (In the Heights, Water by the Spoonful) and singer/songwriter Erin McKeown. Miss You Like Hell is a contemporary musical about an undocumented Mexican-American woman named Beatriz who is trying to gain legal citizenship. She and her teenage daughter, Olivia, travel the United States, from Philadelphia to Los Angeles, as they mend their fractured relationship. This paper details a research study surrounding this 2023 production of Miss You Like Hell as part of the author’s graduate study. The research study consisted of pre-show and post-show audience surveys and post-show talkbacks to measure the musical’s impact on audience attitudes toward immigration reform and interest in civic engagement around the issue. This study asked a critical question: How can theatre-makers and artist-activists utilize musical theatre to build community, impact attitudes, and increase civic engagement around social issues like immigration reform? This case study on Miss You Like Hell is an example of the impact of socially conscious musicals on audience attitudes. In this context, a socially conscious musical is defined as a musical that directly engages with a sociopolitical or social justice issue. The author concludes with a consideration of the research limitations and an invitation to future scholars to conduct further research at the intersection of musical theatre and social justice.

Today more than ever the United States is a target for international migration. Population growth and economic stagnation in the Third World are increasing the pressures for emigration, and current United States immigration law is incapable of responding to the growing flow of illegal immigrants. The number of illegal aliens apprehended in the United States increased forty percent in 1983, and reached 1.4 million by the year's end. The backlog of applications for political asylum is over 165,000, and many of these claims are frivolous. Polls by Roper, Gallup, NBC, and others have shown that ninety percent of the American public demands immigration reform, and yet we as a nation have been distinctly unwilling or unable to respond to this overwhelming public sentiment. This Article will discuss the history and philosophy of United States immigration policy, the causes and extent of illegal immigration, the related issue of political asylum, and the legislative response to the current need for immigration reform: the Immigration Reform and Control Act, known as the Simpson-Mazzoli Bill.

Beginning with the September 11, 2001 ("9/11 ") terrorist attacks, the labor movement's plans to organize immigrant workers and achieve immigration reform have met serious challenges. After 9/11, the political climate surrounding immigrants put the AFL-CIO s hopes for legislative reform on hold, because of socially perceived connections between immigrants and terrorism. Then, in a March 2002 decision titled Hoffman Plastic Compounds, Inc. v. NLRB, the U.S. Supreme Court held that undocumented immigrant workers could not collect back pay under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) when their rights to join unions are violated. According to the Court, back pay for undocumented workers would trench upon the employer sanctions regime expressed in the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. In this Article, Professor Garcia analyzes the challenges facing the labor movement and immigrant workers from several perspectives. The Hoffman decision raises questions about the effectiveness of domestic labor law for all workers, as well as international human rights issues. Before the Hoffman decision, immigrant worker organizing took place in a legal environment that was at best indifferent, if not hostile, to the rights of immigrants and all workers. The Article addresses the effects the Hoffman decision and the post 9/11 climate have had on immigrant worker organizing and immigration reform. Then, Professor Garcia discusses reforms that could ameliorate the impact that Hoffman has had on immigrant workers' rights, and the likelihood those reforms will be enacted. This Article concludes that an integrated vision of labor and immigration law reform is necessary in light of an increasingly globally interconnected society.

The challenges faced by immigrant workers are pivotal in today’s global discourse. The recent 2024 United States election and the upcoming 45th Canadian elections reflect these sentiments, while developing countries express concerns regarding restricting foreign workers and increasing uncertainty in the immigration process. This paper explores the various issues of wage disparities, legal barriers, exploitation, and social discrimination, as well as conflicts and wars faced by Indian international migrants. Through thematic context analysis, this paper aims to analyse these challenges. Key findings include the legal hurdles Indian workers/ professionals face, such as decades-long waits for green cards in the US, and new immigration reforms in Canada, affecting Indian students. Additionally, the paper highlights the intensifying xenophobia and anti-immigrant sentiments during the COVID-19 pandemic, worsening social discrimination against Indian migrants. The research concludes that addressing these challenges necessitates comprehensive reforms, and international organisations such as the International Labour Organisation (ILO), together with other UN bodies and the World Trade Organisation (WTO), must play active roles in bringing these concerns to light in the case of India. Furthermore, India’s forthcoming bilateral agreements should include a chapter on the movement of natural persons. Policy suggestions include implementing fair wage practices to close the pay gap between migrants and nationals, dismantling the kafala system in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to protect the rights of migrant workers, streamlining immigration pathways for skilled professionals and combating xenophobia through public awareness campaigns.

This Article will consider some of the controversial sections of the INA and the impact of the pending immigration legislation. Part I considers the labor certification requirement, a prerequisite for third and sixth preference immigrants. This Part concludes that clarification of the division of authority between the Attorney General and the Secretary of Labor, and of the intent of aliens to keep their certified jobs, would be desirable. Part II analyzes the requirements an alien must meet to adjust status to one, of the occupational preferences. The statutory refusal to adjust status of aliens who accept ''unauthorized employment" must be clarified. Part III discusses two doctrines which extend the time the INS has to investigate and act on mistakes of entering aliens - the lack of a statute of limitations and the reentry doctrine - and suggests methods of altering deportation procedures to provide fairness to the alien. Part IV focuses on the provision excluding aliens for fraud during entry and illustrates how courts have interpreted ambiguous language in the absence of clear legislative direction. Finally, this Article concludes that current movement toward immigration reform should not ignore these legal ambiguities. A law with such a long and varied history as the INA inevitably contains some ambiguities and inconsistencies, and it is up to the legislature, to correct them when the opportunity presents itself.

Although the authors of the Articles which follow could not possibly touch on all aspects of reform, they have highlighted several that are important, giving further stimulus to a discussion which is certain to continue even if the Simpson-Mazzoli bill passes soon. Each of them constitutes an important contribution to that discussion, and Professor Aleinikoff's Article is arguably the single most challenging and constructive to appear on the subject of asylum claims adjudication. The University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform should be congratulated for its contributions to the ongoing debate on immigration reform.

For most of the twentieth century, a non-citizen was generally not subject to removal on the basis of a criminal conviction which had been expunged by the state that rendered the conviction. During that time, the definition of a "conviction" for purposes of immigration law was borrowed from the law of the state which rendered the criminal conviction. In the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IRIRA) of 1996 Congress sought to provide a more uniform definition of the term "conviction" sufficient to justify an order of removal under the immigration law. The IIRIRA does not mention expungement, however. This Article argues that the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) and courts have misconstrued the IIRIRA. In 1999 the BIA first dealt with the effect of a state expungement under the statute. This Article argues that the BIA's decision in Matter of Roldan improperly reversed more than a half-century of precedent by refusing to give effect to a state expungement of a non-citizen's conviction unless expressly provided by federal statute. Judicial decisions have since accepted this rule. Part I of this Article reviews state expungement statutes. Part II summarizes cases prior to the IIRIRA. Part III explains the IIRIRA and Matter of Roldan. Part IV addresses recent cases concerning the effect of a state expungement on removability, arguing that these cases have either misconstrued the IIRIRA or improperly applied the Chevron doctrine. Part V compares the current state of the law with immigration laws abroad, arguing that the exceptional result reached by United States courts is further evidence that Matter of Roldan and its progeny are mistaken.