Nation's Immigration Research Articles

Can You Hear Me Now? Attorney Perceptions of Interpretation, Technology, and Power in Immigration Court

The Executive Office for Immigration Review houses America's trial-level immigration courts, which adjudicate hundreds of thousands of cases annually, many resulting in deportations. Most proceedings require interpretation and all rely heavily upon technology. Yet, we know little about communication and technology in these hearings, and even less about the views of attorneys who navigate this system daily. I examine the effects courtroom interpretation and technology have on immigrant voices as described in interviews with immigration attorneys representing clients facing deportation. Attorneys overwhelmingly characterize the court as procedurally unjust, pinpointing how flaws in interpretation, telephonic conferencing, and videoconferencing offer the illusion of due process. Drawing upon criminology, legal sociology, and linguistics, this study finds profound improvements are needed to ensure due process in the nation's immigration courts, including: Elimination of telephonic and videoconferencing in all but extreme circumstances. Modernization of telephonic and videoconference technology. Improvement of interpreter standards and working conditions. Education of attorneys, judges, and interpreters regarding challenges inherent to courtroom interpretation and technology. Although enhancing the quality of interpretation and technology protocols may improve immigrants’ access to justice in immigration court, meaningful immigration court reforms should reduce the need for an immigration court altogether.

A global model of migration and poverty

AbstractMost rich nations maintain very tight restrictions on immigration despite widespread globalisation since World War II. This paper breaks new ground by assessing these barriers’ poverty implications, using a two‐region, one‐sector, dynastic growth model with a continuum of skills. Like other global studies of migration, I find that rich nation immigration impediments impose huge losses on the global economy. I also find that such barriers increase global poverty by 40% or more. This corroborates a conclusion drawn by others: opening rich nations to freer immigration could reduce poverty more than any other single policy shift.

Immigration policy, practices, and procedures: The impact on the mental health of Mexican and Central American youth and families.

Currently, 15 million Mexican and Central American individuals live in the United States, with this number projected to rise in the next few decades (Lesser & Batalova, 2017; Zong & Batalova, 2017). Research has begun to investigate the impact of the nation's immigration practices and policies on immigrant Latino/a families and youth. Current immigration policies can create vulnerabilities, including fear and mistrust, discrimination, limited access to services, parent-child separation, and poverty. These experiences increase risk for poor mental health outcomes and may exacerbate prior exposure to traumas in the home country (e.g., violence) and during migration (e.g., extortion). This paper reviews current immigration policies for arriving Mexican and Central American immigrants and links to mental health among documented and undocumented immigrant families and youth. A discussion of positive policies and resources that may mitigate the damaging impact of immigration-related stress is included. Finally, social justice implications for clinicians and researchers are discussed, with culturally sensitive interventions, advocacy, and dissemination of research and policy as primary recommendations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Moving the “Less Desirable”: Portuguese Mass Migration to Canada, 1953–74

Abstract: The sovereignty of migration policy-makers is never absolute. This has been true for both receiving and sending states. One important check on the receiving nation's immigration policy implementation was the sending nation's own sovereignty over its expatriated citizens. These colliding sovereignties have sometimes created liminal spaces where migrants and their informal facilitators were able to subvert regulations by playing them against each other, while, at other times, they were pressed between formal gatekeepers bent on enforcing their policies. This bilateral dimension is often missing from Canadian immigration history, as is the role of homeland government officials, who brokered and supervised these migrant movements while conciliating the roles of gatekeepers and facilitators. This is especially significant when it involved authoritarian governments, such as Portugal's Estado Novo dictatorship (1926–74). How did Ottawa's relatively liberal immigration policies correspond with the Estado Novo's authoritarian stance on emigration? How did Portuguese officials influence the movement of its emigrants in Canada? How did the migrants react to the concerted top-down arrangements of two imposing governments? This article examines these and other questions in reference to the Portuguese “bulk order”, family sponsorship, and clandestine movements to Canada between 1953 and 1974.

Building Sanctuary: The Movement to Support Vietnam War Resisters in Canada, 1965–73, Jessica Squires

Building Sanctuary: The Movement to Support Vietnam War Resisters in Canada, 1965-73, Jessica Squires. Vancouver, University of British Columbia Press, 2013. xxi, 348 pp. $34.95 Cdn (paper). Drawing on newspapers, archival documents, oral histories, and an array of secondary sources, Jessica Squires shows that while Canada allowed American draft dodgers, deserters, and others to find refuge from the war (or from complicity with the nation that waged it), its status as a ready sanctuary is largely a myth, as such a conclusion omits how that refuge was actually achieved. Squires reconstructs the complex social movements that grew in response to the influx of young Americans fleeing both the draft and a country engaged in an unpopular war in Southeast Asia. The author traces the burgeoning Canadian anti-draft movement's interaction with law enforcement and government officials and investigates the complex interactions between activists and war resisters, finding that support for these new immigrants to Canada was far from monolithic. In doing so, the author delves into the much neglected links between the anti-draft movement and the nation's immigration policy. As Squires reveals, the Canadian government made considerable efforts to block this group of prospective immigrants. She also challenges the idea that leaders, including Liberal Prime Minister, Pierre Trudeau, and his government were unequivocal in their support of war resisters. Indeed, the federal government's approach was at best ambivalent; few politicians publically supported draft resisters, wary of a perceived alignment with so called radicals, coupled with concerns about straining relations with the United States government. Squires shows how the RCMP, complicit with local Canadian police forces and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, routinely monitored and targeted resisters, efforts that at times resulted in deportations. But the approach on how to address those coming north was anything but uniform or even coherent. Prior to the spring of 1969, draft evaders found it much easier to enter the country than other Americans who were deserters from the military. As Squires points out, Ottawa's 1968 move to have border agents discriminate on the basis of military status created enormous difficulties for those hoping to gain entry, and challenges for those looking to provide aid. In 1967, the government of Canada adopted a system in which prospective immigrants amassed points based on employment opportunities, language proficiency, and educational attainment. To gain landed immigrant status, hopefuls needed to have fifty points or higher. But the new directives allowed border agents to deduct these points based on military status. Deserters already faced increased scrutiny with their military status, and lacked what many draft dodgers had by way of college education and professional skills. Squires shows how an intense lobbying effort by this grassroots Canadian movement was crucial in ending much of the discrimination based on military status in 1969, which had in effect closed the border to many dodgers and deserters. The author is at her best when examining the politics around northward-bound war resisters, especially the complex exchanges between bureaucrats and politicians, and connecting these accounts to those inside the social movement, including the media and the police. The internal government discussions concerning immigration policy in light of the war and within the context of the anti-war movement is also important to a better understanding of Canada's immigration history and the development and implementation of public policy. …

The U.S. Immigration Crisis and a Call for the Church's Lifeworld Politics: Why Should Hauerwas Collaborate with Habermas on the U.S. Immigration Crisis?

The U.S. Immigration Crisis and a Call for the Church's Lifeworld Politics: Why Should Hauerwas Collaborate with Habermas on the U.S. Immigration Crisis? Ilsup Ahn Introduction: Saying “No” to the State's Biopolitics Against the Undocumented Migrants According to the recent survey report published by the Washington, D.C.‐based Public Religion Research Institute, throughout 2013, there has been consistent bipartisan and cross‐religious support for creating a path to citizenship for immigrants living in the United States. While 14 percent percent of Americans support allowing undocumented immigrants to become permanent legal residents but not citizens, 63 percent favor providing a way for immigrants who are currently living in the United States without legal documentation to become citizens provided they meet certain requirements. They also discovered that nearly two‐thirds of Americans believe that the U.S. immigration system is either completely broken (34 percent) or mostly broken but working in some areas (31 percent). The report also shows that 41 percent of Americans believe immigration policy should be an immediate priority for President Obama and Congress, while roughly as many (42 percent) say it should be a priority during the next couple of years. Interestingly enough, only 14 percent of Americans say it should not be a priority at all. Despite the majority of the U.S. citizens favor some sort of comprehensive immigration reform, the Congress has failed to pass a comprehensive immigration overhaul to date largely due to the House Republican leaders, who recently unveiled their principles for an overhaul for the nation's immigration laws. These principles, however, do not clarify whether most undocumented immigrants would ever be able to become legal residents or U.S. citizens, while they would require tighter border security and more interior immigration enforcements. These principles seem to reiterate the problematic anti‐immigration mantra to continuously militarize our borders as well as to criminalize undocumented immigrants. The Obama administration has been increasingly criticized in regard to the inhumane deportation of many undocumented people, especially those parents whose children are U.S. citizens. Critiques argue that President Obama has overseen record levels of deportations, with ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) repatriating about 2 million undocumented people since he took office in January 2009 (roughly 400,000 a year or 1,100 per day). Amid the increasing political turmoil relating to the immigration reform, the public media begin to notice that the real winners in immigration control are the prison industry. The Atlantic, for example, reports that since 2003, when ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) was created and government crackdowns on undocumented aliens increased, private prisons have gained business, with industry profits more than doubling. Damon Hininger, CEO of CCA (Corrections Corporation of America), said during a conference call with investors in May 2010 that between 2007 and 2009, when earnings for the S&P dropped by 28 percent, the company's earnings drew by 18 percent. According to The Atlantic, the government spends more than $2 billion a year on immigration detention, while spending only $72 million on alternatives to detention. It also reports that the private prison industry, such as CCA, has spent more than $1 million on lobbying. Although private prisons say that their lobbying efforts are aimed at promoting their services, not shaping immigration policy, immigrant advocates argue that the private prison industry is always lobbying for more detention beds. Given that the cost of detaining an immigrant averages $159 a day and half of 34,000 beds are operated by private prison corporations, it is not difficult to see the connection between the interests of the private prison corporations such as CCA and the Geo Group and the criminalization of undocumented migrants. According to Lee Fang of The Nation, the controversial Arizona SB1070 was developed in consultation with private prison lobbyists through a group called the American Legislative Exchange Council. Unfortunately, as Aubrey Pringle reports, several pending immigration bills would increase the number of incarcerated immigrants even more. The ongoing political struggles related to the increasing border militarization, the widespread criminalization of undocumented migrants, and the massive deportation of undocumented parents are the explicit exemplification of what philosophers Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben call the...

Poverty and deprivation of immigrants vs. natives in Italy

Purpose– Italy has become a migrant receiving country and it has to face with the problem of social inclusion of immigrants. The purpose of this paper is to measure the gap on poverty and deprivation between immigrants and natives since manifest conditions of both of them are an important signal, although not exclusively, of social exclusion.Design/methodology/approach– Poverty analysis typically relies on a single monetary variable such as income and it is characterized by a simple dichotomization of the population into poor and non-poor. In this paper the authors stress the importance of using a multidimensional and fuzzy approach in order to study disparities between immigrants and natives. The authors cover several of the multifaceted aspects of resources necessary to maintain adequate living standards in a developed country. With the fuzzy methodology, the authors also overcome any limitation of the conventional approach based on the simple dichotomization of the phenomenon.Findings– The empirical analysis is based on data from two official surveys. The authors find that between Italian and immigrant households there are significant differences in poverty and deprivation levels, with a strong disadvantage for the latter. The authors argue that any serious attempt to reduce poverty and deprivation must now include comprehensive reforms in the nation's immigration policies if they are to be taken seriously.Originality/value– The paper makes an original contribution to the understanding of inequality between immigrants and natives, by studying a complex phenomena such as poverty and deprivation in a multidimensional perspective using a fuzzy approach.

The relationship between ethnic threat and economic insecurity in times of economic crisis: Analysis of European Social Survey data

This study analyses the relationship between attitudes toward immigration and dete- riorating economic conditions in times of crisis. We examine three questions: First, how are a vulnerable position in the labour market and recent changes to an individual's economic situation related to perceived ethnic threat? Second, what is the role of the nation's economic and immigration context? Last, are relationships at the individual level between economic conditions and perceived ethnic threat affected by contextual variables? Data from 23 countries sampled in the fifth round of the European Social Survey (ESS-5, 2010) is used. At the micro level, unemployment, job insecurity and income deprivation during the three years prior to the survey affect perceived ethnic threat, as predicted by group conflict theory. These effects are, however, relatively small. Among the contextual variables, only growth in gross domestic product (GDP) shows an effect in the expected direction: perceived threat is higher in countries where GDP growth is lower. However, the study design does not allow the conclusion that changes in the economic context lead to changes in attitudes toward immigrants. The significant cross-level interaction for economic growth indicates that the threat-inducing effect of unemployment is stronger in contexts where the growth in GDP is high. This finding contradicts our hypothesis. One could explain this by the emergence of a generalized feeling of economic insecurity in countries severely hit by the economic crisis. In these countries, strong feelings of economic insecurity—and the resulting levels of perceived ethnic threat—might also be present among those who are employed, thereby dimin- ishing the gap between them and the unemployed.

More High-Tech Visas, More STEM Education Funds

A bipartisan group of U.S. senators unveiled an overhaul to the nation's immigration policies that hopes to create new funding streams to strengthen STEM education.

Race, Nation, and West Indian Immigration to Honduras, 1890-1940 - by Chambers, Glenn A.

Race, Nation, and West Indian Immigration to Honduras, 1890-1940 - by Chambers, Glenn A.

Race, Nation, and West Indian Immigration to Honduras, 1890-1940 (review)

Race, Nation, and West Indian Immigration to Honduras, 1890-1940 (review)

Glenn A. Chambers, Race, Nation, and West Indian Immigration to Honduras, 1890–1940 (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press), pp. xii+202, $35.00, hb.

Glenn A. Chambers, Race, Nation, and West Indian Immigration to Honduras, 1890–1940 (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press), pp. xii+202, $35.00, hb.

The Debate on Family Reunification and Canada's Immigration Act of 1976

On April 10, 1978, a new Immigration Act came into force in Canada after a lengthy legislative reform process initiated in September 1973 aimed at clarifying and modernizing the immigration legislation. The Act's introductory clause spelled out the objectives of the nation's immigration policy, among which were welcoming refugees, fulfilling the country's economic, social, and demographic needs, and guaranteeing family reunification. While few people disputed these objectives, the relative importance attributed to each, and especially the number of visas allocated annually to the various immigrant categories, was more controversial. It was one of the issues at the center of the protracted debates that had taken place both within political circles in Ottawa and the Canadian public in the preceding years. Throughout its history, Canadian immigration policy has been influenced by demographic and economic considerations: the young nation needed to import hands and brains. Until at least the middle of the 1960s, the immigration program was regulated by what some have called the tap-on and tap-off system, submitting the immigrant intake to short-term economic fluctuations, namely real or perceived labor market needs and constraints. (2) At the same time, explicit and indirect devices ensured the stability of the nation's racial and ethnic makeup. The dialectics of racial and economic factors in the history of Canada's immigration policy have been well documented. (3) Less well known, however, are other aspects of immigration policy such as family reunification, which has at various periods achieved significant political visibility in Canada. This paper analyzes the political debate concerning the role and significance of family reunification in the context of the 1970s, when the nation examined its immigration policy objectives and admission categories or types of immigrant visa--family, economic, and humanitarian--were more precisely delineated. Indeed, the increasingly sophisticated admission paths reflected the state's growing concern for the creation of relevant and efficient bureaucratic means to achieve its policy objectives. Yet the persistent gap between the lawmakers' intention and the actual process of immigrant admissions, which remained largely determined by administrative discretion, led to further political debates as well as legislative and administrative reforms. The dynamics at work in such debates and reforms, including organized interests competing for the lawmakers' attention, an institutional framework favoring Cabinet discretion and strong ideological currents pitting the supposed national interest against policies, made long-term planning and consistency difficult for Canada's successive governments. In such a context the issue of family reunification partook of a struggle between two conceptions of immigration policy objectives: one that saw such objectives as complementary, and another that put them in competition with one another. The origins and development of family reunification in Canada Family reunification has always had special significance for Canada. Even during the period of strict immigration restrictions corresponding to the Great Depression, foreign relatives of Canadian citizens or residents were accepted. With the displaced persons crisis in the aftermath of the Second World War, the Canadian government cautiously opened up the categories for the admission of relatives in spite of the country's restrictive immigration program and deliberately positioned Canada on the international stage as the champion of separated families. (4) Since then Canadian government officials have proclaimed their country's deep attachment to family reunification--a principle which, along with the integration of refugees, has come to be associated in official discourse with the so-called humanitarian aspect of the country's immigration policy and is presented as the hallmark of the nation's compassion. …

Immigration and National Security

The greatest threat to U.S. homeland security comes from illegals who enter the country through its porous borders in order to attack. The tide of illegal immigration must be stemmed in order to secure the United States against terrorism. It is all too easy for illegal immigrants to slip in beneath the radar, eschewing the legalization process and never being detected and deported. And as long as the benefits of illegally immigrating outweigh the costs, the influx will continue. Legal immigration itself needs reform, too; particularly the visa-waiver program and the rules governing dual citizenship, which pose further security challenges. Federal government officials must overcome their fear of alienating ethnic voters and American business, enhance border security, and reform the nation's immigration policies.

Immigrant and Ethnic History in the United States Survey

THE EVENTS OF SEPTEMBER 11, 2001, prompted Americans to scrutinize the nation's immigrants and immigration policies with new rigor. Even before the hijacked planes hit the Twin Towers, however, many Americans believed the United States was taking in too many immigrants and that those immigrants were taking too long to assimilate. Fear and loathing have been voiced about every group of immigrants that has come to America. During the colonial period, Benjamin Franklin cursed the great wave of German immigrants as generally the most stupid of their own nation. The famine Irish were reviled in Massachusetts, where they were caricatured with ape-like features. As Eastern and Southern Europeans poured through Ellis Island at the turn of the 20th century, President Coolidge declared that America must be kept American.1 We are once again living at a time marked by fear and distrust of foreigners. Since 9/11 everyone with dark skin, an accent, a turban, or a foreign birthplace looks to many Americans as a potential enemy of the state.2

Children of Immigrant Families: Analysis and Recommendations

As the 21st century progresses, our nation will become increasingly dependent on the current generation of children, a generation that is dramatically more diverse than previous generations. (1) Racial/ethnic minorities, in aggregate, are destined to become the numerical majority in the United States within the next few decades. (2) This dramatic shift in demographics is being driven by immigration and fertility trends with the number of children in immigrant families growing rapidly in nearly every state across the country. According to the 2000 Census, 1 of every 5 children in the United States was a child of immigrants--that is, either a child who is an immigrant or who has at least one immigrant parent. Regardless of how one might feel about our nation's immigration policies, there is no turning back the clock on the children of immigrants already living here, most of whom are U.S. citizens. Who these children grow up to be will have a significant impact on our nation's social and economic future. Will we have a cohesive society--or one fife with intergenerational and intercultural conflict? Will we have a prosperous economy--or one struggling with a labor force dominated by low-wage earners? Will we have a strong safety net for the elderly, poor, and disabled--or will the taxes to support historic entitlement programs become prohibitive? In this journal issue, the strengths and challenges that set children of immigrant families apart from the mainstream population are explored. For example, compared with children of U.S.-born parents, children of immigrants are more likely to be born healthier and to live with both parents. They also are more likely to be living in poverty and to be without health insurance. Although indicators of child well-being vary widely based on the family's country of origin, the overall trends are dominated by the large number of immigrants from Mexico, Asia, Central America, and the Caribbean. (See Figure 1.) Parents with limited English skills emigrating from these regions tend to be poorly educated and have limited job prospects. Some are legal immigrants, some are refugees, and some are undocumented. Thus, while the children in these families often share the same hardships experienced by other children from low-income families, what is needed to help them overcome these hardships requires a greater understanding of each group's unique circumstances. Investing in the healthy development of all our nation's children, including children of immigrants, is to invest in a brighter future--not just for these children themselves, but for our entire nation. All society benefits by providing this segment of our population with the education and supports they need today to become America's productive, engaged citizens of tomorrow. Strengths of Immigrant Families Immigrant families generally come to America with many strengths, including healthy, intact families, strong work ethic and aspirations, and for many, a cohesive community of fellow immigrants from the same country of origin. These strengths can help to insulate children of immigrants from various negative influences in American society, but they are not always sufficient to keep children on pathways to success over time. Healthy, Intact Families According to several measures, children born to immigrant mothers are healthier than those born to U.S.-born mothers, on average. For example, infant mortality rates are lower among immigrant mothers, and their babies are less likely to be born with low birth weights. (3) Also, children of immigrants are reported to experience fewer health problems across a wide range of conditions--from injuries and physical impairments, to infectious diseases and asthma. (4) Moreover, children in immigrant families are more likely than children in U.S.-born families to live with two parents in the home, with a father who works and a mother who does not work. …

Class and crime in war-time: Lessons of the American Vietnam war resistance in Canada

Class circumstances follow from as well as causally precede crime, and therelationship between class and crime is highly contingent. This tangled webof causation makes it challenging to meaningfully study links between classand crime. I propose that this tangled causal web can be better understoodif we direct more research to distinctive class settings in which particularkinds of crime occur. This implies directing more research attention to nonrepresentative samples that derive from nonrepresentativesettings, with the goal of increasing our leverage over theoreticallycontingent, class-connected contextual variables. This unconventionalresearch agenda is illustrated through an analysis of the lives of Americanswho resisted the draft and military service in Vietnam by ``dodging'' and``deserting'' military service and migrating to Canada, a new setting wherethese selective service and military ``criminals'' were transformed by theiradopted nation's immigration policy into ``New Canadians'' and unexpectedsymbols of Canadian sovereignty.

Immigration and the Nation-State: The United States, Germany, and Great Britain. By Christian Joppke. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. 356p. $72.00 cloth, $22.95 paper.

This book will enhance Christian Joppke's growing reputa- tion as one of the most thoughtful commentators on the politics of international migration and citizenship. Immigra- tion and the Nation-State is an impressive cross-national comparison that builds on elite interviews and reanalysis of primary materials, but its chief value is in its bold synthesis and critique of a rapidly growing and highly disjointed secondary literature. Although it assesses a variety of theo- retical concepts, the book is primarily a historically rooted, richly empirical work of analysis and interpretation. Joppke deals expertly with three liberal states with different nation- hood traditions and immigration histories. The United King- dom is distinctive in that it was at once a nation-state and an empire. The United States is the only case of the three in which governments deliberately sought to foster immigration for settlement. Germany was a divided nation whose com- mitment to reunification, embedded in the Basic Law, posed particularly troublesome issues for immigration and citizen- ship policy.

Immigration and Citizenship in Germany: Contemporary Dilemmas

The paper starts from a paradox of contemporary German politics: after the unification of the two Germanies the ethnocultural grounding of German citizenship has lost its historical meaning; at the same time violent conflicts and heated debate over the rights to full membership for immigrants in the German state have developed. After a theoretical discussion of the notions of nation state, citizenship, and immigration, the development of the contemporary paradox of citizenship is sketched historically using two pairs of distinctions: nationhood v. statehood and political v. social (state-mediated) inclusion. The paradox of ‘ethnicized’ conflicts over Germans v. foreigners is interpreted as a discrepancy between membership in the state on the one hand and membership in the welfare state system on the other – a discrepancy which currently is ‘overdetermined’ by the socio-economic consequences of unification.

Overcoming the barriers to global economic development and the international flow of people, products, and resources: Strategic recommendations

Global economic development is directly a function of competitive flows of products, people, money, and information between national boundaries. Unfortunately, national sovereign interests restrict these flows based on a nation's trade, immigration, monetary and technology infrastructure policy. Furthermore, different agencies regulate different flows. For example, commerce regulates trade flow; immigration regulates people flow; central banks regulate money flow; and telecommunications regulate information flow. This article attempts to develop a framework that recommends inter-agency cooperation and coordination based on national or regional economic policy.