Commentary: Blurred Boundaries in Immigration

Professors Jennifer Chacón, Bill Ong Hing, and Dan Kanstroom participate in a colloquy on “Blurred Boundaries in Immigration” in volume 39 of the Connecticut Law Review.  Professors Hing and Kanstroom comment on Professor Chacón’s provocative article “Unsecured Borders:  Immigration Restrictions, Crime Control and National Security,” which “explore[s] the origins and consequences of the blurred boundaries between immigration control, crime control and national security specifically as related to the removal of non-citizens.”  She contends that the modern “insistence on formulating immigration policy while gazing through a distorting lens of `national security’ perversely ensures that the law is ill-suited to achieve either national security or other immigration policy goals.”  Professor Hing comments that this “striking piece . . . . warns about just how close we are to becoming a police state.”

KJ