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ImmigrationProf Blog
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New Immigration Publications

By immigrationprof

Here are two innteresting new immigration articles from the Social Science Research Network (www.ssrn.com):

Family300x266faculty_hb “A Broader View of the Immigration Adjudication Problem” JILL E. FAMILY (Widener University – School of Law Email).  ABSTRACT:  Are too many individuals diverted from civil immigration adjudication? Each year, the government completes millions of diversions from civil immigration adjudication through explicit and implicit waivers, the expedited removal program and the increasing criminalization of immigration law. By uncovering and analyzing this diversion phenomenon, this article exposes an important piece of the immigration adjudication problem that has been largely undiagnosed. While judges, scholars, government officials and practitioners have acknowledged serious problems within the civil immigration adjudication system, this article widens the view to incorporate the issue of whether too many are being sidetracked from the system altogether. This article concludes that too many are being rerouted from the civil immigration adjudication system because some of the identified diversions are not true to the administrative process design criteria of efficiency, accuracy and acceptability. The government should reevaluate its efforts to steer foreign nationals away from civil immigration adjudication under the four guiding principles proposed here: (1) not all diversions are bad; (2) government coercion, misinformation or a lack of information should play no role in the diversion process; (3) no-option waivers should not be implemented and (4) open-ended, prospective waivers also should not be used.

Johntehranian “The Last Minstrel Show? Racial Profiling, the War on Terrorism and the Mass Media” Connecticut Law Review, Vol. 41, No. 3, 2009 JOHN TEHRANIAN (author of Whitewashed (NYU Press 2008)) (Chapman University, School of Law).  ABSTRACT:  This Article examines and critiques media portraits of the Middle East and Middle-Eastern Americans by tracing the alarming impact of this last minstrel show on public policy and the war on terrorism The Article begins by analyzing racial profiling’s problematic discourse of legitimation, deracinating its unsound roots and charting the intricate relationship between representation and reality in the narration of the Middle-Eastern threat, especially after 9/11. The Article then examines the instrumental role of the mass media in both ossifying and perpetuating stereotypes that have rationalized policies targeting individuals of Middle-Eastern descent. Drawing on specific examples from the movies, television, music, publishing and advertising, the Article highlights the accretive impact of entertainment content on the epistemology of fear and the grave and under appreciated toll of such representations on the Middle-Eastern American community. Finally, the Article also calls for some modest but concrete reforms in the entertainment industry as a starting point for providing more balanced depictions of the Middle East and of Middle-Eastern Americans.

KJ