The Immprofs of CSLSA

Immprof Yolanda Vasquez takes her first selfie!

The immprof contingent at this year’s CSLSA conference was small but devoted.

Yolanda Vasquez (U. Cinn.) presented her work Crimmigration: The Missing Piece of the Criminal Justice System in the 21st Century. Vasquez notes that crimmigration has caused the criminal justice system to play a dominant role in the detection, arrest, labeling and removal of “criminal aliens.” And this system “finely targets” poor noncitizens – principally, Mexicans – in the same way the criminal justice system as a whole “finely targets” poor black USC men. True criminal justice reform must recognize the influence and effects of crimmigration.

I presented my current work-in-progress A Citizenship Market. Libertarian economists and left-leaning egalitarians both support open borders, but the proposal has one big drawback: oversubscription. A private market that would allow individuals to freely swap citizenship on a one-to-one basis – whether with or without compensation – would capture the benefits of open borders while addressing its greatest weakness.

CSLSA is an annual conference of scholars that takes place in early October. It’s a small conference – typically there are some 40 attendees. It’s a great forum for making connections and getting cross-disciplinary feedback. I hope you’ll consider attending next year!

-KitJ