Rethinking Immigration Exceptionalism(s)

Immprofs Rubenstein & Gulasakarem

At Yale’s Notice-and-Comment blog, immprof David Rubenstein suggests that United States v. Texas provides an opportunity to rethink immigration exceptionalism — or, as he and co-author Deep Gulasekaram explain in their forthcoming article — “immigration exceptionalism(s).

David writes:

When petitioning for certiorari, the United States’ reply brief framed Texas as a case “that implicates fundamental questions of standing, separation of powers, federal immigration authority, and administrative law . . . .” To pile on, however, we might also ask the following: Do all of these “fundamental questions” warrant exceptional treatment? None of them? Just some of them? And if so, which ones, and why not the others?

That is to say: “how should we split the exceptionalism atom?”

Their co-authored piece doesn’t seek to answer this question. Rather, it “shine[s] a spotlight on that conceptual void, and explore what it may entail for the future of immigration theory and advocacy.”

-KitJ