Immigration Law and Policy

The Conference of Asian Pacific American Law Faculty, or CAPALF, has issued a statement on President Trump's recent executive order. The statement is signed by several of King Hall's own Asian-American law faculty, including Afra Afsharipour, Anupam Chander, Gabriel "Jack" Chin, Thomas W. Joo, Rose Cuison Villazor, Lisa Ikemoto, Madhavi Sunder, and Yoshinori "Toso" Himel '75.

An excerpt:

Tomorrow brings "Documenting the Immigrant: U.S. Immigration Policy Past, Present, and Future," a major conference organized by the UC Davis Institute for Social Sciences with co-sponsors including the School of Law.

I will speak on a panel in the afternoon.

From the conference web page:

Professor Leticia Saucedo will deliver the Alice Cook Distinguished Lecture at Cornell University on April 13, 2017.

Saucedo will deliver a lecture titled, "The Legacy of the Immigrant Workplace: Lessons for the 21st Century Economy."

The Alice Cook Distinguished Lecture is organized by the ILR School of Cornell University. ILR is a leading college of the applied social sciences focusing on work, employment, and labor policy issues.

It has been a memorable year in U.S. immigration news.  Here is the ImmigrationProf top 10 immigration news items for 2016.

1.  The Election of Donald Trump as President of the United States

The detention of immigrants is a major tool for enforcing the immigration laws employed by the executive branch. President-elect Donald Trump has promised to detain immigrants facing removal while their cases percolate through the courts. Detention thus is poised to become more common for noncitizens in removal proceedings.

In recent weeks, King Hall faculty have written several opinion pieces for the press.

Kevin R. Johnson in The Sacramento Bee: Trump's Immigration Promises Fraught with Obstacles

In recent years, the U.S government has aggressively used detention of immigrants as a tool for enforcing the immigration laws. Immigration detention became national news in 2014 when the Obama administration detained tens of thousands of Central American women and children fleeing violence in their native lands.

Jack Chin and I participated in a podcast on Bloomberg BNA. The topic: Immigration in the Supreme Court's upcoming term.

LISTEN HERE TO THE PODCAST: "IMMIGRATION EVOLUTION"

Cracks are beginning to show in the deference that courts usually give to Congress in the immigration arena.

Tougher immigration laws have spurred the courts to import constitutional norms into the field, once subject to Congress's plenary power.

Yesterday was a big day for Donald Trump and immigration in campaign 2016.   There has been talk of Trump softening on immigration.  At the end of the day, he reasserted a pretty hard line.

First, Trump visited Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto in Mexico City.  They had a private discussion and both gave public remarks.  Both talked firmly yet diplomatically in the public remarks, with Donald Trump seeming somewhat subdued to me and, some might say, statesman-like.  

Jason A. Cade has powerfully advocated for returning greater discretion to the courts and agencies in making and reviewing Executive Branch decisions to remove noncitizens from the United States.