Stanford University Press Blog

HOW THE U.S. CAN SUPPORT IMMIGRANTS EN ROUTE TO CITIZENSHIP

Ming Hsu Chen on American membership and exclusion.

MING HSU CHEN

The Statue of Liberty in silhouette at sunset. Free for commercial use. Via Pixabay

 

This piece was previously posted on the Scholars Strategy Network.

For the last decade, U.S. federal immigration policy has focused on enforcement. Indeed, an anti-immigrant thrust undergirds many of the major domestic policies of the last thirty years – from the tough on crime initiatives of the 1980s, to the welfare and work reforms of the 1990s, to the anti-terrorism efforts following September 11, 2001. Most recently, powerful political forces have pushed ethno-nationalism as a strategy for protecting America during a public health crisis. Beyond so many tendencies to reject immigrants are the underappreciated roles immigration policy can play in integrating immigrants rather than excluding and deporting them.

Members or Not?

Compared to U.S. citizens, immigrants hold statuses far short of full membership in U.S. society. For many, membership is circumscribed by their legal status as noncitizens. There also social, economic, and political barriers to full membership, even for naturalized citizens. Many immigrants, including naturalized citizens, struggle with access to language instruction, face economic barriers in the workplace, and find themselves without a political voice or vote. Increasingly, many fear brushes with law enforcement or immigration authorities that may lead to detention or deportation.

U.S. immigration law, unfortunately, tends to draw boundaries and exclusions. Noncitizens sit outside the circle of membership, and in many areas the laws are not obligated to afford them the equality or fair treatment due to citizens. Rather than seeing immigrants as individuals who are, at present, partial members of the U.S. community, and in many instances moving toward possible full citizenship in the future, U.S. authorities tend to regard immigrants as the responsibility of someone else, somewhere else.

What William Barr Can Learn from Ramsey Clark

Lonnie Brown on William Barr, Ramsey Clark, and the necessity of independence

LONNIE T. BROWN, JR.

February 2019- William P. Barr being sworn in as Attorney General by U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts with the participation of President Donald J. Trump. Public Domain. Official White House Photo by Tia Dufour. Via Wikimedia Commons.

 

In light of AG William Barr’s recent testimony before the House Judiciary Committee we present Lonnie T. Brown, Jr.’s January 2020 blog post for Defending the Public's Enemy ».

During his confirmation hearing, William Barr touted his ability to distance himself from politics and to safeguard the rule of law, declaring, under oath, that as attorney general he would be “truly independent." To many, Barr’s words provided comfort or at least hope that he would be guided by law and principle, not the president’s political agenda. However, since being confirmed, his actions have revealed the illusory nature of his sworn declaration.

Rather than exhibiting the fairmindedness and objectivity expected of the nation’s chief law enforcement officer, Barr seems to have established a de facto attorney-client relationship with President Trump, serving as his strident advocate and partisan defender. For example, in March, he zealously made the president’s case for “no collusion” by publicly recasting the substance and tenor of Robert Mueller’s report on the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

More recently, in a similar vein, the attorney general sharply criticized the findings of the Justice Department’s Inspector General’s report on the FBI’s investigation into Russian involvement in the president’s 2016 campaign. That report concluded that the FBI had adequate grounds to open the investigation and was not politically motivated. In a rather transparent effort to parrot President Trump’s “witch-hunt” narrative, Barr characterized the FBI’s investigation as having been based on the “thinnest of suspicions” that he personally believed to be “insufficient to justify the steps taken.”

My guess is that a large segment of the electorate, across the political spectrum, sees nothing wrong with or surprising about Attorney General Barr’s alignment with the president, or any attorney general’s close relationship with a president, for that matter. Such a rapport is by no means simply a Republican phenomenon. President Obama’s attorney general Eric Holder, for instance, once referred to himself as the president’s “wingman,” connoting that his job was to have the chief executive’s back.