Redefining American Families: The Disparate Effects of IIRIRA’s Automatic Bars to Reentry and Sponsorship Requirements on Mixed-Citizenship Couples

López, Jane Lilly

doi:10.14240/jmhs.v5i2.82

Cited by 3 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…The Act also foreclosed legal immigration for poor, mostly Latino families. As such, it sacrificed the US immigration system’s historic commitment to family unity to the goal of decreasing and discouraging legal and illegal immigration of the poor, and created a “hierarchy of mixed-citizenship families” (Lopez 2017, 237). Some families can access the benefits of citizenship, whereas others must live apart or in a perpetual state of insecurity.…”

Section: Us Familiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In fact, it prevents “the admission of immigrants who could help support their families, and it keeps others from securing legal status and the possibility of higher-wage jobs” (CLINIC 2000, 10). In failing to measure true family income, the measure keeps families “poor, unsettled and suspended in a legal no-man’s land” (Kerwin 1999, 1221), and causes US citizens to become “public charges” by “preventing them from increasing their combined family income through family reunification” (Lopez 2017, 241). US citizen children in mixed-citizenship households are the most affected; if the noncitizen parent is unable to immigrate due to a potential public charge assessment, the child will be deprived of the additional revenue that would ordinarily flow to the family.…”

Section: Us Familiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Between 2012 and 2016, Jane Lily Lopez (2017, 241) interviewed 40 “mixed-citizenship” couples living in and outside the United States on their “day-to-day experiences” and, in particular, on how their status and the law “created opportunities for and/or placed limitations on their success as individuals and as a family.” 28…”

Section: Us Familiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Lopez (2017, 242) found that mixed-citizenship couples experienced these measures in different ways. For one category consisting of 16 couples, the bars and the sponsorship requirements “had no measurable effect on their families” because the noncitizen spouses lived abroad, had already acquired status in the United States, or had overstayed a visa and could adjust status in the United States.…”

Section: Us Familiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In addition, it created new immigration-related crimes and established “the concept of ‘criminal alienhood,’” which has “slowly, but purposefully” conflated criminality and lack of immigration status (Abrego et al 2017, 695). It also conditioned family reunification on income, divided mixed-status families, and consigned other families to marginal and insecure lives in the United States (Lopez 2017, 246). Finally, it created the 287(g) program that enlists state and local law enforcement agencies in immigration enforcement and drives a wedge between police and immigrant communities. The trend of “cracking down” on immigrants did not begin with IIRIRA.…”

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confidence: 99%

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From IIRIRA to Trump: Connecting the Dots to the Current US Immigration Policy Crisis

Kerwin

2018

Journal on Migration and Human Security

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When signing into law the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA, or "the Act"), 1 President William J. Clinton asserted that the legislation strengthened "the rule of law by cracking down on illegal immigration at the border, in the workplace, and in the criminal justice system-without punishing those living in the United States legally" (Clinton 1996). In fact, the Act has severely punished US citizens and noncitizens of all statuses. It has also eroded the rule of law by eliminating due process from the overwhelming majority of removal cases, curtailing equitable relief from removal, mandating detention (without individualized custody determinations) for broad swaths of those facing deportation, and erecting insurmountable, technical roadblocks to asylum. In addition, it created new immigration-related crimes and established "the concept of 'criminal alienhood,'" which has "slowly, but purposefully" conflated criminality and lack of immigration status (Abrego et al. 2017, 695). It also conditioned family reunification on income, divided mixed-status families, and consigned other families to marginal and insecure lives in the United States (Lopez 2017, 246). Finally, it created the 287(g) program that enlists state and local law enforcement agencies in immigration enforcement and drives a wedge between police and immigrant communities. The trend of "cracking down" on immigrants did not begin with IIRIRA. The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988, and the 1990 Immigration Act, for example, expanded deportable offenses (Abrego et al. 2017, 697; Macías-Rojas 2018, 3-4). IIRIRA, however, significantly "ratchet[ed] up" the "punitive aspects of US immigration law already in place" (Abrego et al. 2017, 702), and erected much of the legal and operational infrastructure that underlies the Trump administration's plan to remove millions of undocumented residents and their families, to terrify others into leaving "voluntarily," and to slash legal immigration. In 2016, the Center for Migration Studies of New York (CMS) issued a call for papers to examine IIRIRA's multifaceted consequences. 2 Between March 2017 and January 2018, CMS published eight papers from this collection in its Journal on Migration and Human Security (JMHS). The papers cover the political conditions that gave rise to IIRIRA, and the Act's impact on immigrants, families, communities, and the US immigration system. This article draws on these papers-as well as sources closer to IIRIRA's

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Section: Us Familiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Us Familiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Us Familiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Us Familiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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From IIRIRA to Trump: Connecting the Dots to the Current US Immigration Policy Crisis

Kerwin

2018

Journal on Migration and Human Security

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Putting Americans First: A Statistical Case for Encouraging Rather than Impeding and Devaluing US Citizenship

Kerwin

Warren

2019

Journal on Migration and Human Security

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Executive Summary This article examines the ability of immigrants to integrate and to become full Americans. Naturalization has long been recognized as a fundamental step in that process and one that contributes to the nation’s strength, cohesion, and well-being. To illustrate the continued salience of citizenship, the article compares selected characteristics of native-born citizens, naturalized citizens, legal noncitizens (most of them lawful permanent residents [LPRs]), and undocumented residents. It finds that the integration, success, and contributions of immigrants increase as they advance toward naturalization, and that naturalized citizens match or exceed the native-born by metrics such as a college education, self-employment, average personal income, and homeownership. It finds that: Naturalized citizens enjoy the same or higher levels of education, employment, work in skilled occupations, personal income, and percentage above the poverty level compared to the native-born population. At least 5.2 million current US citizens — 4.5 million children and 730,000 adults — who are living with at least one undocumented parent 1 obtained US citizenship by birth; eliminating birthright citizenship would create a permanent underclass of US-born denizens in the future. Requiring medical insurance would negatively affect immigrants seeking admission and undocumented residents who ultimately qualify for a visa. About 51 percent of US undocumented residents older than age 18 lack health insurance. In 2017, about 1.2 million undocumented residents lived with 1.1 million eligible-to-naturalize relatives. If all the members of the latter group naturalized, they could petition for or expedite the adjustment or immigration (as LPRs) of their undocumented family members, including 890,000 “immediate relatives.” Their naturalization could put 11 percent of the US undocumented population on a path to permanent residency. The article also explores a contradiction: that the administration’s “America first” ideology obscures a set of policies that impede the naturalization process, devalue US citizenship, and prioritize denaturalization. The article documents many of the ways that the Trump administration has sought to revoke legal status, block access to permanent residence and naturalization, and deny the rights, entitlements, and benefits of citizenship to certain groups, particularly US citizen children with undocumented parents. It also offers estimates and profiles of the persons affected by these measures, and it rebuts myths that have buttressed the administration’s policies. For example, the Trump administration and restrictionist legislators have criticized the US immigration system’s emphasis on family reunification for its supposed failure to produce skilled workers. Yet the article finds that: The current immigration system, which prioritizes the admission of the nuclear family members of US citizens and LPRs, yields a legal foreign-born population that has occupational skills equal to those of the native-born population. The legal foreign-born population living in 24 US states and Washington, DC, and those from 94 source countries 2 have higher percentages of skilled workers than the overall population of native-born workers.

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Spouse Sponsorship Policies: Focus on Serial Sponsors

Ghafournia

Easteal

2017

Laws

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Australian citizens or permanent residents can sponsor a spouse or prospective spouse for immigration, and concerns have been raised particularly in regards to serial or repeat sponsorship and the rights to safety for sponsored partners who are victims of domestic violence. There has been little research to date though on this type of family migration. By bringing together immigration statistics and policies from current national and international literature, this paper provides a more nuanced portrayal of patterns of spouse sponsorship and the potential problems of serial sponsorship and protection of those sponsored from intimate partner violence (IPV). We identify the limitation of the existing immigration policy and law for protecting the right of sponsored spouses who are mainly women. Some recommendations to better support these sponsored people are also explored.

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Redefining American Families: The Disparate Effects of IIRIRA’s Automatic Bars to Reentry and Sponsorship Requirements on Mixed-Citizenship Couples

Abstract: Executive Summary

Cited by 3 publications

References 14 publications

From IIRIRA to Trump: Connecting the Dots to the Current US Immigration Policy Crisis

From IIRIRA to Trump: Connecting the Dots to the Current US Immigration Policy Crisis

Putting Americans First: A Statistical Case for Encouraging Rather than Impeding and Devaluing US Citizenship

Spouse Sponsorship Policies: Focus on Serial Sponsors

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