Visa as Property, Visa as Collateral

Three decades ago Guido Calabresi and Philip Bobbit famously wrote about tragic choices, namely tough policy choices which offend deeply held values, and the accompanying subterfuges, that is, efforts by policy elites to shield such choices from public view.\u27 Strangely, the tragic choice framework has not been applied in the context of U.S. immigration law, although current immigration policy is rife with tragic choices and subterfuges. A case in question is the issue of commodification of visas. It is clear that U.S. policymakers remain deeply committed to maintaining an illusion that U.S. visas are not being sold. 2 For example, in the subprime mortgage financial crisis that began in 2007, U.S. policymakers declined to auction visas to wealthy overseas investors who would be willing to purchase depressed real estate, a policy suggestion that gained considerable currency as a means of buttressing property values.3 Yet, U.S. immigration practice has long made unofficial concessions to commodification, that is, concessions at the margins. Notably, the government generally derives no direct benefit from such concessions, although other parties may extract significant rents. One might call these informal subterfuges, as a cottage industry has developed with labor brokers and coyotes charging applicants high fees to gain entry to the United States.4 Strikingly, these fees are pervasive, not only in the black and gray markets (that is, markets outside of the formal economy, sometimes involving inherently illegal activities such as undocumented border crossings). They are also pervasive in the white markets (within the formal economy). For example, elite applicants typically employ attorneys and sometimes lobbyists who charge high fees to navigate the complexities of the Immigration and Nationality Act ( INA ).5 There are also official concessions to commodification. Indeed, the INA mandates that some migrants pay very high prices to obtain the right to enter the United States. Certain elite visa applicants, for example, must invest significant sums in the U.S. economy as a condition of both obtaining and maintaining their visas

Visa as Property, Visa as Collateral

Three decades ago Guido Calabresi and Philip Bobbit famously wrote about tragic choices, namely tough policy choices which offend deeply held values, and the accompanying subterfuges, that is, efforts by policy elites to shield such choices from public view.\u27 Strangely, the tragic choice framework has not been applied in the context of U.S. immigration law, although current immigration policy is rife with tragic choices and subterfuges. A case in question is the issue of commodification of visas. It is clear that U.S. policymakers remain deeply committed to maintaining an illusion that U.S. visas are not being sold. 2 For example, in the subprime mortgage financial crisis that began in 2007, U.S. policymakers declined to auction visas to wealthy overseas investors who would be willing to purchase depressed real estate, a policy suggestion that gained considerable currency as a means of buttressing property values.3 Yet, U.S. immigration practice has long made unofficial concessions to commodification, that is, concessions at the margins. Notably, the government generally derives no direct benefit from such concessions, although other parties may extract significant rents. One might call these informal subterfuges, as a cottage industry has developed with labor brokers and coyotes charging applicants high fees to gain entry to the United States.4 Strikingly, these fees are pervasive, not only in the black and gray markets (that is, markets outside of the formal economy, sometimes involving inherently illegal activities such as undocumented border crossings). They are also pervasive in the white markets (within the formal economy). For example, elite applicants typically employ attorneys and sometimes lobbyists who charge high fees to navigate the complexities of the Immigration and Nationality Act ( INA ).5 There are also official concessions to commodification. Indeed, the INA mandates that some migrants pay very high prices to obtain the right to enter the United States. Certain elite visa applicants, for example, must invest significant sums in the U.S. economy as a condition of both obtaining and maintaining their visas

What are the barriers to building a trusted police service in China and India? A Comparative Study

This thesis attempts to identify what the barriers to building a trusted police service in China and India are through answering the questions: How has economic modernisation impacted upon policing? To what extent are the two police forces trusted by its citizens? Do the police carry out their duties in a fair and unbiased fashion? What do police corruption/malpractices look like and why does it persist? And what are the influencing factors in decision-making at the moments-of-truth? There is very limited research into the Chinese Police generally and even less on factors affecting organisational culture, practices, and decision making. There is no comparative study between the Chinese and Indian Police. This thesis found that the Chinese Police are held in higher esteem than the Indian Police by their respective citizenry. Both the Chinese and Indian police use stereotypes and are biased against certain section of society in the way they carry out their duties and that corruption and malpractices are tolerated and engrained in its culture but is subtler in China than in India. However, one surprised finding is that India is more at risk of the rule by man than China, even though India is said to be the world’s largest democracy grounded on the principles of the rule of law.SMUT Fund; POLIS and DS Field research funds; Trinity College field work fund

Spectacles of Dispossession: Representations of Indian Muslims in British Colonial Discourse, 1857-1905

PhDThis thesis analyses some of the changing features by which Indian Muslims were identified in British colonialist discourse between the outbreak of revolt in 1857 and the partition of Bengal in 1905. Most of the texts examined emanate out of the relatively circumscribed Anglo-Indian official community, and range from personal correspondence, to 'Mutiny' memoirs, travel guides, and socio-political essays. The argument takes as its starting point David Washbrook's description of the selfconstitution of the Raj as a centralised, secular and neutral state arbitrating the claims of competing ascriptive racial and ethnic communities. Drawing on recent Lacanian analyses of the formation and maintenance of ideologies, as well as on the sociological schema of Zygmant Bauman, the thesis argues that in the post-1857 period the preservation of this official identity became dangerously reliant on a discourse of power centred on representations of Indian Muslims. Chapter One reads the stereotype of the Indian Muslim in 1905 for its most salient features - debased foreign origins, religious incontinence, isolation within Indian society, and secret ambitions towards temporal power. It then traces them back to their first marked appearance in colonial discourse in 1857. Chapter Two begins with a reassessment of the historiography with regard to Muslim 'conspiracy' during the revolt, as well as a reconsideration of official praxis towards Indian Muslims in the half-century before its outbreak. Proceeding to a detailed analysis of' Mutiny' texts, it concludes that the unprecedented, widespread British misperception of 'conspiracy' stemmed in part from an irrational colonialist attempt to re-possess their own fractured secular ideology through tropes of Christian persecution. Chapter Three compares the highly ambivalent post-'Mutiny' representations of Indo-Muslim 'fanaticism' that resulted with a secularised late eighteenth-century discourse on Mughal figures of authority. It argues that the strikingly similar discourses of alienation and lack of self-command structuring both forms of representation derived from crises in the colonialist inability to command their own self-presentation as rulers within the Indian environment. In the later discourse, in particular, these instabilities issued in a disastrous process of representational stigmatisation and segregation