Vigilante Racism: The De-Americanization of Immigrant America

Sadly, the de-Americanization process is capable of reinventing itself generation after generation. We have seen this exclusionary process aimed at those of Jewish, Asian, Mexican, Haitian, and other descent throughout the nation\u27s history. De-Americanization is not simply xenophobia, because more than fear of foreigners is at work. This is a brand of nativism cloaked in a Euro-centric sense of America that combines hate and racial profiling. Whenever we go through a period of de-Americanization like what is currently happening to South Asians, Arabs, Muslim Americans, and people like Wen Ho Lee-a whole new generation of Americans sees that exclusion and hate is acceptable; that the definition of who is an American can be narrow; that they too have license to profile. Their license is issued when others around them engage in hate and the government chimes in with its own profiling. This is part of the sad process of unconscious and institutionalized racism that haunts our country

Ethics, Morality, and Disruption of U.S. Immigration Laws

This is the published version

Legal Services Support Centers and Rebellious Advocacy: A Case Study of the Immigrant Legal Resource Center

The purpose of this Essay is to provide a description and analysis of the ILRC’s work, with particular focus on its civic participation projects. While I provide a brief review of many ILRC programs, this Essay more fully describes ILRC’s work to build capacity among immigrants and refugees and the organizations that serve them to enhance the engagement and influence of newcomers in American civic life. That work includes work with immigrant service organizations to develop and implement grassroots campaigns to improve immigration laws, and the development and promotion of new models of service that transfer knowledge, skills and power to immigrants. By focusing on civic participation examples, the Essay describes projects that exemplify the program’s social change lawyering as it attempts to facilitate democratic participation by immigrants. In the process, methods are described in which ILRC staff attorneys go about doing this work in a rebellious, collaborative manner that simultaneously seeks to de-marginalize the individuals and groups with which they work. Thus, the aim of the Essay is to provide an insight into how the organization has gone about doing its business in this area, in hopes of gleaning lessons and approaches that other legal services and law school clinical programs can find useful

Bay Area Resistance to Trump’s Anti-Immigrant War

From the Muslim ban to the assault on sanctuary cities, to the repeal of DACA, the Trump administration’s policies on immigration may be the worst in a generation. Bill Ong Hing outlines the long history of anti-immigration policies from past administrations. In the Bay Area, immigration service providers have continued their work to protect immigrants and their families