The Shifting Border of Immigration Regulation

While American immigration law is still largely informed by the doctrine of plenary power, which holds that [a]dmission to the United States is a privilege granted by the sovereign (as the Supreme Court asserted in Knauff more than fifty years ago), what has dramatically changed in recent years is the location of our gates, which no longer stand at the country\u27s territorial edges. Instead, the border itself has become a moving barrier, a legal construct that is not tightly fixed to territorial benchmarks. This shifting border of immigration regulation, as we might call it, is selectively utilized by national immigration regulators to regain control over their crucial realm of responsibility, to determine who to permit to enter, who to remove, and who to keep at bay

The Shifting Border of Immigration Regulation

While American immigration law is still largely informed by the doctrine of plenary power, which holds that [a]dmission to the United States is a privilege granted by the sovereign (as the Supreme Court asserted in Knauff more than fifty years ago), what has dramatically changed in recent years is the location of our gates, which no longer stand at the country\u27s territorial edges. Instead, the border itself has become a moving barrier, a legal construct that is not tightly fixed to territorial benchmarks. This shifting border of immigration regulation, as we might call it, is selectively utilized by national immigration regulators to regain control over their crucial realm of responsibility, to determine who to permit to enter, who to remove, and who to keep at bay

Severing the Gordian Knot of Sovereignty and Migration Control

The claim that states have an unfettered sovereign right to control their borders and exclude non-citizens from their territory is accepted everywhere without contestation. Yet it is anything but a self-evident truth. While taken for granted today, the assumption that control over migration is the “last bastion of sovereignty” represents a radical departure from the norm of freedom of movement (for some, not others, namely, white, “civilized,” Christian men) that defined international law's earlier approach. What avenues for reform, resistance, and recalibration open when we revisit the legal foundations and contemporary consequences of the dominant understanding according to which states have near-absolute authority to regulate migration as an incident of sovereignty? In the spirit of asking big questions and addressing topics of lasting relevance, this symposium seeks to problematize the view that each state has unfettered discretion to control its territory and decide who it admits “upon such conditions as it may see fit to prescribe.”1 With a surge of nationalist-populist anger and anti-immigrant sentiment rising across the globe and the corresponding shrinking of rights and protections afforded to those on the move, there is added urgency to challenge the view readily expressed in public debate that migration is an “existential threat to be managed with the full and legally unregulated power of the sovereign state.”2 This view has emboldened governments, operating alone or in concert, to invest unprecedented amounts of resources, political capital, and institutional capacity to “take back control” over borders and migration—as the Brexit slogan memorably put it. With voters across the globe naming immigration a top concern, governments are recalibrating their policies in an increasingly restrictive direction, shutting the gates of admission to would-be migrants and asylum seekers.3 The deep-seated assumption that states have inherent power over migration provides legal cover for such acts, despite the immense human toll, erosion of rights, and denial of the basic protection and dignity of those who are caught in the increasingly sweeping dragnet of ever-expanding borders and migration control regimes.4 Laws, regulations, and declarations about the urgency to “sort out the border management situation to ensure that the porous borders are addressed in a way that protects the sovereignty of our state” are nowadays proclaimed as a matter of course by public authorities in established democracies as well as autocracies, spanning the gamut from former imperial powers to post-colonial states.5 Exploring what has been forgotten or pushed underground with the triumph of the dominant understanding that states have an inherent sovereign right to control their borders—a view so prevalent that we rarely notice how it impairs our ability to imagine alternatives—is the kernel of this inquiry

Earned Citizenship: Property Lessons for Immigration Reform

At the heart of contemporary immigration debates lies a fundamental tension between the competing visions of a nation of laws and that of a nation of immigrants. This is particularly evident in the American context. The nation-of-laws camp maintains that people who have breached the country\u27s immigration law by entering without permission (or overstaying their initial visa) cannot overcome this original sin, even if they have lived on its territory peacefully and productively for decades thereafter. The nation-of-immigrantsmilieu counters by reminding us that immigration is a vital component of the national self-definition of immigrant-receiving societies such as the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand - the flesh of our flesh, as noted historian Bernard Weisberger once put it. For illustrative purposes, this Article will focus on the United States, which annually accepts the largest intake of immigrants in the world. No less significant, the United States is currently in the midst of an acrimonious debate over immigration reform. Canada, too, might see similar debates erupt in the future given the rise of temporary workers admissions that have skyrocketed in recent years.s If some of these temporary entrants remain beyond the terms of their initial visa, Canada might witness the establishment of a population that settles in the country for years yet remains prohibited from the protection of citizenship, for the regulations that govern the initial admission are specifically designed to bar the option of ascendance to citizenship and the fundamental protections (such as those against deportation) that come with it

Recruiting Super Talent: The New World of Selective Migration Regimes

The desire to be great, to make a lasting mark, is as old as civilization itself. Today, it is no longer measured exclusively by the size of a polity\u27s armed forces, the height of its pyramids, the luxury of its palaces, or even the wealth of its natural resources. Governments in high-income countries and emerging economies alike have come to subscribe to the view that in order to secure a position in the pantheon of excellence, it is the ability to draw human capital, to become an IQ magnet, that counts. Across the globe, countries are vying to outbid one another in an effort to attract highly-skilled migrants, aggressively recruiting those at the top of the talent pyramid who possess what we might call super talent. This spiraling race for talent is one of the most significant developments in recalibrating international migration and mobility in today\u27s globalizing world. Yet it has received only scant attention in academic circles despite its growing prominence in the real world of law and policy-making. In this article, we begin to close the gap. Our discussion highlights the increasingly common practice of governments \u27picking winners through fast-tracked, strategic grants of citizenship for those with exceptional skills and extraordinary talent, while at the same time holding other categories of standard immigration applicants (those entering on the basis of family reunification, humanitarian reasons, and so on) to ever stricter admission and permission-to-stay requirements. We chart and explain these developments before turning to identify the core ethical and legal challenges they raise. The discussion concludes by exploring whether, and if so, how, these striking developments may transform the concepts of citizenship and migration in the twenty-first century. Globalization and the Law: The Next Twenty Years. Indiana University Maurer School of Law, Bloomington, Indiana, April 5-6, 2012

Le casse-tête de la citoyenneté par droit de naissance

Cet article est la traduction française de l’introduction du livre d’Ayelet Shachar, «The Puzzle of Birthright Citizenship», avec la permission de l’éditeur, tirée de The Birthright Lottery : Citizenship and Global Inequality, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, pp.1-18. © 2009 President and Fellows of Harvard College. Traduction de Martin Provencher.This paper is the French translation of Ayelet Shachar’s introduction, «The Puzzle of Birthright Citizenship», digitally reproduced by permission of the publisher from The Birthright Lottery : Citizenship and Global Inequality, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, pp.1-18. © 2009 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Translation by Martin Provencher

Just Membership: Between Ideals and Harsh Realities

In this paper, Ayelet Shachar begins by restating the main idea of her important book The Birthright Lottery : Citizenship and Global Inequality (Harvard, Harvard University Press, 2009) and then goes on to address in a constructive spirit the main themes raised by the five preceding comments written by scholars in the fields of law, philosophy and political science.Dans cet article, Ayelet Shachar commence par rappeler l’idée centrale de son livre important The Birthright Lottery: Citizenship and Global Inequality (Harvard, Harvard University Press, 2009) avant de répondre de manière constructive aux cinq commentaires qui précèdent, rédigés par des experts dans les domaines du droit, de la philosophie et de la science politique

Regulation of CLL survival by hypoxia-inducible factor and its target genes

AbstractChronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), the most common adult leukemia in the Western world, is characterized by the progressive accumulation of small mature CD5+B lymphocytes in the peripheral blood, lymphoid organs, and bone marrow (BM). The main feature of the disease is decreased apoptosis, resulting in the pathologic accumulation of these malignant cells. Appropriate cellular responses to changes in oxygen tension during normal development or pathological processes, such as cardiovascular disease and cancer, are ultimately regulated by the transcription factor, hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF). Unlike their normal counterparts, CLL cells express HIF-1α even under normoxia. In addition, overexpression of HIF-1α has been observed in leukemic cells in BM specimens from CLL patients. The HIF transcription factor has been implicated in controlling the expression of a wide variety of genes implicated in apoptosis, angiogenesis, invasion, and metastasis. This review describes pathways regulating CLL survival with a focus on HIF-1α and its target genes, MIF and Midkine (MK), and the potential cross-talk between these factors