Immigration Law
FALL 2020

Below is the schedule of topics for our course this fall. We will cover one topic per class meeting.

Within each topic, all readings with page numbers and no links are from the casebook. All other readings can be accessed directly from the page for that topic.

Please be sure to read carefully any sections of the Immigration and Nationality Act that are relevant for a particular assignment. Which statutory provisions are important will be clear from the reading materials themselves, but I generally do not separately list the relevant statutory provisions as assigned readings. 

I. Constitutional Foundations

1. Citizenship
2. Federal Power to Exclude and Deport
3. Early Limits on Federal Immigration Power

II. “Plenary Power” and Immigrants’ Rights

4. Due Process and the Rise of Plenary Power Doctrine
5. Beyond Due Process: Speech and Equality
6. Current Debates over the Plenary Power

III. The Admissions System

7. Allocating Scarce Migration Rights: Quotas and Preferences
8. Families and Workers
9. Domestic Labor Markets and “Temporary” Foreign Workers

IV. Inadmissibility and Deportability

10. Ex Ante and Ex Post Screening
11. Criminal Convictions
12. Deportation Federalism

V. Beyond the INA’s Basic Screening Structure

13. Relief from Removal
14. The Parole and Suspension Powers
15. Enforcement Discretion and the Shadow Immigration System

VI. Humanitarian Protection

16. Persecution and Protected Grounds
17. “Particular Social Group”
18. Access to Asylum
19. Temporary Protected Status

VII. Immigration Procedure

20. Overview of Admissions and Removal Procedures
21. Summary “Hearings”
22. Access to Article III Courts
23. Detention I
24. Detention II

VIII. Immigration Federalism

25. History of State Efforts to Regulate Immigrants
26. The State Autonomy Model
27. The “Cooperative” Enforcement Model