No description available.

No description available.

Zugl.: Osnabrück, Universiẗat, Diss., 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 273-284).

"Family unity" is often upheld as the principle of U.S. immigration policy, central to the making and self-understanding of the U.S. as a "nation of immigrants." However, family-based immigration system was only born of struggles of immigrant families against the regime of restriction. As the era of open immigration ended in the U.S. in 1921, there emerged a fundamental tension between claims of immigrant families and the regime of immigration restriction. Much of what current immigration law recognizes as family, or how it matters, originated in the post-1921 era, born out of struggles by immigrant families. This dissertation examines the period between 1921 and 1978 from two perspectives. One is as an era of the three-tiered regulatory system created in the 1920s that lasted until the 1960s to the 1970s: 1) quotas restriction applied to European immigrants 2) exclusion of Asian immigrants, and 3) administrative regulation of immigration from Mexico without a firm ceiling. Another is as the formative years of contemporary immigration control that lasts today. The three-tiered system marked by explicit ethno-racial hierarchization closed first in 1965 by abolition of the quotas system in the Eastern Hemisphere, and finally in 1978 when Congress placed all countries including the Western Hemisphere under a worldwide ceiling. But the end of the quotas era was not a return to an era of open immigration, but an onset of alternative form of immigration restriction and regulation. With particular attention to linkage between ideas about family and ethno-racial composition of the U.S., the dissertation will discuss how claims of family, selective admission and restriction of family immigration, created, reinforced, and unmade the three-tiered immigration restriction regime. To date there has been no comprehensive historical study of the concept of the "family" in immigration law -- how it is defined, who is eligible as a family member and who is not, under what conditions families may be united or separated, and how family-based policies varied according to ethno-racial origin. This lack has resulted in a static and naturalized view of the family rather than a dynamic and contested concept in immigration law and policy. This dissertation explains the changes in definitions of family in immigration, deportation, and nationality law during the quotas era, shows how they are the product of challenges raised by immigrant families, and how they were inherited to the era of formally neutral and at the same time global immigration restriction.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2003. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also from UMI Company.

Gendered violence-based immigration laws and nonprofit organizations helping in their implementation have been considered crucial tools in providing access to citizenship for battered immigrants. Despite the progressive character of such institutions, barriers that filter immigrants as worthy to become legitimate members of the United States or as illegitimate subjects remain in place. I explore this paradox based on an in-depth case study of OLA, a nonprofit organization in Texas that provided legal services free of charge to immigrants who not only had been victims of violence, but also were economically impaired to afford the costs related to the application process. My dissertation shows how systems of class, racial/ethnic and gender inequality are formally reflected in the options available for them through the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) and the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act (VTVPA), informally reproduced by immigrants' advocates in their daily work practices, and inadvertently reinforced by immigrant applicants. Immigration laws are a major component of the gates that the state creates to reaffirm its sovereignty since these regulate which individuals are welcomed to form part of its population. Legal nonprofits organizations, such as OLA, function as nongovernmental bureaucracies that mediate between the immigrants in quest of legal status, and the state granting legality. In assisting in the implementation of immigration laws, nonprofits inadvertently contribute to the procreation of the citizenship ideals and disciplines beneath state laws. In such manner, they become brokers of mainstream social norms, and reinforce the selective structure of and gated access to American society. Battered immigrants attempting to pass through the formal and informal gates to legality have to balance their obedient and dissident acts in order to satisfy the expectations of those who may grant them access, that is, both nonprofit staff and immigration officers. The interactions between immigrants, nonprofit workers, and the state reveal the intricate ways in which the stratified and stratifying quality of society is (intentionally and unintentionally) recreated on a daily basis.

No description available.

Thesis (LL. M.)--University of Toronto, 2004. / Adviser: Kent Roach.

Thesis (M.S.W.)--Smith College School for Social Work, Northampton, Mass., 2007 / Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment for the degree of Master of Social Work. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 58-62).

Thesis (LL. M.)--University of Toronto, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references.