This thesis begins with a historical analysis of the legal precedent which has granted the federal government exceptional power over immigration legislation, and demonstrates how that authority has expanded in the last half-century. It then proposes an alternative scheme which would embrace immigration federalism and allow states a larger, but still closely regulated, role in legislation over aliens.

This thesis investigates the often neglected Mexican perspective on US immigration policy, contending that effective immigration policy can only be reached through a bilateral, multidimensional approach that incorporates the Mexican perspective. To delineate this perspective, I examine the historical, economic and socio-cultural views of immigration to the US in Mexico. I then evaluate the immigration policies pursued by both the US and Mexican governments through the lens of these Mexican perspectives. I show that current immigration policies and approaches are seriously flawed from the Mexican point of view, and stress that both governments must work to incorporate the Mexican perspective into the current debate over immigration reform in the United States.

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.

In the 1980s, in support of the Sanctuary Movement for Central American refugees, cities across the United States began to withdraw information and resources from the boundary making processes of the federal state. Inspired in part by a 1971 initiative in Berkeley, California to provide sanctuary to soldiers refusing to fight in Vietnam, “Cities of Refuge” issued statements of non-cooperation with the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). They passed policies that prevented police and service providers from asking the immigration status of the people they came into contact with in the course of their daily duties, and limited information sharing with the federal authorities. Drawing on archival research and interviews, this dissertation maps the shifting meaning of Sanctuary as a constellation of practices and logics which has troubled the boundaries of national citizenship. Struggles to establish Cities of Refuge reveal the complex interplay between two different political trajectories in the United States: one deeply implicated with the state’s authority over migration controls and what Agamben has understood as the sovereign exception, and the other with city sanctuary, as a form of urban citizenship. The genealogy of city sanctuary reveals the multiple and sometimes contradictory threads or genealogies that have been woven into American citizenship over time, raising questions about the ostensibly hardened relationship between sovereignty, membership, and the nation state. Exploring the interactions between the daily practices of state institutions and Sanctuary reveals the performative aspects of exception: it is produced and maintained only through the constant repetition of discourses and practices that maintain the boundaries of citizenship and reproduce the state’s authority to control the movement of people across its border. Bringing the study of sovereignty into the city, and exploring alternative assertions of sovereignty reveals the exception not as an underlying logic, but a geographically specific, ongoing struggle.

In the 1980s, in support of the Sanctuary Movement for Central American refugees, cities across the United States began to withdraw information and resources from the boundary making processes of the federal state. Inspired in part by a 1971 initiative in Berkeley, California to provide sanctuary to soldiers refusing to fight in Vietnam, “Cities of Refuge” issued statements of non-cooperation with the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). They passed policies that prevented police and service providers from asking the immigration status of the people they came into contact with in the course of their daily duties, and limited information sharing with the federal authorities. Drawing on archival research and interviews, this dissertation maps the shifting meaning of Sanctuary as a constellation of practices and logics which has troubled the boundaries of national citizenship. Struggles to establish Cities of Refuge reveal the complex interplay between two different political trajectories in the United States: one deeply implicated with the state’s authority over migration controls and what Agamben has understood as the sovereign exception, and the other with city sanctuary, as a form of urban citizenship. The genealogy of city sanctuary reveals the multiple and sometimes contradictory threads or genealogies that have been woven into American citizenship over time, raising questions about the ostensibly hardened relationship between sovereignty, membership, and the nation state. Exploring the interactions between the daily practices of state institutions and Sanctuary reveals the performative aspects of exception: it is produced and maintained only through the constant repetition of discourses and practices that maintain the boundaries of citizenship and reproduce the state’s authority to control the movement of people across its border. Bringing the study of sovereignty into the city, and exploring alternative assertions of sovereignty reveals the exception not as an underlying logic, but a geographically specific, ongoing struggle.

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.