Immigration issues have been put on the center of the discussion table for years. Mentioning the term, the first thing coming into one’s mind maybe Mexican or Latino citizens secretly hide inside a cargo ship and risk their lives to cross the border. But the new Chinese immigrants’ inflow creates no less influence. They do not bring drugs but take brutal labor jobs, they do not come with families but live more compactly with groups, they do not keep unnoticed but will actively show up in churches and can get green card with much ease. The externalization of Chinese migrant worker trend deserves more social and economic attention. In this master’s report, I will unravel the puzzles of the Chinese immigration wave, focusing on their pursuit of asylum fraud. In 2011, more than 32 percent of the total 21,012 asylum approvals are granted to Chinese nationals. In east Los Angeles area, where undocumented Chinese conglomerate, low-end factories and shops, churchs, and law offices form up a complete immigration chain service. V The two main characters, Ai Peng and Guo Yinghua, represent the two universal approaches among the Chinese community: asylum through reasons of religion and birth control. Through interviews with professionals and scholars and existing materials, I am intending to depict the real lives of asylees, evaluate impact of the immigration wave, and raises legal and executive questions for improvement. / text

This thesis examines the federal government’s progression in implementing the Secure Communities program. The Secure Communities program was initiated by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 2008 as a pilot program in only fourteen jurisdictions nation-wide. As of the writing of this thesis, four years following the initiation of the program, S-Comm. has been implemented in over 1700 jurisdictions nation-wide and it is set to be implemented in all local jurisdictions nationally by the end of 2013 (Immigration and Customs Enforcement, 2012). Although local law enforcement agencies had long shared the fingerprints of those they arrested with the FBI, the FBI now forwards this information to the DHS through S-Comm. who then checks the fingerprints against the Automated Biometric Identification System known as IDENT—a fingerprint database containing information on over 91 million individuals, including travelers, applicants for immigration benefits, and immigrants who have previously violated immigration laws. ICE then supposedly reviews their records to see if the person arrested is deportable. If they believe they are, or want to further interrogate them, ICE will issue a detainer. The detainer is a request to the local police to inform federal immigration authorities when the arrestee will be released from custody and to hold the individual for up to two days for transfer to ICE (The Chief Justice, 2011). This process is considered to be the most advanced form of file sharing between local authorities and federal immigration authorities yet. The focus of this endeavor is to evaluate whether this program has been effective in doing as its title maintains. If this program is one that the American people, documented or not, have to endure then it is important that we ask: has Secure Communities made American communities safer? Recent data collected on the program, reports of mass opposition to the initiative by local law enforcement officials throughout the country, and numerous personal accounts of discriminatory harassment of mostly Spanish-speaking Americans by federal immigration agents and state and local law enforcement officials participating in Secure Communities collectively demonstrate that this program has failed in making American communities more secure. / text

A common theme in immigration studies in the United States is that the discourse around immigration has changed over time. Once a bipartisan issue where unlikely coalitions and partners were common, recent research has shown that partisanship is becoming more important in deciding immigration votes. In this paper, I set out to see if we can see evidence of this change in both congressional discourses around immigration and the legislation itself. To study the discourses around immigration, I analyze the floor debates for two immigration bills. For the legislation, I look at four immigration bills, two that passed and became law, and two that each only passed one chamber of Congress. This study is meant to explore how the framing and problem definition of immigration has changed since 1986 in the United States, and to provide the background for further study into changing discourses about immigration in the U.S. government. / text

In the past twenty years, a great deal of literature has been produced as to the value of citizenship in the global era. Some scholars insist that globalization has decreased the value of citizenship with the growth of human rights. Others believe that such claims are premature. Though these authors bring up important points as to the degree civil, political, and social rights have been granted to non-citizens around the world, they all fail to adequately address mobility rights. Primarily granted to citizens, mobility rights are going to become increasingly important with higher rates of international mobility, work, and residence. As such, these rights, the extent of which is defined by one's national citizenship, will play a significant role in determining autonomy and the capacity of an individual to determine one's own destiny. In this paper, I will explore inter-national and intra-national citizenship and immigration policies with the hopes of demonstrating the continued importance of citizenship in an increasingly globalized world. After laying out my theory, I will measure the value of U.S. citizenship inter-nationally and intra-nationally with regards to mobility rights. / text

published_or_final_version / History / Master / Master of Arts

Discourses surrounding U.S. immigration reform and border security are embedded with instances of the new racism (subtle and covert forms of racism in spoken and written language). One anti-immigrant organization in particular, the Minuteman Project, has gained widespread attention of the political establishment and mainstream press through its rapid expansion, physical involvement on the U.S.-Mexican border, and outspoken views on current U.S. immigration policy. There is a need to examine critically the discourse of growing citizen groups such as this one, who draw on web media resources to maintain and reproduce negative depictions of minority groups by masking and legitimating racist discourse.The data set consists of textual selections from the Minuteman Project website. Print text data includes the organization's mission statement and a context-specific article and email response related to immigration protests, as well as 'disclaimers' or statements of tolerance toward immigrants and elected officials that assist in the Minuteman Project's positive representation of self. A critical discourse analysis approach with an emphasis on metaphor is employed to determine how lexical, semantic, and syntactic choices are employed in creation of 'us' and 'them' participant roles. This analysis includes examination of visual images in proximity to print postings as well as images employed on Minuteman Project merchandise such as T-shirts and hats. The images are analyzed in relation to their contextual role in supporting or subverting the Minuteman Project's rhetorical strategies. The pervasive role of metaphor in this verbal and visual context is examined in relation to self and other representation, identity construction, and in-group membership.The analysis reveals contradictory and shifting self and other representations. Extensive use of patriotic and war tropes located in participant roles assist the Minuteman Project in masking underlying racist ideologies while overtly distancing itself from self-identified nationalist and white supremacist groups. Disclaimers, statements of tolerance, and metaphors assist the organization in successfully forging public connections with members of the political establishment. This study has implications for critical analysis of web-based texts, for multimodal analysis, and for the relation between circulatory web discourses and public policy in general.

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Between 2005 and 2009, Iran became one of the most significant immigrant sending source countries to Nova Scotia. My thesis examines the settlement experiences of Iranian immigrants in Halifax to determine whether they plan on staying in the province. I engage literature on multiculturalism and transnationality as a theoretical framework to explore what influences newcomers in developing a sense of belonging to Canada. By conducting interviews with Iranian immigrants, I found that social network sites are an important tool for integrating and facilitating political organization and transnational activism. Other findings suggest that lack of employment opportunities and dismissal of foreign experience are the main reasons for out-migration.

This thesis will provide an argument against the use of immigration detention for asylum seekers. The thesis will critically analyse the law and policy of immigration detention in Canada. It will argue that the current policy of immigration detention in Canada does not comply with international human rights and obligations. The current policy of immigration detention does not reflect the values enshrined in the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedom, and the policy of mandatory detention should be abolished immediately. Immigration Detention should be a last resort, only enforced after alternatives to detention have been considered. There should be regular reviews of detention, equally applicable to all immigrants, and detention should last for as brief a period as possible.