Famigration (Fam Imm): The Next Frontier in Immigration Law

Abstract

The recently published article, Immigration’s Family Values by Professor Kerry Abrams and R. Kent Piacenti, and the forthcoming Removing Citizens: Parenthood, Citizenship, and Immigration Courts by Kari Hong examine how, when, and why immigration law uses a different definition of family than the one used in state courts. Despite their differences, in conversation, these two pieces highlight how the Department of Homeland Security likely is either following misguided policies or pursuing improper objectives when creating a federal family law. Crimmigration (Crim Imm) scholarship successfully identified the ways in which the (purported) civil proceedings of immigration law needed the extra constitutional protections found in criminal law. In analogous ways, Famigration (Fam Imm) calls on scholars to engage in the similar project of scrutinizing existing immigration practices through the lens of family law. In do so, a more systematized approach may introduce constitutional protections, resolve federal and state law conflicts, and formulate more universal, idealized concepts into the technocratic scheme of the Immigration and Nationality Act.