Category Archives: human rights
Another whitewash of history
Some good, some bad in this proposal
The purpose of the credible fear interviews is to screen out the asylum claims that are obviously without merit so that they don’t clog up an already overcrowded immigration court system. Sending applicants to an asylum officer before the case goes to court (which already happens when people who are inside the country apply for asylum) would serve to screen out the obviously valid claims. That would leave the court with those claims that are neither obviously without merit nor obviously worthy of a grant, i.e., the hard cases. Those are the ones that require the most preparation and time so expediting them as proposed is a bad idea. Few attorneys I know can handle cases on that short time frame. Besides, putting these new cases at the front of the queue moves everyone else back and would make the backlog even worse. The solution? Make the immigration courts independent and give them the resources needed to tackle their huge caseload.
What’s to come … maybe
“In Roe, the justices ruled the right to an abortion arose out of a right to privacy, which isn’t explicitly spelled out in the Constitution but rather assembled through the guarantees of the 14th Amendment. Over the decades, the Supreme Court has built a Jenga tower of legal reasoning around the existence of that right to privacy and how rights may be extrapolated from the Constitution. Pull out one block, like Roe, and you threaten to topple the whole thing, experts say. …
“In Roe, the justices ruled the right to an abortion arose out of a right to privacy, which isn’t explicitly spelled out in the Constitution but rather assembled through the guarantees of the 14th Amendment. Over the decades, the Supreme Court has built a Jenga tower of legal reasoning around the existence of that right to privacy and how rights may be extrapolated from the Constitution. Pull out one block, like Roe, and you threaten to topple the whole thing, experts say.”
You think?
Deteriorating human rights in India
Welcome news
The question of what constitutes “a particular social group” for purposes of asylum is one of the most difficult and vexing in immigration law.
Welcome news
Bristol County Jail is considered among immigration practitioners to be the worst immigration detention facility in New England. And Hodgson is the New England version of Sheriff Arpaio.
The moral case is undeniable
But, alas, as a practical matter, I fear that the best they can get is compensation in some future peace deal. And even that seems a long shot.