The President and Immigration Law

by Adam B. Cox, Cristina M. Rodriguez

Who controls American immigration policy? The biggest immigration controversies of the last decade have all involved policies produced by the President ? policies such as President Obama's decision to protect Dreamers from deportation and President Trump's proclamation banning immigrants from several majority-Muslim nations. While critics of these policies have been separated by a vast ideological chasm, their broadsides have embodied the same widely shared that Congress, not the President, ought to dictate who may come to the United States and who will be forced to leave.This belief is a myth. In The President and Immigration Law, Adam B. Cox and Cristina M. Rodr?guez chronicle the untold story of how, over the course of two centuries, the President became our immigration policymaker-in-chief. Diving deep into the history of American immigration policy ? from founding-era disputes over deporting sympathizers with France to contemporary debates about asylum-seekers at the Southern border ? they show how migration crises, real or imagined, have empowered presidents. Far more importantly, they also uncover how the Executive's ordinary power to decide when to enforce the law, and against whom, has become an extraordinarily powerful vehicle for making immigration policy.This pathbreaking account helps us understand how the United States ?has come to run an enormous shadow immigration system-one in which nearly half of all noncitizens in the country are living in violation of the law. It also provides a blueprint for reform, one that accepts rather than laments the role the President plays in shaping the national community, while also outlining strategies to curb the abuse of law enforcement authority in immigration and beyond.

Genres: Law, History, Political Science

354 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 4, 2020

Reviews

[Rick Wilson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Excellent book that illustrates the modern interaction between the executive branch and the rest of the federal government. Both for better and for worse.

Also a decent overview of the immigration system from a policy perspective.

[Iva Velickovic · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cox and Rodriguez wanted to write a book justifying DACA, and so they did, and Chapter 6 is great. But then Trump and all of his policy decisions--family separation, the Muslim ban, MPP--happened...and Cox and Rodriguez still wanted to write their book on DACA, and so tossed in a chapter at the end to say "that was like really bad and the Supreme Court decision in Trump v Hawaii is an anomaly that should be read narrowly." I wanted a searing look at whether the executive should have all the power it does over immigration--considered not only from a separation-of-powers perspective, but from a due process and individual rights perspective--and this just isn't that book.