Seminar - 3 hours. This seminar will cover some of the bedrock legal principles that inform U.S. asylum and refugee laws, policies and practices in the last 50 years. Informed by international norms, the U.S. adopted its domestic legal regime in this area of law in the 1980s. Through significant advocacy and litigation, asylum and refugee protections expanded over decades to include victims of persecution by non-state actors. The U.S. also retracted important protections based on national security, fraud, floodgate concerns, and most recently, pandemic. At the same time, ongoing global crisis and unrests continue to push new waves of forced migration adding to a backlog of displaced persons, many of whom fall outside existing asylum and refugee protections. We study the transformation of this area of the law and the strategies and efforts to preserve and expand protections.
Law 235 Administrative Law and 292 Immigration Law and Procedure are recommended
Final Assessment: Paper
Grading Mode: Letter Grading
This course is a foundation course for the immigration law certificate and satisfy the writing requirement for the certificate and/or the advanced writing requirement.