Wednesday, October 26, 2016

Beyond Earned Citizenship by Muneer I. Ahmad,Yale Law School October 14, 2016 Harvard Civil Rights- Civil Liberties Law Review (CR-CL), Vol. 52, 2017

Abstract: For more than a decade, a single rubric for legalization of the 11 million undocumented people in the United States has dominated every major proposal for comprehensive immigration reform, and continues to do so today: earned citizenship. Introduced as a rhetorical move intended to distinguish such proposals from amnesty, the earned citizenship frame has shaped the substantive provisions of the legislation by conditioning legalization on the performance of economic, cultural, and civic metrics. In order to regularize status, earned citizenship would require undocumented individuals to demonstrate their ongoing societal contributions at multiple intervals over a probationary period of many years, and they would remain subject to deportation for failure to do so. Such a behavioral approach expresses a particular moral basis for legalization and a normative vision of citizenship, and aspires to place millions of people on a path to citizenship. And yet, despite the centrality of earned citizenship in contemporary immigration debates and the magnitude of its ambition, there has been virtually no scholarly treatment of its substance, ideology or normative claims. This Article explores the origins and uncovers the deep structure of earned citizenship, and critically evaluates the virtues and shortcomings of earned citizenship as matters of politics, morality, policy and law. Although laudatory for its inclusionary promise, earned citizenship suffers from serious, previously unaddressed theoretical and conceptual flaws that illuminate and imperil our larger understandings of citizenship, and invite consideration of alternative frameworks for legalization.

KJ

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2016/10/immigration-article-of-the-day-beyond-earned-citizenship-by-muneer-i-ahmad-.html