The New York University School of Law’s Journal of Legislation and Public Policy will host a symposium on immigration law entitled “Immigration Reform: Balancing Integration and Enforcement” on Friday, Oct. 27, in NYU Law’s Vanderbilt Hall, 40 Washington Square South. Discussion will highlight the challenges of deterring illegal immigrants from entering the country, while addressing the extent to which the law enables illegal immigrants to participate in American society. Marcelo Suárez-Orozco, The NYU Steinhardt Courtney Sale Ross University Professor of Globalization and Education, will be the keynote speaker.
This event is free and open to the public. A picture ID is required.
The first panel will explore the extent to which American immigration policy allows illegal immigrants to integrate into mainstream society. Panelists will discuss such topics as the right to counsel, citizenship, and access to education. The panel will feature the following speakers:
- Kris Kobach is a Professor of Law at the University of Missouri. He has served in the Bush administration formulating policy on immigration and national security issues.
- Nancy Morawetz is a Clinical Professor and director of the Immigrant Rights Clinic at the NYU School of Law. Morawetz tracks trends in immigration legislation.
- Judy Rabinovitz is the Senior Staff Counsel, ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project. She has litigated a variety of class actions and impact cases focusing on immigration detention policies and practices including a litigation campaign challenging the mandatory immigration detention statute. She is an adjunct assistant professor of law at NYU Law School.
- Cristina Rodriguez, Assistant Professor at NYU School of Law, is an expert in immigration law and citizenship theory, and is a nationally recognized expert in language rights. Her current work deals with the effects of multilingualism on democratic and social institutions, and on constitutional conceptions of parental control over cultural transmission.
The second panel will examine immigration law enforcement. Discussion will focus on the intersection of immigration with labor law and criminal law, civil rights, and the role of local government and the federal courts. The panel will feature the following speakers:
- Muzaffar Chishti is Director of the Migration Policy Institute at NYU School of Law. He is a member, and former Chair, of the Board of Directors of the National Immigration Forum; Secretary of the National Coalition for Haitian Rights; Treasurer of the U.S. Committee for Refugees; and a member of the Board of Directors of the National Immigration Law Center. Chishti is the coauthor of Immigration Issues for Labor Lawyers.
- Michael Hethmon is General Counsel of the Immigration Reform Law Institute. He has published on a wide range of immigration-related legal issues, including local enforcement of federal immigration law, the agricultural guest-worker program, gender-based asylum, and the diversity visa program.
- David Martin is the Warner-Booker Distinguished Professor of International Law at the University of Virginia. He served two years as special assistant to the assistant secretary for human rights and humanitarian affairs at the Department of State, and served as General Counsel of the Immigration and Naturalization Service from 1995 to 1998. For more than 20 years he has studied trends in immigration.
- John M. Walker, Jr. is the Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He has been a Visiting Lecturer at Yale Law School, and an Adjunct Professor at NYU Law School, and is the director, and on the faculty of, the NYU School of Law’s Dwight D. Opperman Institute of Judicial Administration.
This conference will be held at NYU Law’s Vanderbilt Hall, 40 Washington Square South, between MacDougal and Sullivan Streets, one block east of the West Fourth Subway Station. [Subway Lines: A, B, C, D, E, F, V (West 4th Street); N, R, W (8th Street); 6 (Astor Place)]
Reporters interested in attending this conference should contact Elizabeth Fasolino at 212.998.6849 or elizabeth.fasolino@nyu.edu