Latest Trump asylum change is illegal
Attorney General William Barr announced July 15 a new Trump Administration plan, effective the next day, barring Central American immigrants from seeking asylum in the United States unless they seek it first in other Central American countries, a move that a Washington University in St. Louis immigration expert says “violates the clear language of the law.”
This national emergency is ‘fictitious’
Stephen Legomsky, an immigration law expert at Washington University in St. Louis, comments on the Feb. 15 announcement of a state of emergency by President Donald Trump. “This much is crystal clear,” he said. “There is no national security emergency at the southern border.”
Trump’s border-closing threat enters ‘murky’ legal waters
The legality, let alone the wisdom, of closing the southern border amid a partial government shutdown is called into question by Stephen Legomsky, an immigration-law expert at Washington University in St. Louis.
School of Law opens Immigration Law Clinic
The School of Law has launched a new immigration clinic, aimed at helping students learn how to handle immigration matters affecting low-and moderate-income people.
WashU Expert: Trump likely to be restrictive on immigration
Stephen Legomsky, renowned expert on immigration policy and former chief counsel of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, says that while Trump’s immigration policies will be more hard line, comprehensive immigration reform is still possible.
Recent immigration agency chief counsel criticizes House leadership for stalling immigration reform
“The House leadership’s procedural excuses for blocking
a vote on critical immigration reform make little sense,” says Stephen
Legomsky, professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis and the recent Chief Counsel of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
in the Department of Homeland Security. In that position he worked
intensively with White House and DHS officials and played a major role
on comprehensive immigration reform. “It’s now been 7 months since the
Senate passed a bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform bill.
Speaker Boehner should allow the people’s elected representatives in the
House to consider it without further delay,” Legomsky argues.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services chief counsel to give Tyrrell Williams Lecture April 11
Stephen H. Legomsky, U.S. Citizenship and
Immigration Services chief counsel, plans to discuss the evolving topic
of immigration law at Washington University in St. Louis on Thursday,
April 11. Legomsky will present the 2012-13 Tyrrell Williams Lecture, “Immigration and the Role of the Government Attorney.”
Federal suit against Arizona immigration law will ultimately succeed
The U.S. Justice Department lawsuit filed July 6 against Arizona’s controversial new immigration law will likely see partial success, according to a Washington University in St. Louis law professor. But he predicts the legal battle will extend beyond Arizona.
Repairing the U.S. asylum system
LegomskyA recent academic study confirmed empirically what many immigration experts had already suspected: The chance of winning an asylum case often hinges as much on the luck of the draw as on the merits of the case. Some adjudicators grant asylum liberally while others grant it only rarely, and the disparities are dramatic. The Stanford Law Review asked Stephen Legomsky, J.D., D.Phil., leading immigration and asylum law expert and John S. Lehmann University Professor at Washington University in St. Louis, to write an article analyzing the policy implications of this study. Legomsky offers a controversial conclusion: “There are times when we simply have to learn to live with unequal justice because the alternatives are worse.”
Leading law expert says reform of legal immigration criteria needed before illegal border crossing can be curbed
Joe Angeles/WUSTL Photo”Beefing up enforcement will never put a serious dent in illegal immigration unless it goes hand in hand with major reforms of our legal immigration criteria,” says Stephen Legomsky, an internationally renowned immigration law expert at Washington University in St. Louis. He gets frustrated when he hears people suggest that undocumented immigrants are “jumping the queue,” or that undocumented immigrants “should just wait their turns like everyone else.” More…