The President and Immigration Law

by Adam B. Cox, Cristina M. Rodriguez

When President Barack Obama announced his plans to shield millions of immigrants from deportation, Congress and the commentariat pilloried him for acting unilaterally. When President Donald Trump attempted to ban immigration from six predominantly Muslim counties, a different collection of critics attacked the action as tyrannical. Beneath this polarized political resistance lies a widely shared belief: that Congress, not the President, makes our immigration policies, dictating who can come to the United States, and who can stay, in a detailed and comprehensive legislative code.

In The President and Immigration Law, Adam Cox and Cristina Rodr�guez shatter the myth that Congress controls immigration policy. Drawing on a wide range of sources-rich historical materials, unique data on immigration enforcement, and insider accounts of our nation's massive immigration bureaucracy-they tell the story of how the President became our immigration policymaker-in-chief over the course of two centuries. From founding-era debates over the Alien and Sedition Acts to Jimmy Carter's intervention during the Mariel boatlift from Cuba, presidential crisis management has played an important role in this story. Far more foundational, however, has been the ordinary executive obligation to enforce the law. Over time, the power born of that duty has become the central vehicle for making immigration policy in the United States.

A pathbreaking account of the President's relationship to Congress, Cox and Rodr�guez's analysis helps us better understand how the United States ended up running an enormous shadow immigration system-one in which nearly half of all noncitizens living in America are here 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 outlining strategies to curb the abuse of law enforcement authority in immigration and beyond.

Genres: Law, History, Political Science

360 pages, Hardcover

Published September 1, 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.