Introduction

The anti-immigrant sentiment has been growing nationally for the past several years and has resulted in a series of violent confrontations, human rights violations, and even deaths, as it was described in US News and World Report recently (Fox, 2014). This anti-undocumented immigrant sentiment has led to the passing of a series of laws in several states to “discourage and deter the unlawful entry and presence of aliens and economic activity by persons unlawfully present in the United States,” as specified by SB 1070 in Arizona (2010, Sec. 1). Other states soon followed suit with similar bills (Morse, 2011). Many consider the Alabama bill, HB 56, passed in 2011, the most comprehensive and the most damaging anti-immigration law. It allows, among other things, law enforcement to demand papers and detain anyone they deem to be in the country illegally; it also makes a crime for undocumented immigrants to hold a job in Alabama, and to be caught without documentation proving status; it makes it illegal to sign a contract with undocumented immigrants, to knowingly rent property to them, and to knowingly hire them for jobs; it requires businesses to use E-Verify, the government database of names, to check employees’ legal status; finally, it mandates that parents report the immigration status of their children to public schools to assist the schools in maintaining legal status records on all of their students and document the costs of educating them (HB 56, 2011).

Several states have enacted immigration enforcement laws, and the fact that even more states have taken steps to pass similar laws makes the immigration situation quite alarming. Those opposing the development of anti-illegal immigration laws see them as a threat to the values of the nation and to the principles for which it stands. Many believe that they shake and weaken the socio-economic-political infra-structure of the nation (Gordon & Raja, 2012). Although the anti-immigration laws have not, to date, been fully implemented due to legal challenges and great opposition from community leaders, it remains, nevertheless, a fluid situation. It found reprieve, however, in the June 15, 2012 Executive Order by President Obama indicating that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security would not deport certain DREAM ACT-eligible undocumented individuals. According to this law (DACA), eligible individuals would be granted “deferred action” or temporary relief from deportation, valid for two years, and renewable at the end of that period of time. If granted, these immigrants may apply for and may obtain employment authorization or “work permit” for the period covered by the deferred action status. Deferred action, in other words, allows undocumented individuals to temporarily remain in the U.S. with legal immigration status.

This process sounds simple enough but, as always, the devil is in the details. In order to be considered for deferred action, the immigrants have to meet a long series of requirements, a few of which include having arrived in the United States before their sixteenth birthday, being under the age of 31 as of June 15, 2012, and being currently in school, having graduated from high school or having obtained a high school equivalency diploma (Department of Homeland Security, 2015). However, fulfilling all these requirements does not guarantee a deferment. That decision is made by DHS on a case-by-case basis. Most importantly, such a decision, even if positive, does not provide a path to lawful permanent resident status or U.S. citizenship.

Although a welcome step, DACA only provides a temporary respite to a limited group of immigrants. Nevertheless, recognizing the importance of this act, St. John's University's Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies decided to apply and was able to secure a grant from the New York City Department of Youth and Community Development that allowed the organization to help immigrant youths who might qualify for DACA in all of the necessary required steps. In this context, we were able to witness firsthand what was needed to assist these groups of immigrants in fulfillment of the necessary requirements.

Aware that the DREAM Act was not enough, Obama decided to push for a better solution to the immigration situation by declaring our immigration system broken in his November 21, 2014 pronouncement. His intentions were to find a more humane way to assist the 11 million undocumented immigrants living and working in the shadows all over the United States. It is his contention that these immigrants are crucial to the USA economy and social fabric, as were the immigrants who preceded them. In his attempt to find a more comprehensive solution to immigration reform, Obama pushed for legislation to fix some of the core problems of the system, without much result due to the political gridlock. He then decided to fix as much of the broken system as he could by establishing executive actions on immigrant accountability. Three of the important elements of the President's executive actions are: cracking down on illegal immigration at the border; deporting felons, not families, and accountability, criminal background checks, and the paying of taxes. Although a step in the right direction, these executive actions certainly fell short and could not fix the broken system.

We are left with many questions which require further opportunity for analysis. It is in that context that St. John's University's Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS) has over the years organized a series of multidisciplinary symposia and workshops on issues affecting immigrants. They have provided forums where scholars, legislators, providers of immigration services, school personnel, and other professionals can have an opportunity to examine the various dilemmas and multiplicity of factors impacting the lives of the immigrants. In these forums, the primary focus has been to provide important analyses of the issues and challenges and offer possible solutions to some of those issues. This was the focus of the Center's fifth annual conference on human rights and immigration, entitled Recent Immigration Initiatives, Resolutions and Challenges: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue, held on November 22nd, 2013. The invited scholars and experts on immigration who participated in this important forum discussed these initiatives and their implications from multidisciplinary perspectives. This special issue of the Journal of Social Distress and the Homeless is dedicated to some of those selected scholarly papers. Although not included in this special issue, other conversations on the issue have taken place in subsequent conferences. For instance, most recently, on March 26th and 27th of this year, CLACS again organized another two-day multidisciplinary symposium on immigration, entitled Looking Beyond the Fence: Politics, Power, and the Future of U.S. Immigration, to continue this important dialogue, which we hope to publish as another special journal issue in the future.

Do immigrants have a place in our society? A legal argument

This central question seems to permeate and guide most of the discussion being held in various forums throughout the United States, directly and indirectly. It was the central theme of Russell's excellent Keynote Speech at the November 22nd, 2013 Immigration Conference. Influenced by his work as a Senior Attorney and Director of Immigration and Refugee Services Division at Catholic Charities, NY, Russell titled his presentation Recognition of the Immigrant's Humanity is a Prerequisite for Genuine Legal Reform. The main focus of his paper is the issue of how immigrants can find their rightful place in our society. We know that the successful adaptation of any group of immigrants to the new host country or society depends on a series of socio-economic-political and educational factors (Javier & Camacho-Gingerich, 2004). As a lawyer and teacher of law, Russell looks for the answers to this question in the law, especially fixed on the fate of Senate Bill 744-the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act (2013) and HR1417 (2013), its counterpart in the House of Representatives. According to Russell, the question of how immigrants are to fit into our society is tinted by our own views, assumptions, and biases, as is the case for many issues in our human interactions (Dana, 1973). For some, it may suggest the need for reform. For others, it may justify the status quo or become a justification for further restrictions. For Russell, this question serves as a point of reference for three ideas that he highlights in his presentation. First, for there to be a meaningful, effective, and durable change in immigration, we must learn about and communicate the human experience of immigrants; second, that historical law reforms and conventional “lawyering” are not the tools for achieving genuine change in immigration; this is because, and this is his third point, meaningful, effective, and durable social change in immigration requires that we first formally recognize the immigrant as a “full person,” as a person with human dignity and human rights and who exists within the fabric of our “social charter.”

To support his first idea, Russell quotes from an article by William Quigley at the Loyola University College of Law, “Ten Questions for Social Change Lawyers,” (2012) in which he states that,

History shows us that systematic social change comes not from the courts or heroic lawyers or law reform or impact litigation, but from social movements. Social change lawyers work with, assist, and are in constant relationship with social movements working to bring about social change (p. 204).

Lawyers can lead change or they might follow social movements to effect change. Both are of equal value. According to Quigley, the better kind of law-making is founded upon the second view, where the movement expresses a view and the law helps to implement it in society (2012, pp. 209–210). According to Russell, this has not happened yet with respect to immigration. Immigration lawyers, although many of them are intent on social change, remain deeply embedded in their own areas of expertise, are hyper-specialized, and, therefore, their field of vision is diminished. This problem is aggravated by the fact that immigration lawyers have few good laws to work with and judges have little power.

It is Russell's strong recommendation that we should maintain a wider lens, a more multidisciplinary perspective that allows us to speak from direct experience about many more facets of the immigrant life than his/her legal status alone, such as work, family, faith, struggles, ethnicity and background, language, education, food, physical and mental health, home, safety, etc. These areas foster connections and powerful political initiatives, especially among the most vulnerable. Russell urges us to give voice to this human experience and to remain connected to our clients as much as we are able, in order to overcome this “lawyering” deficit. He believes that observing and learning from their experience could more fully make us better lawyers who could tell a better story in court.

The second idea proposed by Russell is that law and legal reform are inadequate for real change. According to him, neither works in immigration. Legal reform of this kind is neither durable nor effective and, therefore, not meaningful. This is not to say that cases and legal reforms have not had an impact. They serve the important role of ensuring that some rights are distributed equally and that liberties are protected. However, according to Russell, every good law seems to be followed by a bad one. He cites as examples the enactment of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (PL 99–603, 1986), which was followed ten years later by the Illegal Immigration and Immigrant Responsibility Act (PL 104–208, 1996). The ad hoc creation of humanitarian legislation for Central Americans (NACARA) or Haitians (HRIFA) was followed by post-9/11 provisions such as the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System, the real ID, and expansions of the “material support to terrorists” ban. In the area of litigation there have been, as Russell points out, definite important advancements but he considers these as merely defensive work. New substantive rights have been rarely secured or advanced (Russell, 2013).

The existing paradigm does not work for meaningful change in immigration due in part to the “plenary power doctrine” which gives Congress ultimate control over immigration laws, without any judicial oversight. In Russell's view, this dysfunction exists because the immigrant person is not considered a person in the fullest sense under the constitution. We think of immigrants as “other” and, therefore, as people with diminished status, both existentially and on paper. This condemns us to designate laws and policies that are always a product of crisis—reactive not intentional. As long as this is the case, he believes future generations of immigrants in America will not find their right place in society. Russell cites an article by Professor David Massey at Princeton University, “America's Immigration Policy Fiasco,” where he states that the most serious task remaining for immigration reformers is the legalization of the eleven million persons who are currently unauthorized. Massey affirms that their lack of legal status constitutes an insurmountable barrier to social and economic mobility, not only for themselves but for their citizen family members as well (Massey, 2013).

Russell's third and concluding thought in his presentation is that the United States Constitution, and our general discourse about immigrants that flows from it, must be understood to articulate the language of human rights, which starts with the value of human dignity as unqualified and unconditional. Human rights language and advocacy, he believes, is a tremendously effective tool for social justice. He cites precedents of the application of human rights thinking to immigration across cities and counties of the United States which have designated themselves as “welcoming communities,” as well as in Italy, in Article 10 of the country's Constitution which provides foreigners civil freedoms and “…the right of asylum under these conditions provided by law” (Constitution of the Italian Republic, Art. 10). Russell cites equally powerful precedents in the United States. In 1868, the efforts of both the abolitionist movement and the Civil War resulted in the Fourteenth Amendment, which granted citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States” (U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1). Just ten years earlier, the Supreme Court in Dred v. Scott (1857) had held that persons of African descent could not be citizens of the United States. The Reconstruction Framers, via the cooperation of both newly freed slaves and immigrant groups, fixed the existential status of such people and placed them in the social charter. According to Russell, Justice Curtis's dissent in the Dred v. Scott decision identified the social imbalance that would exist if Congress had unfettered discretion to decide and change the rules of citizenship. Essentially, Congress had oversight over distributing privileges of citizenship and could potentially “turn the democratic republic into an oligarchy” (Russell, 2013, p. 13).

Immigration in a sociological and school context

The discussion of the legal support for the immigrants’ place in our society offers some comfort and guidance as to the possible positive outcome of the current situation. However, the time frame remains fluid and illusive, depending on the direction of the political wind that may be blowing at the time. In the meantime, immigrants continue to be vulnerable to abuse of various kinds. This issue is emphasized in Dr. Villalón's excellent paper on violence against immigrants, which views the immigrant condition deteriorating further whenever there is a financial crisis. According to her, such a condition tends to negatively impact on the immigrants because employment opportunities tend to decline, the work conditions worsen, anti-immigrant and xenophobic sentiments increase, and thus immigration controls. When immigrants are the victims of gender violence or intimate partner violence (IPV), their situation become even direr because the available resources to be able to escape and overcome abusive relationships are practically nonexistent for the immigrants. Villalón's analysis, based on data collected from interviews over a three year period, illustrates the challenging conditions the immigrant survivors of IPV are forced to endure, “pervasiveness of systems and practices of marginalization.” According to Villalón, this marginalization is reinforced by the threats of deportation, ambivalent law enforcement officers, limited resources and shrinking services. The ultimate outcome of all of this is the spreading of a “sense of fear with its paralyzing and isolating effects.”

Pratt-Johnson's manuscript and that of Figueroa Murphy provide the readers with an additional opportunity to understand further the various challenges immigrants tend to face, this time with more focus on the school experience. In this context, Pratt-Johnson brilliantly examines how and the extent to which stressors experienced by recent immigrant families tend to impact on school-aged children. The author identifies stressors resulting from four basis sources as a consequence of the immigration experience: (a) Separation of families; (b) changes in familial roles; (c) social and legislative pressure that targets immigrant families; and (d) school bullying and harassment. According to Pratt-Johnson, many immigrant students experience stressors in all four categories in addition to the stress of learning a new language and adapting to a new culture. Figueroa Murphy makes an interesting and important argument, in this regard, in what pertains to the emphasis of standardized testing to measure school progress for immigrant children. The fact that these immigrant children may not have acquired the necessary linguistic proficiency and cultural adjustments only add to the immigration stress referred to by Pratt-Johnson. The major thrust of Pratt-Johnson's argument, in this regard, is that the negative impact of these stressors—which can include difficulty focusing on academics, developmental delays or problem behavior—can only be mitigated when schools and communities embrace the reality of the immigrant experience and support the struggles of immigrant students and their families. Most importantly, it is Pratt-Johnson's contention that it is essential for schools to develop the necessary climates and provide resources to help the potentially new generation of Americans to thrive despite the challenges.

The manuscripts included in this special issue of the journal can only touch on some of the challenges impacting on the immigrants but it is our hope that readers are encouraged to continue to explore the different factors that require the attention of all of those interested in finding a better and more humane solution to the immigration experience in all its complexity. Let's continue the dialogue and struggle for better solutions.