GIOVANNI FACCHINI, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign - Department of Economics
Email: facchini@uiuc.edu
ANNA MARIA MAYDA, Georgetown University - Department of Economics, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)
Email: amm223@georgetown.edu

In democratic societies individual attitudes of voters represent the foundations of policy making. We start by analyzing patterns in public opinion on migration and find that, across countries of different income levels, only a small minority of voters favour more open migration policies. Next we investigate the determinants of voters' preferences towards immigration from a theoretical and empirical point of view. Our analysis supports the role played by economic channels (labour market, welfare state, efficiency gains) using both the 1995 and 2003 rounds of the ISSP survey. The second part of the paper examines how attitudes translate into a migration policy outcome. We consider two alternative political-economy frameworks: the median voter and the interest groups model. On the one hand, the restrictive policies in place across destination countries and the very low fractions of voters favouring immigration are consistent with the median voter framework. At the same time, given the extent of individual-level opposition to immigration that appears in the data, it is somewhat puzzling, in a median-voter perspective, that migration flows take place at all. Interest-groups dynamics have the potential to explain this puzzle. We find evidence from regression analysis supporting both political-economy frameworks.

MICHAEL C. DUFF, University of Wyoming College of Law
Email: mduff1@uwyo.edu

This article discusses the Supreme Court's 2002 Hoffman Plastic Compounds opinion, normally considered in terms of its social justice ramifications, from the different perspective of NLRB attorneys tasked with pursuing enforcement of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) under the conceptually (and practically) odd rubric that some NLRA employees (unauthorized workers) have no remedy under the NLRA. The article focuses on three problems evincing paradox. First, NLRB attorneys prosecuting cases involving these workers will probably gain knowledge of unlawful background immigration conduct. To what extent must the attorneys disclose it, and to whom? Second, NLRB attorneys are extraordinarily reliant on the broad crediting of employee witnesses to establish unlawful employer conduct. How can NLRB attorneys win credibility-based cases heard before judges who may be predisposed to disbelieve witnesses based on the witnesses' unauthorized status? Third, after Hoffman bargaining units under the NLRA, which are certified when a union gains the support of a majority of employees in a work setting, can be severely impacted by the absence of a discharge remedy. How can the structural integrity of the NLRA be maintained if employers may simply discharge union-represented, unauthorized workers, without real remedial consequence, until the union's majority support, and with it the employer's obligation to bargain, is destroyed? Assessing the NLRB's peculiar, post-Hoffman investigative policy of assiduously avoiding immigration issues, the article contrarily recommends active engagement with the problems identified, and chides the agency's failure to embrace new paradox in the expanding immigrant workplace as a serious abdication of its mission.

GIOVANNI FACCHINI, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign - Department of Economics
Email: facchini@uiuc.edu
ANNA MARIA MAYDA, Georgetown University - Department of Economics, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)
Email: amm223@georgetown.edu

In democratic societies individual attitudes of voters represent the foundations of policy making. We start by analyzing patterns in public opinion on migration and find that, across countries of different income levels, only a small minority of voters favour more open migration policies. Next we investigate the determinants of voters' preferences towards immigration from a theoretical and empirical point of view. Our analysis supports the role played by economic channels (labour market, welfare state, efficiency gains) using both the 1995 and 2003 rounds of the ISSP survey. The second part of the paper examines how attitudes translate into a migration policy outcome. We consider two alternative political-economy frameworks: the median voter and the interest groups model. On the one hand, the restrictive policies in place across destination countries and the very low fractions of voters favouring immigration are consistent with the median voter framework. At the same time, given the extent of individual-level opposition to immigration that appears in the data, it is somewhat puzzling, in a median-voter perspective, that migration flows take place at all. Interest-groups dynamics have the potential to explain this puzzle. We find evidence from regression analysis supporting both political-economy frameworks.

KATIE R. EYER, affiliation not provided to SSRN

Many scholars have criticized the use of adjudication by administrative agencies as a means of making law. Such scholars have contended that adjudicative lawmaking by administrative agencies suffers from a number of defects - including decreased public participation, a lack of prospectivity, and a tendency to arise in fact-bound circumstances - that make it inferior to legislative lawmaking by administrative agencies. These critiques have led authors to conclude that adjudicative lawmaking by administrative agencies should be discouraged, in all but very limited circumstances.

This paper assesses this conventional understanding empirically within the context of a rule of law framework. It ultimately concludes that - at least from a rule of law perspective - adjudicative lawmaking promotes a number of important "goods." Indeed, there are several respects in which adjudicative lawmaking is not only comparable, but superior, to legislative lawmaking.

These conclusions differ substantially from the conclusions reached by prior scholars. As a result, the paper also rejects the prescriptive conclusions of prior authors, instead concluding that precipitous declines in adjudicative lawmaking by administrative agencies should be arrested or reversed. The paper concludes by briefly discussing potential means of reversing precipitous declines in adjudicative lawmaking, based on the experience of the Board of Immigration Appeals.

REBECCA BARBER, Mary Lou Fulton College of Education
Email: Rebecca.Barber@asu.edu

In 2006, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reported that an average of 211 million people each year were directly affected by the accumulated impact of natural disasters. This is approximately five times the number of people thought to have been affected by conflict over the past decade. It is commonly expected that, as a result of climate change, population growth and inappropriate urbanisation, the incidence, severity and impact of natural disasters will continue to rise. And yet while the obligations of states in situations of armed conflict have been extensively debated, the applicability of human rights law in the aftermath of natural disaster has not been so widely examined by regional or international human rights bodies. This paper considers the obligations of governments in the aftermath of natural disasters, with a particular focus on the right to housing. The applicability of human rights law (and specifically economic, social and cultural rights) in the aftermath of natural disaster is considered in a general sense, followed by a discussion of the content of the right to housing, and the obligations of governments to respect, protect and fulfil this right in the course of responding to disaster. The question of whether states have an obligation to provide restitution, compensation or other form of reparation to those who have lost homes, land and property by reason of natural disaster is also discussed. The paper draws on examples from the Indian Ocean tsunami (2004), the Pakistan earthquake (2005) and the South Asian floods (2007), and identifies specific elements of government obligations that are of particular importance in ensuring the right to adequate housing in the aftermath of natural disaster.

KRIS W. KOBACH, University of Missouri at Kansas City - School of Law
Email: kobachk@umkc.edu

In the 2007 state legislative session, for the first time ever, legislators in all fifty states introduced bills dealing with illegal immigration. A whopping 1,562 illegal immigration bills were submitted, up from 570 in 2006. Of the bills submitted, 240 were enacted into law, up from 84 in 2006. The vast majority were designed to discourage illegal immigration in one way or another. It has often been said, but seldom demonstrated so clearly: every state is a border state now. It is undeniable that the urge to reduce illegal immigration has become a powerful force in state legislatures across the country. This article analyzes the fact that the single largest factor motivating state governments to enact legislation discouraging illegal immigration is the fiscal burden that it imposes upon the states. It then identifies and addresses eight areas in which states or cities can constitutionally act in the field of immigration. In conclusion, whenever a state has acted it has had an immediate effect on the level of illegal immigration in that state. This progression of state laws is a predictable and positive development in a system in which the federal government has been unable to effectively curtail the influx of illegal aliens for more than two decades.