A Broader View of the Immigration Adjudication Problem

Abstract

Are too many individuals diverted from civil immigration adjudication? Each year, the government completes millions of diversions from civil immigration adjudication through explicit and implicit waivers, the expedited removal program and the increasing criminalization of immigration law.

By uncovering and analyzing this diversion phenomenon, this article exposes an important piece of the immigration adjudication problem that has been largely undiagnosed. While judges, scholars, government officials and practitioners have acknowledged serious problems within the civil immigration adjudication system, this article widens the view to incorporate the issue of whether too many are being sidetracked from the system altogether.

This article concludes that too many are being rerouted from the civil immigration adjudication system because some of the identified diversions are not true to the administrative process design criteria of efficiency, accuracy and acceptability. The government should reevaluate its efforts to steer foreign nationals away from civil immigration adjudication under the four guiding principles proposed here: (1) not all diversions are bad; (2) government coercion, misinformation or a lack of information should play no role in the diversion process; (3) no-option waivers should not be implemented and (4) open-ended, prospective waivers also should not be used.

Keywords: immigration, judicial review, administrative adjudication, executive power, administrative law, administrative process design, separation of powers

JEL Classification: K1, K33