Moral Judgments, Expressive Functions, and Bias in Immigration Law

Abstract

In a lucid and trenchant style characteristic of Professor Hiroshi Motomura’s writing, "Immigration Outside the Law" offers rich descriptive and prescriptive analyses of three major themes underlying debates about unauthorized migration: the meaning of unlawful presence, state and local involvement in the regulation of unauthorized migration, and the integration of unauthorized migrants into American society. This review advances several ideas that I argue are important to understanding these key themes. In brief, I suggest that a more comprehensive understanding of public debates about unauthorized migration requires examining lay moral judgments about unlawful presence, the expressive functions of immigration law, and the nature of contemporary forms of racial and ethnic bias against Latinos. I discuss how considering these ideas in connection with the book’s key themes and arguments might extend, strengthen, and complicate the book’s analysis and insights.