Rethinking Crimes of Moral Turpitude
Jada, Undergraduate Student (UM-Dearborn) “Detained immigrants therefore often find themselves without sufficient legal defense and enter a system geared to imprison and punish not simply to contain,” say Ackerman and Furman in The Criminalization of Immigration. The immigration system is very similar to the criminal justice system accept immigrants wind up deported versus receiving a lengthy prison sentence. Thousands of immigrants are being deported for minor offenses because the government has made the smallest infractions a deportable offense—after all, this system is built to punish immigrants. According to ICE, 350,000 immigrants are deported from the United States every year. Immigrants have little chance combatting a system that's rigged against them, and once ordered deported the only way to stay in this country is to file for an appeal. But that very difficult even if the deportee has legal representation. As Ackerman and Furman explain, “the vast majority of deportable aliens have no legal representation, do not fully understand the laws arraigned against them and do not have sufficient cultural capital to digest complex volumes of law and legal cases.” Unfortunately, short of demonstrating that, if deported, an immigrant will face torture or violence, there is little that can stop a deportation. So even if a deportee gets a lawyer and their lawyer files for an appeal, there’s not much they can do due to the current laws against them. As Margaret H. Taylor and Ronald F. Wright stress in The Sentencing Judge as Immigration Judge, “the increase in criminal deportations over the past two decades is partly a by-product of the steep rise in criminal enforcement and incarceration rates during this period. But it also results from a flurry of new legislation enacted to make it easier to deport noncitizen criminal offenders.” This statement emphasizes the fact that “a moral turpitude conviction is now a deportable offense when committed within five years after the date of admission if a sentence of more than a year may be imposed.” In sum, the government makes it very easy for noncitizens to be deported even for the slightest offense, such as petty theft. How do we fix this? How can we stop immigrants and permanent residence from being deported for nonviolent offenses? The only way this can change is by changing the current laws and policies. Specifically, the laws that allow minor crimes to become deportable offenses. The only crime that should be a deportable offense is rape and murder period. As Lindsay M. Kornegay and Evan Tsen Lee stress in Why Deporting Immigrants for ‘Crimes of Moral Turpitude” is now Unconstitutional, “In the best of times, immigrants should only be deported according to the rule of law and not by the whim of executive branch officials.” References: 1. Ackerman, Alissa R., and Rich Furman. 2014. The Criminalization of Immigration: Contexts and Consequences. NC: Carolina Academic Press. 2. Kornegay, L. M., & Lee, E. T. 2017. "Why Deporting Immigrants for 'Crimes Involving Moral Turpitude" is Now Unconstitutional. " Duke Journal of Constitutional Law & Public Policy 13(1), 48. 3. Taylor, M. H., & Wright, R. F. 2002. "The Sentencing Judge as Immigration Judge." Emory Law Journal 51(3), 1131.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
About
CrimBytes is a space for student musings on crime, media, and culture. ArchivesCategories |