CAMDEN -- While immigration surfaced as a hot-button topic in political races across the country this fall, one of the nations leading scholars on immigration and citizenship law cautions that there are no easy answers to this complicated issue.
In her new book, The Citizen and the Alien: Dilemmas of Contemporary Membership (2006, Princeton University Press), Linda Bosniak, a professor at the Rutgers University School of Law at Camden, offers a comprehensive exploration of the tensions inherent in citizenship -- both of inclusion, or belonging to a community, and exclusion, for those who are outsiders.
Alienage matters, Bosniak argues, because citizenship matters. Citizens are full members of the national community; noncitizens, on the other hand, are both members and outsiders simultaneously. They are subject to both the jurisdiction of the border, which defines them as outsiders, and to the jurisdiction of equal personhood, which extends recognition and inclusion to territorially present persons.
In the United States in particular, she writes, the law has been chronically ambivalent about the significance of alienage for the allocation of rights and benefits. At times the law treats alienage as an irrelevant and illegitimate basis on which to justify the less favorable treatment of persons At other times, though, the law treats alienage as an eminently appropriate basis for differential treatment of persons.
So when is a question as to an immigrants right to public education or a drivers license an equality issue, as opposed to a matter of immigration control? In any given case, the question in law and policy often comes down to which set of rules or standards to consider, she says.
Such ambivalence is not limited to American law. Even advocates for immigrant rights, Bosniak explains, feel the tension between holding citizenship as the ultimate goal, which leads to a push to ensure that the availability of citizenship is widely distributed, and, on the other hand, working to ensure that even noncitizens have rights, which arguably weakens or even devalues the significance of citizenship.
Scholars in the field of immigration law have praised the book, calling it brilliant and valuable. Homi K. Bhabha of Harvard University writes: As the relationship between national territory, regional identity, and global jurisdiction becomes increasingly complex, questions of citizenship become more pressing How do we conceive of the rights of aliens in a global polity inhabited by, and indebted to, guest workers, migrants, and the undocumented? Linda Bosniaks outstanding book rises to this challenging situation with remarkable clarity and extends her inventive legal perspective to provide insightful reflections on cultural and ethical issues.
Bosniak, a resident of Princeton, joined the Rutgers-Camden faculty in 1992. She teaches courses in Immigration Law, Constitutional Law, Employment Discrimination Law and Administrative Law, and seminars on citizenship and on the state action doctrine.
The law school has increased its offerings in immigration law in recent years, she says, and student interest in such courses has grown in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Bosniak is a 1988 graduate of Stanford Law School. She received her bachelors degree from Wesleyan University in 1980 and her masters degree from the University of California at Berkeley in 1988.
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