Georgetown Law Visiting Professor Andrew Schoenholtz (right), co-director of Georgetown Law's Center for Applied Legal Studies, with attorney Asa Hutchinson, former undersecretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and former member of Congress. (Photo by Burke Speaker, Migration Policy Institute)

By Ann W. Parks

As a federal lawsuit to block the Arizona statute once known as SB 1070 winds its way through the courts, issues surrounding immigration continue to play out on the national stage: Should the states be tackling the problems of immigration? Should the U.S. government detain hundreds of thousands of immigrants every year? How can immigrants’ right to counsel be improved?

“All those involved in immigration removal proceedings know that [having] counsel representing people in these proceedings does matter,” said Visiting Professor Andrew Schoenholtz, speaking at Georgetown Law’s eighth annual Immigration Law and Policy Conference on April 26. The conference was co-sponsored by the Migration Policy Institute and the Catholic Legal Immigration Network for practitioners, advocates, government officials and academics to provide the best thinking on the most difficult issues in immigration today.

Schoenholtz, who co-directs Georgetown Law’s Center for Applied Legal Studies (CALS), noted that a significant number of immigrants in removal proceedings do not have counsel, resulting in an adversarial system that is neither fair nor effective. “We are very far from solving that problem.”

Schoenholtz and CALS fellow Geoffrey Heeren were among the experts at the conference who explored new ideas for representing indigent persons in immigration proceedings. Others examined immigration enforcement, detention reform, birthright citizenship (whether citizenship should continue to be granted to immigrant children born here) and other topics.

Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff described legislation recently passed in his state that not only tackles immigrant enforcement but takes into account the need for migrant labor. “This [country] is a special place … we are that golden door that looks at the worth of the soul and the individual and deals with the problem in a way that is uniquely American.”

The conference can be viewed on C-SPAN by clicking here.

April 29, 2011