In 1996, powerful anti-immigrant forces in New Gingrich's 104th Congress worked hard to pass the most restrictive immigration law in decades. This law changed virtually every aspect of immigration policy, including the rules for political and religious refugees. It is not, however, as harsh a law as the chairmen of the committees wanted. A fascinating case study of the legislative process and the author's experience as a public lobbyist, A Well-Founded Fear tells how a coalition of human rights and refugee organisations fought to preserve the rights of refugees and asylum seekers.

This book explores the strategies of the global movement to change American nuclear test ban policy at the End of the Cold War, and the sources and nature of the George Bush administration's resistance to change.

This book explores the strategies of the global movement to change American nuclear test ban policy at the End of the Cold War, and the sources and nature of the George Bush administration's resistance to change.

Through the Refugee Act of 1980, the United States offers the prospect of safety to people who flee to America to escape rape, torture, and even death in their native countries. In order to be granted asylum, however, an applicant must prove to an asylum officer or immigration judge that she has a well-founded fear of persecution in her homeland. The chance of winning asylum should have little if anything to do with the personality of the official to whom a case is randomly assigned, but in a ground-breaking and shocking study, Jaya Ramji-Nogales, Andrew I. Schoenholtz, and Philip G. Schrag learned that life-or-death asylum decisions are too frequently influenced by random factors relating to the decision makers. In many cases, the most important moment in an asylum case is the instant in which a clerk randomly assigns the application to an adjudicator. The system, in its current state, is like a game of chance.

Refugee Roulette is the first analysis of decisions at all four levels of the asylum adjudication process: the Department of Homeland Security, the immigration courts, the Board of Immigration Appeals, and the United States Courts of Appeals. The data reveal tremendous disparities in asylum approval rates, even when different adjudicators in the same office each considered large numbers of applications from nationals of the same country. After providing a thorough empirical analysis, the authors make recommendations for future reform. Original essays by eight scholars and policy makers then discuss the authors' research and recommendations

Contributors: Bruce Einhorn, Steven Legomsky, Audrey Macklin, M. Margaret McKeown, Allegra McLeod, Carrie Menkel-Meadow, Margaret Taylor, and Robert Thomas.

The Trump administration's war on asylum and what Congress and the Biden administration can do about it Donald Trump's 2016 campaign centered around immigration issues such as his promise to build a border wall separating the US and Mexico. While he never built a physical wall, he did erect a legal one. Over the past three years, the Trump administration has put forth regulations, policies, and practices all designed to end opportunities for asylum seekers. If left unchecked, these policies will effectually lead to the end of asylum, turning the United States-once a global leader in refugee aid-into a country with one of the most restrictive asylum systems. In The End of Asylum, three experts in immigration law offer a comprehensive examination of the rise and demise of the US asylum system. Beginning with the Refugee Act of 1980, they describe how Congress adopted a definition of refugee based on the UN Refugee Convention and prescribed equitable and transparent procedures for a uniform asylum process. The authors then chart the evolution of this process, showing how Republican and Democratic administrations and Congresses tweaked the asylum system but maintained it as a means of protecting victims of persecution-until the Trump administration. By expanding his executive reach, twisting obscure provisions in the law, undermining past precedents, and creating additional obstacles for asylum seekers, Trump's policies have effectively ended asylum. The book concludes with a roadmap and a call to action for the Biden administration and Congress to repair and reform the US asylum system. This eye-opening work reveals the extent to which the Trump administration has dismantled fundamental American ideals of freedom from persecution and shows us what we can do about it.

"I worked in a trailer that ICE had set aside for conversations between the women and the attorneys. While we talked, their children, most of whom seemed to be between three and eight years old, played with a few toys on the floor. It was hard for me to get my head around the idea of a jail full of toddlers, but there they were." For decades, advocates for refugee children and families have fought to end the U.S. government's practice of jailing children and families for months, or even years, until overburdened immigration courts could rule on their claims for asylum. Baby Jails is the history of that legal and political struggle. Philip G. Schrag, the director of Georgetown University's asylum law clinic, takes readers through thirty years of conflict over which refugee advocates resisted the detention of migrant children. The saga began during the Reagan administration when 15-year-old Jenny Lisette Flores languished in a Los Angeles motel that the government had turned into a makeshift jail by draining the swimming pool, barring the windows, and surrounding the building with barbed wire. What became known as the Flores Settlement Agreement was still at issue years later, when the Trump administration resorted to the forced separation of families after the courts would not allow long-term jailing of the children. Schrag provides recommendations for the reform of a system that has brought anguish and trauma to thousands of parents and children. Provocative and timely, Baby Jails exposes the ongoing struggle between the U.S. government and immigrant advocates over the duration and conditions of confinement of children who seek safety in America.

Memoirs and case studies of fraud schemes and consumer protection from an insider who helped to found New York City's first consumer watchdog agency, "Counsel for the Deceived" is a funny, candid account of fraud and institutional paralysis written by a then-newby lawyer, the city's Consumer Advocate. Philip Schrag was appointed by former Miss America Bess Myerson to defend consumer rights. In six case histories, reading more like a true-crime novel than an academic study, he documents the schemes of the "commercial underworld" and the inability of courts and government agencies to respond in time.

Schrag came into office expecting to initiate a new system, which would at last defend the powerless consumer. Instead, he discovered how both petty criminals and big corporations are able to use the law, the courts, and the status quo to delay and blunt any attacks made upon them. The book tells the fascinating and amusing story of how Schrag's young lawyers and investigators became disillusioned by observing the gap between the promise of the legal system and its actual performance-and how, in reaction, they invented unprecedented methods of consumer protection, some of which cause Schrag himself to question their ethical propriety. Enjoyable as the stories are, their purpose is to raise serious and basic questions about our legal process and its ability to secure consumer justice, or even "law and order."

This book is a unique demonstration of a rare ability to report true crime as it occurs in everyday life. It is a witty and perceptive analysis of the actual working of our government and our courts.

The 40th anniversary edition of this classic, acclaimed book adds thoughtful new material: a Preface by the author and a Foreword by Marc Galanter of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

"I worked in a trailer that ICE had set aside for conversations between the women and the attorneys. While we talked, their children, most of whom seemed to be between three and eight years old, played with a few toys on the floor. It was hard for me to get my head around the idea of a jail full of toddlers, but there they were." For decades, advocates for refugee children and families have fought to end the U.S. government's practice of jailing children and families for months, or even years, until overburdened immigration courts could rule on their claims for asylum. Baby Jails is the history of that legal and political struggle. Philip G. Schrag, the director of Georgetown University's asylum law clinic, takes readers through thirty years of conflict over which refugee advocates resisted the detention of migrant children. The saga began during the Reagan administration when 15-year-old Jenny Lisette Flores languished in a Los Angeles motel that the government had turned into a makeshift jail by draining the swimming pool, barring the windows, and surrounding the building with barbed wire. What became known as the Flores Settlement Agreement was still at issue years later, when the Trump administration resorted to the forced separation of families after the courts would not allow long-term jailing of the children. Schrag provides recommendations for the reform of a system that has brought anguish and trauma to thousands of parents and children. Provocative and timely, Baby Jails exposes the ongoing struggle between the U.S. government and immigrant advocates over the duration and conditions of confinement of children who seek safety in America.

Through the Refugee Act of 1980, the United States offers the prospect of safety to people who flee to America to escape rape, torture, and even death in their native countries. In order to be granted asylum, however, an applicant must prove to an asylum officer or immigration judge that she has a well-founded fear of persecution in her homeland. The chance of winning asylum should have little if anything to do with the personality of the official to whom a case is randomly assigned, but in a ground-breaking and shocking study, Jaya Ramji-Nogales, Andrew I. Schoenholtz, and Philip G. Schrag learned that life-or-death asylum decisions are too frequently influenced by random factors relating to the decision makers. In many cases, the most important moment in an asylum case is the instant in which a clerk randomly assigns the application to an adjudicator. The system, in its current state, is like a game of chance.

Refugee Roulette is the first analysis of decisions at all four levels of the asylum adjudication process: the Department of Homeland Security, the immigration courts, the Board of Immigration Appeals, and the United States Courts of Appeals. The data reveal tremendous disparities in asylum approval rates, even when different adjudicators in the same office each considered large numbers of applications from nationals of the same country. After providing a thorough empirical analysis, the authors make recommendations for future reform. Original essays by eight scholars and policy makers then discuss the authors' research and recommendations

Contributors: Bruce Einhorn, Steven Legomsky, Audrey Macklin, M. Margaret McKeown, Allegra McLeod, Carrie Menkel-Meadow, Margaret Taylor, and Robert Thomas.

Although Americans generally think that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is focused only on preventing terrorism, one office within that agency has a humanitarian mission. Its Asylum Office adjudicates applications from people fleeing persecution in their homelands. Lives in the Balance is a careful empirical analysis of how Homeland Security decided these asylum cases over a recent fourteen-year period. Day in and day out, asylum officers make decisions with life-or-death consequences: determining which applicants are telling the truth and are at risk of persecution in their home countries, and which are ineligible for refugee status in America. In Lives in the Balance, the authors analyze a database of 383,000 cases provided to them by the government in order to better understand the effect on grant rates of a host of factors unrelated to the merits of asylum claims, including the one-year filing deadline, whether applicants entered the United States with a visa, whether applicants had dependents, whether they were represented, how many asylum cases their adjudicator had previously decided, and whether or not their adjudicator was a lawyer. The authors also examine the degree to which decisions were consistent among the eight regional asylum offices and within each of those offices. The authors' recommendations , including repeal of the one-year deadline , would improve the adjudication process by reducing the impact of non-merits factors on asylum decisions. If adopted by the government, these proposals would improve the accuracy of outcomes for those whose lives hang in the balance.

"Asylum Denied "is the gripping story of political refugee David Ngaruri Kenney's harrowing odyssey through the world of immigration processing in the United States. Kenney, while living in his native Kenya, led a boycott to protest his government's treatment of his fellow farmers. He was subsequently arrested and taken into the forest to be executed. This book, told by Kenney and his lawyer Philip G. Schrag from Kenney's own perspective, tells of his near-murder, imprisonment, and torture in Kenya; his remarkable escape to the United States; and the obstacle course of ordeals and proceedings he faced as U.S. government agencies sought to deport him to Kenya. A story of courage, love, perseverance, and legal strategy, "Asylum Denied "brings to life the human costs associated with our immigration laws and suggests reforms that are desperately needed to help other victims of human rights violations.

In 1993, Congress created a student loan repayment plan intended to enable high-debt graduates to accept low-income, public service jobs by reducing their loan payments and eventually forgiving part of their debts. But this Congressional initiative only helps those with catastrophically low incomes. It has failed to attract many users because, as implemented through regulations of the U.S. Department of Education, it requires payment over too long a period (25 years before forgiveness). Many students go to graduate and professional schools in pursuit of careers in public service. But they often must borrow $100,000 or more to finance their education. Their loan repayment obligations become so high that they can no longer afford to follow their ideals, and they abandon their plans to have public service careers and seek employment with corporations or firms offering high salaries. The income-contingent repayment plan should have appealed to would-be public interest lawyers, who are among the graduates with the highest debt-to-income ratios; but the plan has failed them, and Schrag explores why and how the plan should be reformed, either by Congress or by the federal administration.