Mary Armistead, a third year law student at Albany Law School, received her undergraduate degree in psychology at Queens University of Charlotte in North Carolina. She is an Executive Editor for Notes and Comments on the Albany Law Review and a research assistant for Professor Melissa Breger.
While in law school, Ms. Armistead has interned with a variety of public interest organizations and she intends to continue utilizing her legal education upon graduation to provide services to disenfranchised populations.
She prepared this paper on the human rights abuses against immigrants for Prof. Halewood's International Human Rights course, Spring 2013.
The United States is often heralded as a model for human rights standards based on the protections granted to its own citizens. At the same time, it fails to protect the human rights of immigrants.
The current United States immigration scheme systematically treats immigrants as unentitled to basic human rights. This system-wide failing must be identified, understood, and eradicated from our immigration law so that immigrants' basic human rights are protected.
During the impending immigration reform process, Congress should ensure that immigrants are no longer treated as second-class humans and, instead, are afforded the dignity inherent in all human people. This paper examines various ways that current U.S. immigration law results in human rights violations against the immigrant population within our border.
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To read the paper, open HERE.
