The Legal Translation and Documentation of Immigrant Abuse and Helpfulness

• In Event: 424 - Regular Session. Law and Society I - When Reforms Meet Routines

Abstract

To apply for U Visa status, a temporary legal standing available to undocumented crime victims who assist law enforcement in investigations, immigrants must obtain validation of their experiences from police via a signed “certification” paper. This paper investigates the challenges lawyers and immigrant crime victims face in translating and documenting the victims’ experiences into legal form. By analyzing interactions between Los Angeles attorneys and female undocumented immigrants, I explore how immigrants prepare to approach police certifiers after violence. Attorneys arbitrate between accounts of violence and immigrant-police encounters and the legal cases they can develop, offering retrospective and prospective advice to immigrants about how to make effective pleas to police. Drawing attention to the devolutionary dynamics of an inclusive immigration policy, I show how nonfederal bureaucrats shape immigrants’ eligibility for legalization. I also expose hazardous consequences of mixing street-level administrative discretion with federal visa eligibility determinations.

Author

• Sarah Morando Lakhani, American Bar Foundation