The Importance of Being Boring: Special Immigrant Juvenile Status and ALI's Restatement of the Law, Children and the Law

Family law and immigration law interact constantly, sometimes in ways that are obvious but frequently in ways that are more subtle and less transparent. At the most basic level, both immigration and family law regulate decisions about who lives together and how families structure their lives. Family law empowers state interventions into families in ways that disrupt family decisions regarding child custody and care. The legal recognition, or not, of marriages has implications for how families organize their lives together. Family law's reach extends to immigration matters where, given the centrality of family to pathways and options for attaining immigration status, family law is routinely determinative of immigration outcomes...