Lowenstein: The Alien and the Immigration Law-A Study of 1446 Cases Arising Under the Immigration and Naturalization Laws of the United States

FOR more than thirty-five years, the Common Council for American Unity, a nonprofit, nonsectarian agency concerned with the problems of the immigrant and the alien and foreign-language groups in our country, has been steering its clientele through the maze of our immigration and allied laws.The legal aspects of this counseling have been directed in recent years by its dedicated and expert staff counsel, Miss Edith Lowenstein. 1 Miss Lowenstein's book is an analysis of the legal problems of all the unsolicited clients who turned to the Common Council for help since January 1, 1953, shortly after the effective date of the McCarran-Walter Act which codified our immigration, naturalization and nationality laws.These cases represent, therefore, no selection or cross section to illustrate a particular problem, thesis or point of view, although the Council's location in New York City precluded adequate portrayal of the difficulties of the Latinos or wetbacks in the Southwest.But because the Common Council did not limit itself to an advisory role but frequently represented its clients in hearings before special inquiry officers of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, in arguments before the Board of Immigration Appeals and in many intercessions before executives of the Service-though not in the courts-the book presents a wealth of information about the administration of the McCarran-Walter Act.Identifying her clients only by their case numbers and without the slightest attempt to emphasize their fears or anguish, Miss Lowenstein has simply and concisely described their collisions with a statute infused with the sentiment, "nothing alien is human to me."The cases are divided into five categories according to the problems involved: those who wished to enter the United States, temporary visitors who sought to change their status to that of permanent residents, deportation cases, naturalization cases and the nationality problems of those concerned with proving their American citizenship or preventing its loss.Within each category, the individual cases are further subdivided into "non-problem" cases, where the law permitted a solution favorable to the alien without difficulty, and "problem" cases, the core of the book, where a conflict occurred between the desire of the alien and the policy of the statute.The book itself is divided into five sections corresponding with these five categories, each section beginning with a compact analysis of the applicable law and the pitfalls besetting the alien.Of the 1446 cases, almost one quarter involved deportation, the most terrifying problem to confront an alien, particularly since half the aliens concerned were married to American citizens and had one or more native-born