• Unfair Immigration Policies

    While international law permits states to establish immigration policies and deportation procedures, it does not grant them discretion to violate human rights in the process. The United States regularly fails to uphold international human rights law in its immigration laws and enforcement policies, by violating the rights of immigrants to fair treatment at the hands of government, to proportional sanctions, to freedom from arbitrary detention, to respect for the right to family unity, and to protection from return to persecution. Such policies violate the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Refugee Convention, treaties to which the United States is party.

  • Mario Chavez shares a moment with his wife, Lizeth Chavez, through the border fence at Playas de Tijuana during a weekend family visit. Mario, a US citizen, cannot not leave the US because of parole restrictions, and Lizeth, a Mexican citizen, does not have a visa to go to the United States.
    © 2008 David Maung
    US: Immigration Reform Should Uphold Rights
    The United States government should urgently reform its unfair immigration system to uphold the basic rights of non-citizens and provide a path to legal status for the country’s unauthorized immigrants, Human Rights Watch said in a policy briefing released today. While the Senate and White House proposals are a good start, more attention should be paid to ongoing abuses in enforcement policies.
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    • Deportation and Disability in the US
      Jul 23 2010 - 16:53

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Unfair Immigration Policies

  • US: Reject Extreme Immigration Enforcement Bill
    Jun 19, 2013
    The United States House of Representatives should reject an expansive immigration enforcement bill that would worsen existing abuses within the US immigration system. House Resolution (HR) 2278, the Strengthen and Fortify Enforcement Act (or “SAFE Act”), passed the House Judiciary Committee on June 18, 2013.
  • US/North Carolina: Don't Deter Workers From Reporting Abuses
    Jun 17, 2013
    Human Rights Watch and Student Action with Farmworkers write to voice opposition to Section 1 of the North Carolina Commerce Protection Act of 2013, SB 648, and to express concern that the bill would stifle investigations that expose workplace abuses and deter employees from reporting abuses, including unsafe working conditions.
  • US/New York: Increase Protections for Farmworkers
    Jun 17, 2013
    With the New York State legislative session scheduled to end on June 20, 2013, Human Rights Watch urges Republican Senate Leader Dean Skelos to schedule a vote on the Farmworkers Fair Labor Practices Act, and further urges the New York State Legislature to pass this important bill.
  • Deported Without Her Children - Alicia’s Story
    Jun 13, 2013
    The women, about a dozen in all, had just finished breakfast at the Tijuana shelter when I arrived. Like many people in Mexican towns on the US border, they had been deported from the United States for not having proper documentation. When I asked them if they had kids living in the United States, most raised their hands and started crying. All these mothers, missing their children, unable to legally return to their families in the United States. I passed around tissues. These days, I always carry tissues with me.
  • Don’t deport all criminal immigrants
    Jun 6, 2013
    Much of the Senate proposal is commendable, but reform to protect families will fall short if it doesn’t address the existing system’s inability to recognize the human capacity for change, or to distinguish between those who truly represent a danger to our communities and those who could instead strengthen them.
  • Q&A: The Senate Immigration Bill
    Jun 3, 2013
    The proposed Senate immigration reform bill (S.744) would make significant changes to the complex array of laws that govern immigration in the US. Some of these changes would address longstanding and serious problems in the immigration system, but some aspects of the bill continue to threaten the rights of immigrants to family unity and due process.
  • Immigration reform needs to help families
    May 24, 2013
    If the US government is genuinely serious about border security, it should reform a barbed-wire policy that splits families to allow people who have been deported to return to their families legally and end prosecutions for minor immigration offenses, so that law enforcement can focus more appropriately on those who are actually a threat to public safety or national security.
  • Q&A: Turning Migrants into Criminals
    May 22, 2013
    Questions and answers about Human Rights Watch's report, "Turning Migrants into Criminals: The Harmful Impact of US Border Prosecutions."
  • US: Prosecuting Migrants is Hurting Families
    May 22, 2013
    The skyrocketing criminal prosecutions of migrants for illegally entering or reentering the United States carry huge human and financial costs, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Imprisoning migrants with minor or no criminal records before deporting them often affects people seeking to reunite with their families in the US or fleeing persecution.
  • Immigration reform overlooks asylum-seekers
    Apr 26, 2013
    "Work authorization is not meant to get you rich, it's to let you live," said an Egyptian asylum-seeker who fled to the United States after a radical group beat him and tried to kidnap his wife and daughter. After fleeing persecution in their home countries, asylum-seekers like this man in New Jersey face a new type of maltreatment in the United States: The U.S. government won't let them work during what is often a drawn-out asylum process.
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