Center for Immigration Law, Policy, and Justice (CILPJ) at Rutgers Law School Spring 2024
Welcome Back!
We are excited to welcome back Professor Rose Cuison-Villazor to CILPJ! After serving as Interim Co-Dean of Rutgers Law School in Newark, Professor Cuison-Villazor has resumed her Director position of CILPJ beginning July 2023. We thank Professor Shani King, who is now Vice-Dean in Newark, for serving as the Director during the 2022-2023 academic year.
Research, Policy, and Advocacy Projects
This year, CILPJ is working on a number of exciting research and policy projects.
In July 2023, CILPJ received a new grant from the Pratt Foundation that will fund a research project exploring the implementation of New Jersey Professional and Occupational Licensing Law (S2455). Passed in 2020, S2455 established that “lawful presence in the United States shall not be required to obtain a professional or occupational license.” Our project intends to assess the extent to which the new law has changed the practice and experience of the licensing process in New Jersey to ensure that professional licenses are accessible to individuals regardless of their immigration status.
The project is led by a team of current and new team members. CILPJ Visiting Scholar Dr. Peter Mancina, who has partnered with CILPJ on several projects in the past, including this 2022 report, will collaborate with Dr. Nicolas Eilbaum, also a CILPJ Visiting Scholar, and Jason Hernandez, Director of Rutgers Immigrant Community Assistance Project, and law students and CILPJ Fellows Erick Guerra and Hanna Wargula.
Professor Cuison-Villazor, on behalf of CILPJ, has co-authored an amicus brief filed before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit to challenge the state of Florida’s new alien land law (S.B. 264), which bars certain Chinese individuals from owning land in the state. In Shen v. Simpson, CILPJ partnered with the Boston location of Foley Hoag LLP, the University of California Davis School of Law Aoki Center for Critical Race and Nation Studies and the Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law & Equality at Seattle University and several other racial justice and civil rights organizations to support the plaintiffs’ motion to enjoin the implementation of S.B. 264. In February 2024, a unanimous court granted the motion with respect to two of the plaintiffs, holding that they have shown “a substantial likelihood of success” that federal law preempts S.B. 264. The concurring opinion written by Judge Nancy Gbana Abudu echoed the arguments presented by CILPJ et al’s amicus brief that S.B. 264 arguably discriminates on the basis of race in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Spring 2024 Events
CILPJ is happy to serve as co-sponsor with the Clement Price Institute on Ethnicity, Culture and the Modern Experience at Rutgers University – Newark the Marion Thompson Wright Lecture Series on Saturday February 17th, 2024. The 44th installment, “La Fuerza de las Voces Negras: Afrolatinidades en las Americas” (The Power of Black Voices: Afro-Latin Identities in the Americas).
On March 6, 2024, CILPJ will co-sponsor an event featuring Professor César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, the Gregory H. Williams Chair in Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. Professor Garcia Hernandez will discuss his new book, Welcome the Wretched. The event is co-sponsored with the International Refugee Assistance Project and Immigrant Rights Clinic.
This year’s Annual Distinguished Immigration and Citizenship Lecture will take place on Monday, April 8, 2024. We are excited to announce that Distinguished Immigration Scholar at Cornell Law School, Marielena Hincapie, and former Executive Director of the National Immigration Law Center, will give the annual lecture. On that day, CILPJ will also co-host with the Rutgers Race and the Law Review and the Immigrant Rights Collective a symposium focused on Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).