Steven W. Bender

Envisioning Compassionate Migration: From Canada to Desert Trails and the Cities in Between

The previous chapters established the need for compassionate migration policy, set the context of how and why it has not occurred in the U.S., and articulated the tragic human costs and other consequences within and beyond the U.S. from ongoing failures to protect human rights and promote human dignity. This final set of chapters takes up the vexing questions of how and in which venues to enact and implement compassionate migration, and from where the push for it might or must come.

Compassionate Migration and Regional Policy in the Americas

Published in 2017 by Palgrave Macmillan, this edited volume explores the contested notion of compassionate migration in its discourse and practice. In the context of todays migration patterns within the Americas, compassionate migration can play a fundamental role in responding to the hardships that many migrants suffer before, during, and after their journeys. As surveyed in this Introduction, the edited volume explores the boundaries of compassion from legal, political, philosophical, and interdisciplinary perspectives, and supplies examples where state and non-state actors engage in practices of compassion and humanity through formal and informal regimes. Despite the Introductions acknowledgment of a lack of a concise and precise definition of the concept and practice of compassionate migration, all authors in this volume agree on the pressing need for more humane and compassionate treatment for those leaving their home country behind in search of a better life. Overall, as previewed in the Introduction, this collection strives to offer carefully balanced analyses, forward-looking strategies, and pragmatic proposals for compassionate immigration reform at domestic and regional levels.

Sourcing Compassionate Migration Policies: Searching for Venues of Humanity

Building on the demonstrated need for compassionate migration policy detailed in the rest of this volume and the sources of compassion suggested in Chapters 16–18, this concluding chapter summarizes and examines the suitable venues and blueprints of compassionate migration policy. These range from traditional immigration policymaking venues like the U.S. Congress to new interventions in compassion such as desert Samaritans. This chapter briefly surveys the landscape of the potential immigration venues in the hopeful search for compassion and sites of humanity in migration policy for the Americas, and supplies a detailed blueprint for those local governments, U.S. states, and civil society organizations (CSOs) willing to embrace and practice compassionate migration policy at the subnational level.

So Far From Compassion: The U.S.-Centric and Exclusionary Framework of Current and Past Immigration Policy

Before examining the possibilities and sources for compassionate regional migration policy in later chapters, in the first set of chapters we lay the historical foundation of restrictive U.S. immigration law and its administration, both nationally and subnationally. In sum, U.S. immigration law has been patchwork, inconsistent, arbitrary, and demonstrably steeped in racism from at least the late nineteenth century forward.