[moneytalks]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_cases_make_bad_law

The situation sucks and you can't help but feel terrible for her, but please let's not change the law based on this. And if we do, let's deport the murderer to the middle of the Pacific ocean.

Immigration laws need to change, but not in response to this.

[joshAg]

There is already law for this.

There's already a visa for victims. It's temporary, but it's called a U Visa.

There's already a visa for skilled workers like her. It's called an H1b Visa.

If her husband had an h1b visa that allowed both him and her to work in the US, which seems to be the case since the story indicates that she was employed as a software engineer too, why shouldn't she be able to assume that visa if her husband dies or chooses to leave the US, assuming she qualifies on her own for the same visa. Really, what about this case is extreme wrt to immigration? If you consider this an extreme case that pattern matches /hard cases make bad law/, then what would average circumstances look like and how would they differ from this?

[anigbrowl]

You ask some good questions, but the basic problem is that you're thinking of a visa as being similar to a transferable property interest. It isn't, and the administrative, temporal, and fiscal costs of adjusting immigration status are pretty high for an individual.

[joshAg]

Oh I know that's not the case today, but I'm asking OP to justify why law shouldn't be created/modified to handle this sort of situation.

[anigbrowl]

Oh I see - sorry about the misunderstanding.

[megous]

> And if we do, let's deport the murderer to the middle of the Pacific ocean.

Why should other countries care for or suffer your country's criminals? Of course, unless you meant some uninhabited island or dropping him in the water... Other than that, keep him.

[anigbrowl]

I read this as meaning he should be set adrift on a lifeboat or somesuch. I do feel a proxy anger towards the murderer, but I'm not a fan of making legally annoying people just disappear because that quickly becomes the go-to solution in tough times.

Another reason that I don't want to just forget about that guy is because he's not a bizarre exception, but partly the product of xenophobic nationalism churned out by some political actors over decades for fun and profit. Immigrants can be conveniently scapegoated for issues as diverse as unemployment, national security, industrial policy, and abortion. The increasing fragmentation of media consumption eventually results in epistemological detachment.

[fapjacks]

Are you implying that's not already the go-to solution in tough times? Even the United States disappeared people after 9/11. Granted, they reappeared, but still.

[crispyambulance]

I believe it is possible for a congress person to naturalize this person by writing a bill.

It is not feasible for groups of people, but it works for special-case individuals.

[anigbrowl]

LEgal change shouldn't be based off specific cases, but under title 8 the attorney-general and his designates has very broad discretion to intervene in individual cases, partly because of the difficulty of crafting one-size-fits-all solutions.

Incidentally, when you hear immigration hardlines talking about how DACA was unconstitutional, I suggest you take that with a big pinch of salt. The previous administration essentially systematized the same criteria they were using for prioritizing individual enforcement decisions and while this was the administrative equivalent of a giant band-aid on an annoying political problem, I don't think there was any legal barrier to their doing so as it did not create any ew powers or positions in the executive branch that would have required congressional approval.

Unfortunately, because immigration law is so complex, arbitrary, and politicized, and because those subject to it are generally ineligible to vote, the quality of information in the media and public debate are abysmal. I don't blame the public for its ignorance of the topic; I've seen practising criminal lawyers' jaws sag open at the discovery that there is a essentially a parallel custodial system whose rules they knew nothing about. Most people aren't aware, for example, that someone picked up on an immigration violation can be detained for up to 6 months without a hearing - and that 6 months is not written anywhere in the law, but was the interim choice of a court faced with a law that doesn't provide for hearings in some cases, and a constitution that requires them.