The status and rights of undocumented aliens in the United States

At the most general constitutional level, American immigration law contains 3 structural features that directly affect the rights of aliens, including undocumented ones: 1) the plenary power of the national government over immigration and aliens, 2) the federal system per se, and 3) the separation of powers at the national level. 4 factors that affect the rights of undocumented aliens are 1) the possibility of formal relief from deportation, 2) the possibility of procedural challenges to deportation, 3) the possibility of delay and the resulting ineffectiveness of formal immigration enforcement, and 4) the informal system of enforcement to which the Immigration and Naturalization Service has been forced to resort. Undocumented aliens in the US have full acccess to state and federal courts, possess extensive procedural rights, and have acquired important substantive rights. Recent developments concerning the rights of undocumented aliens under domestic American law raise a number of questions that have not yet been squarely faced, much less resolved in satisfactory ways. These include: 1) the actual utilization by undocumented aliens of public benefits to which they are not legally entitled, 2) the appropriate criteria for determining which rights should be established, 3) the barriers that preve nt undocumented aliens from asserting those rights, and 4) the implications for an effective and fair US immigration policy of expanding undocumented aliens' rights.