Immigration Law and Procedure in a Nutshell (Nutshell Series)

If you are a beginner, if will be hard for you to start reading althought it will be a better than reading INA or 8 CFR. If you have a intermidiate immigration back ground, why do you even bother looking at books like this? just dive into INA & 8 CFR.
Also, go check out AILA and Lexis Nexis Web-sites.


The book provides a good academic discussion   April 30, 2004
Li Lin (Union City, CA United States)
7 out of 7 found this review helpful

This book makes no pretensions to be the ultimate compendium for the practitioners in the immigration field. As the author points out in the preface, this book is meant to give you a brief overview of the subject. And that it did! It provides succint and stimulating discussions in many pertinent topics. Most importantly, the flow of the discussions is not bogged down by chaotic juxtaposition of law and facts that is usually usually associated with works written by the practitioners. In short, this book presents you with the picture of the forest rather than the individual shots of trees. I highly recommend it.


Great reference guide   March 2, 2006
Larry Overcast (Sunburst, MT USA)
6 out of 6 found this review helpful

I am a manager for a Federal Govt Agency. I found this book informational and easy to understand. Immigration law is a complex subject. The book is easy to read and addresses many important aspects related to this subject. The sections related to inadmissability, removal are well written and easy to understand. The chapters related to the history of various classes of immigrants was intersting as well. I would recommend the book for persons who want to expand their knowledge of this topic.


(4th ed.) Good overview/foundation for further research   January 6, 2008
AK (USA)
3 out of 4 found this review helpful

The most difficult thing about studying any body of laws resides, not in its substance, but in its presentation. One advantage of immigration law is that it relies heavily on fairly stable categories. This book should help anyone but the most impatient to build a first outline of the main categories of immigration law--with helpful annotations.

15 chapters: 1-4 (background information--including history and constitutional law); 5 (immigrant visas), 6 (nonimmigrant visas), 7 (zooms on student visas--a sub-category of nonimmigrant visas), 8 (removal--formerly "deportation"), 9 (inadmissibility), 10 (refugees/asyless), 11 (international law), 12 (citizenship), 13 (zooms on rights of aliens in general), 14 (criminal aspects of immigration law), 15 (ethical practice).

My main advice is to take good note of the general INA and CFR provisions under each category and subcategory, and names (and holdings, why not) of important cases. Add that to your outline, and you have a fine guide for further research. In other words, if your goal is to familiarize yourself with the field AS A WHOLE for the first time, don't get bogged down in the discussions of legal history and cases at first (yes, this is not a manual, so what's the point?)--except for the general history of US immigration law at the start of the book, which gives you a good first sense of the "spirit" of US immigration policy. You could come back to those discussions later, without the aggravation.

I do not recommend delving directly into any body of laws that is as extensive as immigration law, unless of course you have a few years to spare--but then again why waste that time? Think of books like this one as you would of maps: you don't want to have to start looking for California, street by street, starting in Washington DC. The point is this: an overview is always useful. This one should help you, if you use it properly.


immigration law   January 9, 2007
Lyubomir P. Zabov
2 out of 2 found this review helpful

i think that the book is very good, easy to read, well written and conveniently composed so that information is easy to be found