Legalizing Parents and Other Caregivers: A Family Immigration Policy Guided by a Public Ethic of Care

In this article, I consider the implications of an ethic of care for reforming U.S. family-based immigration admissions and waiver policies. Using an ethic of care as a starting point, I make a normative argument for extending family-based immigration benefits to the primary caregivers of resident and citizen-children. This policy reform would provide a basis for recognizing the social membership of the children of immigrants and rewarding the dependency work of their deportable parents or other primary caregivers. It would also broaden the definition of family in immigration law to encompass a wider range of caregiving relationships beyond blood and kinship relations.