Victor Romero is convinced that the Constitution, properly understood, extends to all people living in the United States, citizens and noncitizens alike, the same constitutional and statutory rights. That is the theme of his book. Romero concedes that the federal judiciary has failed, as often as not, to provide this parity—in part because it vacillates uneasily between the so-called personhood and membership paradigms—between guaranteeing every person, regardless of immigration status, due process and equal protection of the laws, and deferring almost reflexively to the political branches whenever it is confronted with issues involving the admission or deportation of aliens.

In Alienated, which is part polemic, part constitutional analysis, and part social science inquiry, the author analyzes immigrant rights from the perspectives of law, tort theory, history, psychology, and personal experience. He relies on many sources, he explains, in order “to provide another side to the story in a way that gives meaning to the law's effect on the average noncitizen” (p. 6). He recounts the travails he himself experienced as a Filipino immigrant who struggled first to remain in the United States, and then to become a citizen.

Romero's constitutional analysis and normative prescriptions stem from his commitment to two tenets central to critical race scholarship. The first is “antiessentialism,” meaning, in this context, that policymakers should not assume that people are necessarily alike just because they look alike. (The author cites the political historian Angela Dillard, who in documenting the ascendance of so-called multicultural conservatism, observes that in appointing a racially diverse cabinet, President George W. Bush illustrates the conservative Right's habit of co-opting affirmative action by “exploiting essentialist thinking in service of the status quo” [p. 22].) According to the second tenet, “antisubordination,” government action is unjust to the extent it reinforces, rather than undermines, the oppressive status quo.

In his historical overview, Romero focuses on the way three groups of noncitizens in United States history—the non-English whites, Chinese, and Mexicans—have alternately been treated as insiders and outsiders, depending upon the extent to which privileged U.S. citizens have identified with them or needed their services. The use of citizenship as a legitimate proxy for what in fact was invidious racial discrimination, he says, has time and again enabled the government to oblige the “entitled” classes and insulate them from clamoring “outsiders.” While overt racism is no longer tolerated, public authorities continue to engage in profiling on the basis of citizenship—the more so, he notes, after the 2001 terrorist attacks when citizenship and race again became frequent proxies for “(dis)loyalty.” When he shifts to contemporary issues, he focuses on foreign-born adoptees, undocumented immigrants, and foreign same-sex partners of U.S. citizens. He faults a number of present-day policies—the Patriot Act, in particular, inflating as it does government's investigatory powers—for unnecessarily penalizing not just members of these groups but aliens in general.

The author's interests range from grand themes—that is, the extent to which individuals' “personhood” should trump their citizenship status—to considerably narrow questions, such as the following: Should our immigration law recognize state-sanctioned marriages performed in this country between binational homosexual partners, only one of whom is a U.S. citizen? Should the government be allowed to deport noncitizens for criminal activity if it means separating them from family members? Should hard-working undocumented aliens have access to governmental assistance for postsecondary education?

Romero examines several recent federal court cases affecting noncitizens. He points out that in a 1999 case, Reno v. American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, the Supreme Court observed in dicta that the government could not engage in conduct toward aliens that is egregious enough to constitute a constitutional offense, but predicted that such conduct would occur only in the “rare case.” Romero is less sanguine, as he makes clear when discussing several alienage cases, including so-called promise-keeping ones, in which immigration officials falsely assure aliens that by cooperating with the government, they will not be deported.

There is a growing body of social science research documenting ways the public can be encouraged to regard noncitizens as “persons” rather than abstract entities. Romero mentions several relevant studies, including those published by critical race theorist Jody Armour and immigrant rights expert Michael Scaperlanda, that discuss measures citizens themselves can use to recognize and guard against negative stereotyping. He also cites research conducted by psychologist Gregory R. Maio and his colleagues showing how information about immigrants (particularly new immigrant groups) can be shaped to convey positive images of them and, in so doing, render the public personally vested in their well-being.

Romero concludes with recommendations, some of them roseate—that is, that federal courts abandon, or at least seriously curtail, the plenary power doctrine, and that citizens demand that their congressional representatives repeal the anti-immigrant provisions of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996. Other suggestions are more feasible. Even though policy toward aliens is largely the province of the federal government, for instance, he nevertheless calls upon state and local officials to do whatever they can to assist their resident noncitizens, whom they are likely to know as neighbors. Their actions, moreover, can have powerful symbolic impact—as demonstrated by the 300 communities and three states that have passed resolutions opposing the Patriot Act and vowing not to enforce any of its anti-immigrant provisions.

Alienation is somewhat conflicted in its approach: Its first half is anecdotal, personal, and very reader friendly; its second half, much of which consists of abridged versions of the author's previously published law reviews, is relatively technical and as such more appropriate for legal scholars. The author also devotes considerable attention to topics that are somewhat quixotic—the plight of binational gay couples, for instance, threatened with the noncitizen's deportation. This is an important issue, to be sure, but alongside the serious inequities confronting large classes of noncitizens, it seems a bit rarefied.

Still, the book is well written, compelling, and even pioneering to the extent that Romero, in his quest to protect noncitizens, seeks assistance from many and varied sources. By tempering his idealism with large doses of pragmatism, moreover, he leaves the reader feeling that while his goals are lofty, they are not entirely out of reach.