Professor Michael Kagan is co-director of the Immigration Clinic at the William S. Boyd School of Law. On Oct. 7, Professor Kagan was quoted in The Guardian's article, "Syria's civil war has forced 3m refugees to flee the country - why is the US accepting so few?"
The article reads, "Michael Kagan, an expert in international refugee law at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said there are serious ethical concerns, not to mention administrative hurdles, to consider when deciding which of the refugees to accept. 'These programmes are often looking for the vulnerable of the vulnerable,' Kagan said, a category that can include unaccompanied children, medical cases, at-risk women, and victims of torture. Kagan said it will take an 'incredible' administrative apparatus to screen every refugee, and even then, there will be ethical concerns about how the decisions are made."
Professor Kagan has written several of the most widely cited articles in the fields of refugee and asylum law. His research on credibility assessment in asylum cases has been repeatedly relied on by federal appellate courts and, according to a 2012 commentary, has "guided most subsequent research and analysis on the topic."
