Dan Tichenor, a University of Oregon political science professor and a senior fellow at the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics, had an op-ed piece published Feb. 4 in the "Room for Debate" section of the New York Times opinion pages.

Tichenor's piece, "Reviving a History of Inequality," discusses a proposal by Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives that would create what he calls a "fixed status" between citizen and legalized immigrant, blocking the path to citizenship for many.

"Few democratic principles are more elemental than the notion that people who are subject to government authority have political rights to influence how that authority is exercised," Tichenor maintains in the piece.