Trump's travel ban is built on a law meant to 'protect' the U.S. from Jews and communists

[DonViejo]

By H. Richard Friman June 22 at 6:00 AM

Last week, the 9th Circuit became the latest court to rule against the Trump administration’s executive orders banning travel from six majority-Muslim countries. Trump’s order claims authority from the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act’s (INA) Section 212 (f), which says the president can temporarily suspend alien entry. But the 9th Circuit ruling argues that the administration “exceeded the scope” of its authority — that it both failed to meet the standards to do so under this statute, and that the order discriminates based on nationality, which the 1965 INA prohibited.

Can we learn anything about this debate from the legislative history of the bill?

To understand the travel ban, we need to take the " target="_blank">wayback machine to 1950. There we find that the original intent behind the statute was to give the president broad discretion over alien entry, including targeted discrimination.

In April 1950 Sen. Pat McCarran (D-Nev.), the powerful chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and its immigration subcommittee, introduced an omnibus immigration bill. Among other provisions, the bill proposed an unprecedented expansion of presidential authority to restrict alien entry, as explained in the bill’s Section 212(e):

< Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens be they immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem appropriate. >

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/06/22/trumps-travel-ban-is-built-on-a-law-meant-to-protect-the-u-s-from-jews-and-communists/

[former9thward]

1. The article is behind a paywall for me so I could not

see what the references to Jews was. But it is wrong to say the 1965 INA prohibited discrimination based on nationality. President Carter used that section of the law to bar all Iranians from coming into the U.S. Other Presidents including Reagan, Clinton, Bush and Obama used the law to bar specific groups from various countries from coming in.

In 1981, President Ronald Reagan used it to bar “any undocumented aliens arriving at the borders of the United States from the high seas," while in 1986, he used it to bar Cuban nationals, with some exceptions.

In 1994, Bill Clinton used it to bar anyone in the Haitian military or government affiliated with the 1991 coup d’état

George W. Bush used it to bar corrupt members of the government of Zimbabwe from entering the U.S.

In 2012, Barack Obama used it to bar hackers aiding Iran and Syria.

[Gothmog]

2. The idiot conservatives cite this provision without realizing the legislative history