I read this woefully inadequate AP report this morning in the Arizona Daily Star which included this passage at the very end of the article without any explanation or analysis that could leave the false impression to readers uninformed in the law that this is a definitive statement of the law. White House predicts courts will reinstate travel ban:
The government had told the appeals court that the president alone has the power to decide who can enter or stay in the United States, an assertion that appeared to invoke the wider battle to come over illegal immigration.
Congress “vests complete discretion” in the president to impose conditions on entry of foreigners to the United States, and that power is “largely immune from judicial control,” according to the court filing.
So let’s begin with some basics. Deborah Pearlstein explains at the Balkinization Blogspot:
[Let’s] start with the basic legal question where the President gets the power to issue an order like this. It turns out to have a straightforward answer: Congress gave him the power in a law passed well before this administration, broadly authorizing the President to “suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants” whenever he finds their entry “would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.” (8 U.S.C. § 1182(f)) It is true that another law provides that no person may be discriminated against in the issuance of a visa on the basis of their “nationality, place of birth, or place of residence.” (8 U.S.C.§ 1152) There is a compelling argument that a court should read this anti-discrimination rule to limit the scope of the President’s power to suspend entries. But there are also arguments government lawyers will try to leverage against such a reading – like the argument that there is a difference between awarding visas and suspending entrance. And different judges read statutes differently.
