At some level, I have learned to accept that US immigration policy is racist. And at some level, I’ve learned to accept that it is “legal” for US immigration policy to be racist, at least from a Hobbesian perspective, which holds that the state can do whatever it wants in whatever lands it controls by force.
This country has always had a “preferred” class of immigrants it wants to attract, while trying to stem the tide of those deemed undesirable by the white powers that be. We didn’t like the Irish for a time, then the Chinese, then the Japanese, then the Southern and Eastern Europeans, and on and on until, latterly, Latinos and Muslims from anywhere. And at nearly every turn, the overtly racist immigration restrictions championed by the ruling whites have been upheld by the courts. Our country’s bigotry is so ingrained in our immigration laws that decoupling the racism from the law would require holding even basic immigration restrictions unconstitutional and essentially starting over.
Remarkably, that is precisely what US District Judge Miranda Du did this week. In a case called U.S. v. Carrillo-Lopez, the Nevada judge declared one of our most basic immigration statutes (Section 1326) an unconstitutional violation of equal protection rights.
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