AILA Et Al.: End Ideological Exclusion Now!

The exclusion of politically undesirable immigrants has long been part of U.S. immigration law and enforcement, with highwater marks in exclusuions coming during the Red Scare after WW I and the McCarthy era.  Congress eliminated the express authorization for ideological exclusion in 1990.  Nonetheless, some critiics have claimed that politically-motivated exclusions and removals have occurred since then — and increased in the last eight years.

Marcia Coyle of the National Law Journal reports that the “American Immigration Lawyers Association, the Society of American Law Teachers, the Constitution Project, the Bill of Rights Defense Committee and more than 70 other legal, civil rights and human rights organizations are urging the Obama administration to end the practice of `ideological exclusion,’ under which foreign scholars, artists, and activists have been denied visas on the basis of their ideas, political views and associations.”

 In a letter to the Attorney General and the secretaries of the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security, the groups contended said that the U.S. governent “had revived the practice of `ideological exclusion’ during the past eight years. As a result, they wrote, dozens of prominent intellectuals were barred from assuming teaching posts at U.S. universities, fulfilling speaking engagements with U.S. audiences or attending academic conferences. Many of those barred were critics of U.S. foreign policy.”

KJ