Essay On Immigration Power

The Plenary Power Doctrine was a Supreme Court ruling created to make who can decide cases about immigration and immigration policy easier than before. According to the doctrine, Congress has complete control and power over immigration. It has been noted that immigration policies and laws have sort of iffy because it is one sector of policy in which courts all of the nation use judicial restraint by letting Congress do what it wants since they tend to have control over these policies. There are also interest groups on immigration that are worrisome that the US will expand the role of the courts regarding the policymaking by ruling that immigrants have constitutional rights when challenging their removal from the country and/or cannot be subject
to detention in prisons or facilities regarding deportation or removal of the country. The interest groups, however, do want that Congress be more clear and specific in their laws regarding immigration, such as who should be deported and for the executive branch to strictly enforce these policies. There has been controversy in what the constitution does have to say about giving Congress plenary power. Some have stated that Art. 1, Sec. 8 states that they should have complete control of naturalization, others have stated that it should be read and interpreted more broadly, stating that naturalization could be what the Founding Fathers were also referring to immigration. Legislative Delegation has been seen more frequent as Congress has been giving more and more power to the president regarding immigration (think President Trump’s recent immigration executive order).
The legislative branch enacted all laws such as the Alien and Sedition Acts, the Alien Friends Act, and the Visa Waiver Pilot Program. The Visa Waiver Pilot Program, especially, gives the president lots of power in deciding which individuals from certain countries can come to the US without visas. There have been major changes in immigration statutes and policies. In the nineteenth century, immigration was seen as a city issue, such as in San Francisco and Boston; there wasn’t a comprehensive national immigration statute until the late nineteenth century (the 1875 Page Law, the Immigration Act of 1882, and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882). These laws were the beginning of Congress’ power to deal with immigration issues as they used them to classify and sort people of certain ethnicities and races. Towards the early twentieth century, the US saw influx in immigrants, especially from Eastern and Southern Europe. This caused fear among the citizens due to all the different people coming in and how it might threat Americanism; due to this fear, Congress began immigration
control. During former President Roosevelt’s time, many statutes were enacted regarding immigration control – the Expatriation Act of 1907 (requiring US citizen women to give up their nationality and take their spouse’s if they were a foreigner), and the Dillingham Commission (commission to study how immigration effects American society) are some examples. After World War II, a major statute was enacted that changed how immigration was considered in the US; the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 ended the assumptions of certain immigrant groups being more or less favorable depending on where they came from.