Trump barring even legal US residents if they are from Muslim lands

Huffington Post - People holding so-called green cards, making them legal permanent U.S. residents, are included in President Donald Trump’s executive action temporarily barring people from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States, a Department of Homeland security spokeswoman said on Saturday. “It will bar green card holders,” Gillian Christensen, acting Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman, said in an email.

Guardian - Writing for the New York Times, David J Bier, an analyst at the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity, says that more than 50 years ago, Congress outlawed such discrimination against immigrants based on national origin.

The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 banned all discrimination against immigrants on the basis of national origin, Bier writes.

The act was drawn up in response to laws creating a so-called Asiatic Barred Zone, banning immigration from China, Japan and other Asian countries.

Trump points to a 1952 law allowing the president the ability to “suspend the entry” of “any class of aliens”, says Bier, but this ignores restrictions placed by Congress in 1965, stating no person could be “discriminated against in the issuance of an immigrant visa because of the person’s race, sex, nationality, place of birth or place of residence”.

While presidents have used their power dozens of times to keep out certain groups of foreigners under the 1952 law, no president has ever barred an entire nationality of immigrants, says Bier.