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President Trump’s liberal use of Section 212(f) if the Immigration and Nationality Act to exclude Muslims and Asians during his presidency fits within a deeper history of how rhetoric of public health, national security, and the use of emergency powers have been coupled with racialized fear to serve a xenophobic and nationalist agenda.  The modern use of 212(f) is a part of a historic legacy of immigration exclusion against Asians, which include the Page Act, Chinese Exclusion, and Japanese internment.  Trump v. Hawaii, which affirms the executive's broad discretionary power under 212(f), perpetuates this legacy by paving the way to even more expansive use of 212(f), which was seized upon by the Trump administration.  Though the presidential proclamations were advertised as necessary emergency responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, they nevertheless harbored racist and nationalist animus as the principal motivators and were actually intended to limit foreign competition for jobs in the United States and to curtail immigration generally.  Thus, the expansive reading of 212(f) in Trump v. Hawaii allows the executive to evoke the rhetoric of national security to sidestep the statutory framework that Congress provided for lawful immigration, which creates a dangerous override of the separation of powers.

This event will be hosted live on February 16, 2023 at 12 PM noon at the UNLV Boyd law school. You can find the registration link here: https://law.unlv.edu/events/cle-immigration-national-security-and-anti-asian-hate. This event is free to attend, so please register and invite your friends and colleagues.