The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 was passed by US Congress during the early Cold War era, a time of intense government crackdowns referred to as McCarthyism and the Second Red Scare, in response to fears over communist spies and Soviet infiltration of the US.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt cited the law following the arrest and detention of Palestinian activist and recent Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil, and it has been brought up on multiple other occasions to justify US President Donald Trump administration’s crackdown on foreigners.
What is this 73-year-old law?
At the time of its passage, it was a general law used to consolidate previous immigration laws and policies, including the denial of those who had engaged in “perverse” acts.
One of its notable aspects was to enact a quota system to “preserve the sociological and cultural balance of the United States” that favoured European immigrants. It expanded the acceptance of European immigrants to include those from eastern and southern Europe, though by that point far fewer Europeans were interested in immigrating to the US.
The law also abolished multiple racial barriers, which included the reversal of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.
However, major civil rights reform to US immigration would not take place until the mid-1960s. Among the law's most controversial aspects was denying people entry based on their political beliefs, which wouldn’t be changed until 1988.
Who did this law target?
Given its time period at the beginning of the Cold War, the 1952 Immigration Act ended up targeting academics, activists, or anyone deemed to have communist sympathies.
Among those that the law has excluded from the US due to their political convictions were: Palestinian writer Mahmoud Darwish, French writer Michel Foucault, Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Pierre Trudeau (before becoming prime minister of Canada).
What are the lingering effects of the law?
At the time, some progressive Democrats voiced serious concerns about the Immigration Act, due to its reversal of due process for immigrant deportation. Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota warned that the law would be the beginning of a police state.
Exclusionary immigration and deportation policies have remained in place, even as laws have been amended over the years. With the Real ID Act of 2005 (under former President Barack Obama), a legal resident can be deported for a range of terrorist affiliations and endorsements, whereas before they could only be deported for terrorist activities.
This law also affects citizens, who will soon have to carry a "real ID" for domestic travel, which some news reports are referring to as an internal passport.
The act's humanitarian parole provision has allowed the US to admit citizens from certain countries for humanitarian reasons. Most recently, this has been under former President Joe Biden for Afghanistan, Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Ukraine and Venezuela.
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