Immigration and Nationality Act

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA; German: Immigration and Nationality Act ; also: McCarran-Walter Act ) is a US federal law from 1952, which the immigration to the United States regulates.

General

The INA restricts immigration to the USA and is codified under Title 8 of the United States Code . The law regulates US immigration and US citizenship . Before the INA came into force, there were already various statutes regulating immigration , but these were not organized within a single text corpus.

Background, history and provisions

The law is named after its initiators, Senator Pat McCarran from Nevada and Congressman Francis E. Walter from Pennsylvania , both members of the Democrats . President Harry S. Truman raised his veto against the bill, which he regarded as "un-American" and discriminatory. In the House of Representatives, however, it was adopted with 278-113 votes, in the Senate with 57-26 votes. The law was passed on June 11, 1952 without Truman's signature.

Racial restrictions that existed until then were abolished in the INA, but a quota system was maintained and the policy of restricting the number of immigrants from certain countries continued. The INA also stipulated which ethnic groups should be preferred for immigration. On the basis of the law, preference is generally given to applicants with special professional qualifications.

The INA defines three types of immigrants: 1. Relatives of American citizens who are exempt from the quota system and can enter without restrictions, 2. Other immigrants, the number of whom must not exceed 270,000 per year; 3. Refugees .

The law allows the government to expel immigrants or naturalized Americans who are involved in subversive activities , and prohibit anyone suspected of such activities from entering the United States. This provision was used until its abolition in 1990 to prevent members, former members and followers of the Communist Party from entering the USA. These included numerous prominent personalities such as the future Prime Minister of Canada Pierre Trudeau , the sociologist Tom B. Bottomore , the cultural scientist Ángel Rama , the philosopher Michel Foucault , the Nobel Prize laureates Gabriel García Márquez , Pablo Neruda and Carlos Fuentes as well as the writers Graham Greene , Doris Lessing , Dennis Brutus , Farley Mowat , Kobo Abe , Julio Cortázar , Mahmud Darwisch , Dario Fo and Jan Myrdal .

Individual parts of the INA are applicable law to this day; however, much of its provisions were overridden by the Immigration and Naturalization Services Act of 1965 .

Caused by the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 , the INA was fundamentally revised from March 2003, whereby provisions were included that allow people suspected of terrorism to enter the USA or to expel them from the USA. These revisions have received a lot of media and academic attention.

See also

Web links