The President and Immigration Law

Abstract

This book challenges the myth that Congress—not the President—controls immigration law, dictating who may come to the United States, and who may stay, in a detailed and comprehensive legislative code. Drawing on a wide range of sources—rich historical materials, unique data on immigration enforcement, and insider accounts of the nation’s massive immigration bureaucracy—it reveals how the President has become our immigration policymaker-in-chief over the course of two centuries. From founding-era debates over the Alien and Sedition Acts, to Jimmy Carter’s intervention during the Mariel boatlift from Cuba, to the last two administrations’ reactions to Central American asylum seekers at the southern border, presidential crisis management has played an important role in this story. Far more foundational, however, has been the ordinary executive obligation to enforce the law. Over time, the power born of that duty has become the central vehicle for making immigration policy in the United States. In grappling with the implications of this power, the book also provides a blueprint for reform, one that accepts rather than laments the role the President plays in shaping the national community, while outlining strategies to curb the abuse of law enforcement authority in immigration and beyond.