Stateless

With President Trump ending DACA, some portion of 2 million Dreamers could be stateless—that is, if places such as Mexico bar entry to them.

My mentor, Prof. Gene Gressman, was Special Counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives in a key 1983 Supreme Court case, I.N.S. v. Chadha.

A bit like today’s dreamers, Jagdish Rai Chadha was born in The British Empire's colony in Kenya to Indian parents. Chadha came to the U.S. as a university student in the late 1960s.

At the time of his birth, he was a UK citizen. He entered the U.S. on a British passport.

After Kenya's declaration of independence from Britain in 1963 he was not recognized as a legitimate citizen or resident of Kenya.

India did not recognize him as a citizen because he was born in Kenya.

Britain stripped all people born in Kenya of citizenship.

That left Chadha with no country—save, perhaps the U.S.

After his student visa expired, the U.S. moved to deport him. He appealed his order. The INS, under the president’s direction, relented. The House of Representatives was upset by this: Where, in the law, was he permitted to stay in the U.S.? It was a decision for Congress to make, not the president.

Why did Prof. Gressman argue that the stateless man should be removed? Isn’t that heartless?

Prof. Gressman had a profound mistrust of the presidency as that branch of government administers immigration law. He was a clerk on the Supreme Court when President Roosevelt issued an Executive Order to put 117,000 Japanese resident aliens and Japanese Americans in internment camps.

He wanted to make sure that Congress never loses its constitutional role in shaping and implementing immigration law.

Prof. Gressman—and the House of Representatives—lost that big case. Mr. Chadha stayed in the U.S. Prof. Gressman was thrilled for him. 
But the loss amounted a big win for presidential power to run our immigration laws without checks and balances.
Prof. Gressman rued the day that a future president would take immigration law into his own hand, without authority from Congress. Having watched Roosevelt enact a deeply racist immigration policy by fiat, he thought that day would come again. Checks and balances were essential to halt the march of racism and nativism—then and now.