Executive Authority to Exclude Aliens: In Brief

"The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) provides that individual aliens outside the United States are “inadmissible”—or barred from admission to the country—on health, criminal, security, and other grounds set forth in the INA. However, the INA also grants the Executive several broader authorities that could be used to exclude certain individual aliens or classes of aliens for reasons that are not specifically prescribed in the INA.

Section 212(f) of the INA is arguably the broadest and best known of these authorities. It provides, in relevant part, that:
    Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate..."

Executive Authority and aliens

Executive Discretion as to Immigration: Legal Overview

"President Obama announced in June 2014 that he would seek “to fix as much of our immigration

system as I can on my own” through administrative action. Although the Obama Administration has not yet announced the specific immigration actions it intends to take, the President has stated that they will occur before the end of the year. It seems likely that such actions will prompt heated legal debate concerning the scope of the Executive’s discretionary authority over immigration matters, including with respect to the enforcement of immigration-related sanctions and the granting of immigration benefits or privileges. Such debate may be similar to that which followed the 2012 launch of the executive initiative commonly known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), under which certain unlawfully present aliens who were brought to the United States as children may be granted “deferred action” (a type of relief from removal) and work

authorization. While some have argued that DACA constitutes an abdication of the Executive’s duty to enforce the laws and runs afoul of specific requirements found in the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), others have argued that the initiative is a lawful exercise of the discretionary authority conferred on the Executive by the Constitution and federal statute..."

Executive discretion and immigration