Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952

The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) of 1952 (Also known as the McCarran-Walter Act) restricted immigration into the U.S. and is codified under Title 8 of the United States Code. The Act governs primarily immigration and citizenship in the United States. Before the INA, a variety of statutes governed immigration law but were not organized within one body of text. As a result of the September 11, 2001 attacks, the INA has undergone a major restructuring beginning in March 2003 and its provisions regarding the admissibility and removability of terrorist suspects has received much media and scholarly attention.

Background

The bill was named after the bill's sponsors: Senator Pat McCarran, (D-Nevada) and Congressman Francis Walter. (D-Pennsylvania)

Racial restrictions which previously existed were abolished in the INA, but a quota system was retained and the policy of restricting the numbers of immigrants from certain countries was continued. Eventually, the INA established a preference system which selected which ethnic groups were desirable immigrants and placed great importance on labor qualifications.

The INA defined three types of immigrants: 1. relatives of US citizens who were exempt from quotas and who were to be admitted without restrictions; 2. average immigrants whose numbers were not supposed to exceed 270,000 per year; 3. refugees.

The Act allowed the government to deport immigrants or naturalized citizens engaged in subversive activities and also allowed the barring of suspected subversives from entering the country. It was used over the years to bar members and former members and "fellow travellers" of the Communist Party from entry into the United States, even those who had not been associated with the party for decades.

The Act had been used to exclude numerous prominent individuals until its ideological clauses were repealed in 1990. These include British sociologist Tom Bottomore, Argentine novelist Julio Cortazar, Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, Italian playwright Dario Fo, Colombian novelist and Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez, Chilean poet and Nobel Laureate Pablo Neruda, Uruguayan scholar Angel Rama, philosopher Michel Foucault (France), and authors Graham Greene (Great Britain), Doris Lessing (Great Britain), Dennis Brutus (South Africa), Farley Mowat (Canada), Kobo Abe (Japan), Nobel Laureate Carlos Fuentes (Mexico), and Jan Myrdal (Sweden)[1], as well as Pierre Trudeau prior to becoming Prime Minister of Canada .

Commentary

"Today, we are protecting ourselves as we were in 1924, against being flooded by immigrants from Eastern Europe. This is fantastic...We do not need to be protected against immigrants from these countries on the contrary we want to stretch out a helping hand, to save those who have managed to flee into Western Europe, to succor those who are brave enough to escape from barbarism, to welcome and restore them against the day when their countries will, as we hope, be free again...these are only a few examples of the absurdity, the cruelty of carrying over into this year of 1952 the isolationist limitations of our 1924 law. In no other realm of our national life are we so hampered and stultified by the dead hand of the past, as we are in this field of immigration." -President Harry Truman's veto message.

"I believe that this nation is the last hope of Western civilization and if this oasis of the world shall be overrun, perverted, contaminated or destroyed, then the last flickering light of humanity will be extinguished. I take no issue with those who would praise the contributions which have been made to our society by people of many races, of varied creeds and colors. America is indeed a joining together of many streams which go to form a mighty river which we call the American way. However, we have in the United States today hard-core, indigestible blocs which have not become integrated into the American way of life, but which, on the contrary are its deadly enemies. Today, as never before, untold millions are storming our gates for admission and those gates are cracking under the strain. The solution of the problems of Europe and Asia will not come through a transplanting of those problems en masse to the United States.... I do not intend to become prophetic, but if the enemies of this legislation succeed in riddling it to pieces, or in amending it beyond recognition, they will have contributed more to promote this nation's downfall than any other group since we achieved our independence as a nation." (Senator Pat McCarran, Cong. Rec., March 2, 1953, p. 1518.)

Passage

Truman vetoed the McCarran-Walter Act because he regarded the bill as "un-American" and discriminatory. Truman's veto was overidden by a vote of 278 to 113 in the House, and 57 to 26 in the Senate. Parts of the McCarran-Walter act remain in place today but much of it was overturned by the Immigration and Nationality Services Act of 1965.

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