Ian Millhiser: Justice Scalia Cites Pro-Slavery Laws Excluding ‘Freed Blacks’ To Justify His Anti-Immigrant Opinion
Ian Millhiser is a Senior Constitutional Policy Analyst at the Center for American Progress Action Fund and the Editor of ThinkProgress Justice. He received a B.A. in Philosophy from Kenyon College and a J.D., magna cum laude, from Duke University.
As ThinkProgress reported yesterday, conservative Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissenting opinion claiming that Arizona’s entire harsh immigration law should be upheld sacrifices both factual and mathematical accuracy in order to attack one of the Obama Administrations recently announced policies. Perhaps the oddest part of Scalia’s dissent, however, is the fact that he actually relied on pro-slavery laws excluding free persons of African descent from much of the south to justify allowing Arizona to target undocumented immigrants:
Notwithstanding “[t]he myth of an era of unrestricted immigration” in the first 100 years of the Republic, the States enacted numerous laws restricting the immigration of certain classes of aliens, including convicted criminals, indigents, persons with contagious diseases, and (in Southern States) freed blacks. State laws not only provided for the removal of unwanted immigrants but also imposed penalties on unlawfully present aliens and those who aided their immigration....