The entire premise of this case is among the most absurd lawsuits ever brought in court for a number of reasons:

1. For decades upon decades, the courts have been clear that the right to exclude is plenary and entirely the political branches’ prerogative. The courts have no power to second-guess any decision– and that is settled law.

2. No less than seven federal statutes grant the president full power to bar entry to aliens, even those who have already received visas. In fact, one of the laws, 8 U.S. Code §1201(h)(i), which passed the Senate 96-2 in 2004, explicitly stripped the courts of any jurisdiction to adjudicate the revocation of visas for anyone seeking entry into the country.

3. A foreign national has no legitimate standing to challenge federal immigration laws or national sovereignty.

4. Shockingly, the other plaintiffs in the lawsuit challenging the travel ban are refugee resettlement contractors who were given standing to sue on the grounds that they are supposedly entitled to taxpayer funding and that a refugee moratorium would hurt their business!

5. Even if foreign nationals could obtain standing through U.S. relatives, this case is not ripe because it assails the president’s policies on future immigration. Thus there is no valid case or controversy with injury-in-fact.

6. The notion that a district judge could issue a nationwide injunction outside the specific case before him/her which sets a national immigration policy is bonkers.

7. The district judge used political statements as the foundation of his legal argument, which should scare anyone who thinks upholding jurisprudential standards, where judicial decisions are based in law, is important.

8. The entire premise that the Establishment Clause grants foreign nationals a religious liberty right to immigrate (but it supposedly doesn’t grant conscience and property rights to actual Americans citizens of faith) is preposterous. Nor is there any Equal Protection or Due Process right. As the Supreme Court said in Ju Toy v. United States (1905):

“That Congress may exclude aliens of a particular race
from the United States, prescribe the terms and
conditions upon which certain classes of aliens may
come to this country, establish regulations for sending
out of the country such aliens as come here in
violation of law, and commit the enforcement of such
provisions, conditions, and regulations exclusively to
executive officers, without judicial intervention are
principles firmly established by the decisions of this
Court.”

Two years prior, in the “Japanese Immigrant Case”, the court used the exact same language and declared that, based on an uninterrupted stream of near-unanimous decisions, the constitutionality of such an exclusion “is no longer open to discussion in this Court.”

9. Even if we agreed to this absurd and dangerous premise that there are anti-discrimination limitations on national sovereignty, a premise these current district courts have apparently accepted as gospel, there is no discrimination here. The moratorium on refugees is applied equally to every nation, and the six countries targeted for suspension of visas are enemy or failed states. The largest Muslim nations are not even on the list.

10. In addition to being covered and even mandated by statute, the right to exclude is inherent in the president’s Article II powers. Don’t believe me? Ask the Supreme Court (Knauff v. Shaughnessy, 1950):

“When Congress prescribes a procedure concerning the
admissibility of aliens, it is not dealing alone with a
legislative power. It is implementing an inherent
executive power.

Thus, the decision to admit or to exclude an alien may
be lawfully placed with the president, who may, in
turn, delegate the carrying out of this function to a
responsible executive officer of the sovereign, such as
the Attorney General. The action of the executive
officer under such authority is final and conclusive.
Whatever the rule may be concerning deportation of
persons who have already gained entry into the United
States, it is not within the province of any court,
unless expressly authorized by law, to review the
determination of the political branch of the Government
to exclude a given alien.”