The Role of the State Department in the Administration and Enforcement of the New Immigration Law

Abstract

The Secretary of State and, by delegated authority, the Administrator of the Bureau of Security and Consular Affairs in the Department of State are responsible for the administration and enforcement of the immigration laws as they relate to the issuance or denial of visas to applicants overseas. That responsibility is established in the 1952 Immigration Law (McCarran-Walter Act) and remains unchanged in the 1965 Immigration Law. The major changes in the 1965 Law require the issuance of visas to persons in newly defined preference categories, each within specified ceilings applied on a hemispheric basis, and within a limitation of 20,000 to all applicants, preference and nonpreference, from any one foreign state. These and other changes required the State Department to establish new controls to comply with the new law. The controls are enforced through the State Department's Visa Office in Washington which is the backstop and link with the consuls abroad who actually issue the visas. While the major accomplishment of the new law is the removal of the discriminatory national-origins quota system, unrelated provisions have caused unanticipated difficulties which the Congress will be required to examine if injustices are to be avoided, particularly to applicants in the nonpreference category.