Trumps ban on Muslims might survive a court challenge Charles Savage, NY Times.

While I wouldn't have expected it from the times, this is a fairly balanced article which matches my memory and cursory research on the matter today.

The US Constitution gives all power over immigration and Visas to Congress, Congress has delegated sufficient discretion to the President to make President Trump capable, on his first hour in office to impose such a ban.

There is an international treaty which would not permit such a ban, but Congress never ratified it and made it national law, therefore it is irrelevant.

There are sufficient historical pronouncements by the Supreme Court to make it established law that the President has this power.  Similarly, acts of comparable severity, like the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 prohibiting any Chinese immigration to the States (1898 US v Wong Kim Ark) makes it difficult to see why the Courts would not upheld it.  These repressive laws were extended until the early 1900 and were not repealed until WWII.  Only in the late 60s and 70s did ethnic Chinese arrive in the States in quantity.

Significant events in 20th Century:

1. "In 1932 President Roosevelt and the State Department essentially shut down immigration during the Great Depression as immigration went from 236,000 in 1929 to 23,000 in 1933. This was accompanied by voluntary repatriation to Europe and Mexico, and coerced repatriation and deportation of between 500,000 and 2 million Mexican Americans, mostly citizens, in the Mexican Repatriation. Total immigration in the decade of 1931 to 1940 was 528,000 averaging less than 53,000 a year."
2. "The Immigration and Nationality Act Amendments of 1965 (the Hart-Celler Act) abolished.." national quotas and circumscribed Eastern block countries to miniscule immigration quotas. Ted Kennedy created the bill in question
3. In the 80s we set refugee targets to 50K per year, and immigration to 270K. We added penalties to employers using illegal (which were largely ignored) and accepted 3M illegal.
4. "The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) and Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) vastly increased the categories of criminal activity for which immigrants, including green card holders, can be deported and imposed mandatory detention for certain types of deportation cases. As a result, well over 2 million individuals have been deported since 1996.^[7]"
5. Although a lot of bills have been proposed, some passed one house or the other, no major Immigration bill has been brought forth by Congress for Presidential signature.

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TRUMP

So Trump is fairly mainstream in his proposal, although typically too straight forward and not Politically correct for the establishment the media, or the administration.

The screaming and tearing of hair we see are from those who despair of beating him in the polls, and seek of something that will lower the esteem his followers have for him.

While I still don't support him, I am tempted by the contempt I feel for those who instead of discussing the merits of his proposal insist in dissecting words, ascribing evil intent and besmirching his character.  It is almost too delicious not to join him in his contempt for the ruling Republican, Democratic, and Media classes.