US Supreme Court finds citizens lack right to have non-citizen spouses allowed into country
Matthew Farrell | U. Toronto Faculty of Law, CA
JUNE 21, 2024 01:26:39 PM
The US Supreme Court ruled on Friday that citizens do not have a right to have their non-citizen spouses allowed into the country. Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote for a 6-3 majority that “a citizen does not have a fundamental liberty interest in her noncitizen spouse being admitted to the country” after a US citizen was unable to secure an immigrant visa for her Salvadoran husband.
The case of Department of State et al. v. Muñoz et al. concerned Sandra Muñoz, a US citizen. She attempted to obtain an immigrant visa for her husband, Salvadoran citizen Luis Asencio-Cordero, who had lived in the US for several years. The application was denied based on 8 U.S.C. §1182(a)(3)(A)(ii), which makes a non-citizen inadmissible if the US State Department believes on reasonable grounds that the individual is entering solely to engage in “unlawful activity.” However, this reasoning was only provided after a protracted legal battle.
Typically, migration decisions are non-reviewable under the doctrine of consular non-reviewability. However, Muñoz found success in the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit by arguing that she had a constitutionally protected interest in her husband’s visa application. This would mean that the doctrine of consular non-reviewability does not apply since the immigration decision concerned a constitutionally protected right. Hence, she argued, the State Department’s failure to provide reasons for their denial in a timely manner was reviewable.
https://www.jurist.org/news/2024/06/us-supreme-court-finds-citizens-lack-right-to-have-non-citizen-spouses-allowed-into-country/
