Deportation

Deportation, enforced removal of an alien from a country in which he or she is a resident to the country of his or her origin. Technically, deportation is distinguished from exclusion, which is a denial of entry into a country; in common speech, however, the latter term is sometimes used to mean the former. Deportation is also distinguished from banishment and exile, two forms of punishment for crimes by citizens, usually imposed on political offenders and entailing an enforced absence from a city, place, or country; and transportation, a penalty imposed on criminals and involving imprisonment or other forms of loss of liberty, in a distant place, usually outside the country.

Until modern times, deportation was used as an occasional means of ridding a community of undesirable aliens, the grounds for removal being mostly political. A number of statutes of this character were enacted from 1793 to 1826 by the British Parliament, to remove and exclude from Britain alien supporters of the French Revolution. Partly similar in character were the Alien and Sedition Acts, enacted by the United States Congress in 1798, which empowered the president to arrest and deport any alien he considered dangerous.

In later times in the U.S., as in the rest of the world generally, deportation became an instrument of national policy, closely associated with immigration policies and varying with political events and economic developments. To prevent an excess of cheap labor, Congress in 1882 enacted the Chinese Exclusion Act, designed to exclude Chinese immigrants from the U.S. and to provide for the deportation of those adjudged illegally resident in the country.

Current U.S. policy, however, may be said to have begun with a congressional enactment in 1891. That legislation provided for a time limit on deportation of one year after an alien's entry into the U.S. and for the deportation within that time of aliens who for certain causes became public charges; established administrative procedure as the means effecting deportation; greatly restricted judicial review of deportation proceedings; and created the office of superintendent of immigration in the Department of the Treasury to administer the deportation laws. This function is now in the Immigration and Naturalization Service of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Later, as the need in the U.S. for immigrant workers began to decline, legislation reflected a growing antipathy toward aliens, who came to be regarded as a cause of unemployment of U.S. workers. The categories of deportable aliens were increased to include convicts, persons likely to become public charges, contract laborers, illiterates, feeble-minded persons, diseased persons, epileptics, procurers, prostitutes, persons entering the country illegally in excess of the immigration quotas, anarchists, and persons professing a belief in or membership in an organization advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government by force and violence. The time limit after entry, during which the government may resort to deportation, was extended; according to the cause it was made three to five years, and, in the case of criminals and anarchists, the limit was removed.

Until World War I, deportation for anarchist beliefs, made a cause for expulsion from the country in 1903, occurred occasionally. Following the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917, new legislation, enacted by Congress between 1917 and 1920 in an effort to combat the introduction of Communist beliefs and tactics, extended the political basis for exclusion and deportation to include many radical beliefs. Subsequently thousands of aliens were arrested and deported.

The deportation laws were invoked in the 1950s against a number of persons, including several union leaders, who were alleged to be members of the Communist Party and to have entered the country illegally. In addition, deportation orders were obtained against aliens who at one time allegedly had been members of the Communist Party although they had later terminated their membership. During the late 1980s approximately 23,000 aliens were deported annually from the United States.