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Page Number: 44

12 

UNITED STATES v. HANSEN 

JACKSON, J., dissenting 

fails to support this connection—tenuous on its face—with 
any evidence that Congress actually consulted our 1947 de-
cision when it drafted the 1952 amendments, or anything 
else that might establish the primary significance that the 
majority ascribes to our decision’s phrasing. 
  The majority similarly characterizes Congress’s decision 
to remove the intent requirement from the statute in 1986 
as “a further effort to streamline” the encouragement pro-
vision.  Ante, at 16.  In other words, the Court today holds 
that  Congress’s  removal  of “willfully  or  knowingly”  in  the 
1986 amendments did not change the mens rea required to 
violate this statute.  But the majority offers no support at 
all  for  its  view  that  Congress  didn’t  really  mean  for  the 
amendment  to  effect  any  substantive  change.    Instead,  it 
conjures  up  its  own  “simple  explanation”:  There  was  “no 
need” for an explicit mens rea because “encourage” and “in-
duce”  carry  the  mens  rea  associated  with  solicitation  and 
facilitation.  Ante, at 15; see also ante, at 14 (reasoning that 
Congress’s use of “encourages” and “induces” brought along 
the “old soil” of “the traditional intent associated with solic-
itation  and  facilitation”  (internal  quotation  marks  omit-
ted)).  Of course, this argument merely assumes that Con-
gress intended for “encourage” and “induce” as they appear 
in the encouragement provision to mean “solicit” and “facil-
itate”;  it  is  a  repackaging  of  the  majority’s  unwarranted 
conflation of those terms.  See Part II–A, supra. 
  The majority also invokes the presumption that a crimi-
nal  law  contains  an  intent  requirement  even  where  Con-
gress does not explicitly include one.  Ante, at 15–16.  But, 
here,  the statutory  history  undermines  that  presumption.  
Congress most certainly focused on the mens rea question 
because  it  not  only  decided  to  remove  “willfully  or  know-
ingly” from the statute, it did so while inserting a separate 
mens rea requirement for the knowledge of the noncitizen’s 
immigration status.  The confluence of these choices implies