Opinion ID: 708223
Heading Depth: 6
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Aliens in the United States Enjoy Full First Amendment Rights

Text: 68 The Supreme Court has consistently distinguished between aliens in the United States and those seeking to enter from outside the country, and has accorded to aliens living in the United States those protections of the Bill of Rights that are not, by the text of the Constitution, restricted to citizens. Kwong Hai Chew v. Colding, 344 U.S. 590, 596 n. 5, 73 S.Ct. 472, 477 n. 5, 97 L.Ed. 576 (1953). Accordingly, the Court has explicitly stated that [f]reedom of speech and of press is accorded aliens residing in this country. Bridges v. Wixon, 326 U.S. 135, 148, 65 S.Ct. 1443, 1449, 89 L.Ed. 2103 (1945); see also United States v. Verdugo-Urquidez, 494 U.S. 259, 271, 110 S.Ct. 1056, 1064, 108 L.Ed.2d 222 (1990); Kwong Hai Chew, 344 U.S. at 596-97 n. 5, 73 S.Ct. at 477-78 n. 5. None of these provisions acknowledges any distinction between citizens and resident aliens. They extend their inalienable privileges to all 'persons' and guard against any encroachment on those rights by federal or state authority. Bridges, 326 U.S. at 161, 65 S.Ct. at 1455 (Murphy, J., concurring), quoted in Kwong Hai Chew, 344 U.S. at 596-97 n. 5, 73 S.Ct. at 477-78 n. 5. 69 Furthermore, the values underlying the First Amendment require the full applicability of First Amendment rights to the deportation setting. Thus, read properly, Harisiades establishes that deportation grounds are to be judged by the same standard applied to other burdens on First Amendment rights. T. Alexander Aleinikoff, Federal Regulation of Aliens and the Constitution, 83 Am.J.Int'l L. 862, 869 (1989). 70 Because we are a nation founded by immigrants, this underlying principle is especially relevant to our attitude toward current immigrants who are a part of our community. See, e.g., Verdugo-Urquidez, 494 U.S. at 265, 110 S.Ct. at 1060 (recognizing that aliens with substantial ties through family and work form part of our national community). Aliens, who often have different cultures and languages, have been subjected to intolerant and harassing conduct in our past, particularly in times of crises. See, e.g., Alien Enemies Act of 1798, Act of June 25, 1798, ch. 58, 1 Stat. 570, 571 (authorizing the President to expel all such aliens as he shall judge dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States); John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism 1860-1925, 229-31 (2d ed. 1963) (describing the Palmer Raids of 1919-20). It is thus especially appropriate that the First Amendment principle of tolerance for different voices restrain our decisions to expel a participant in that community from our midst. See Bridges, 326 U.S. at 149, 65 S.Ct. at 1450 ([W]here the fate of a human being is at stake the presence of the evil purpose may not be left to conjecture.). 71