Court Opinion

ID: 9443215
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 19:14:15.569873+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:24.597517
License: Public Domain

L. HAND, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I believe that my brothers agree that Mezei, although he had been long lawfully resident in the United States, was not entitled, when he left in 1948, to reenter as an alien who had “temporarily departed”1; and that he was in precisely the same position as though this had been his first visit. United States ex rel. Polymeris v. Trudell, 284 U.S. 279, 52 S.Ct. 143, 76 L.Ed. 291. I assume that we also agree that his presence at Ellis Island did not change his legal situation from what it had been when the inspector excluded him on the ship; he had not “entered” the United States and the order before us is one of “exclusion” and not of “deportation.” Kaplan v. Tod, 267 U.S. 228, 45 S.Ct. 257, 69 L.Ed. 585 (incidentally that was a far harsher case than this). So much taken for granted, the only question is whether an alien, who comes to this country and is lawfully excluded, may secure a qualified admission because there is no country which will accept him, for I shall take it that that is true of Mezei.
I do not believe that an alien so situated can force us to admit him at all. Suppose, as I have just suggested, that the respondent had refused to let him leave the ship. I do not see what legal process Mezei could have invoked to get ashore before she left; nor do I see what theory supports the claim that, because we did not impose upon him this harsher 'alternative, but ex gratia> allowed him to land until his case was decided, we must grant him even a limited version of that entry which the statute denies him. For we must remember that the order does give him a privilege of entry which will endure as long as no other country will receive him. Moreover, althottgh that privilege is hedged about in various ways, he will be able nevertheless to mingle with the mass of *971citizens, and spread among them what I suppose we are to consider as the contagion of his 'baleful presence. Think what one miay of a statute based upon such fears, when passed by a society which professes to put its faith in the free interchange of ideas, a court has no warrant for refusing to enforce it. If that society chooses to flinch when its principles are put to the test, courts are not set up to give it derring-do.
No constitutional question can arise. An alien, who comes to our shores and the ship which bears him, take the chance that he. may not be allowed to land. If that chance turns against them, both know, or, if they do not, they are charged with knowledge, that, since the alien cannot land, he must find an asylum elsewhere; or, like the Flying Dutchman, forever sail the seas. When at his urgence we do let him go ashore— pendente lite so to say — we may give him whatever harborage we choose, until he finds shelter elsewhere if he can. Had Mezei never resided here, I wonder whether this would have been doubted, and, as I have said, we are forced to treat him as though he never had been a resident.

. § 213(b), Title 8 U.S.C.A.