Law: Placing a Lock on the Borders

• Share

Margaret Randall has spent much of her life traveling. Her journeys as a writer, oral historian and left-wing activist have taken her to Mexico, North Viet Nam, Nicaragua and Cuba. Today she has settled in at the University of New Mexico as a teacher of American and women's studies. But if the Immigration and Naturalization Service has its way, she may have a bit more traveling to do.

In 1966, while living in Mexico and married to a Mexican national, Randall, now 50, relinquished her American citizenship. She says she believed at the time that she needed Mexican citizenship to find work. In January 1984 Randall, by then divorced, returned on a visa to the U.S. and married an American, from whom she is now separated. In October 1985 an INS official in El Paso rejected her application for permanent resident alien status. Ordinarily, Randall would be eligible to remain because her parents and two of her four children are U.S. citizens. But the immigration official decided that she had to leave. The reason: "Her writings go far beyond mere dissent, disagreement with, or criticism of the U.S. or its policies."

Ten months later, when an immigration judge ruled on Randall's case, he also found her excludable. Like Mexican Novelist Carlos Fuentes and Japanese Novelist Kobo Abe, Randall had fallen afoul of the McCarran-Walter Act, a McCarthy-era law best known for its three provisions that bar entry to the U.S. for Communists and subversives, including anyone deemed to have advocated Communist ideas. Although the Government regularly grants waivers, critics say the law is still used to exclude those who merely hold unpopular ideas or who question U.S. foreign policy. Says Burt Neuborne, a New York University law professor: "McCarran-Walter creates a terrible temptation for anyone who is in power."

Now that law is under courtroom attack. One front is in the U.S. Supreme Court. It decided last week that it would review the decision of a Washington appellate panel that last March rejected the Government's assertion of a virtually unfettered right to bar several foreign visitors, including Nicaragua's Interior Minister Tomas Borge Martinez and former Italian General Nino Pasti. In the meantime, Randall remains in the U.S. while preparing to make her case before an immigration appeals board. But in a federal lawsuit she is pressing a separate challenge to McCarran-Walter itself. Her suit has been joined by PEN American Center, a writers' advocacy group, and eight prominent American authors, including Novelists Norman Mailer, Kurt Vonnegut and Alice Walker and Playwright Arthur Miller.