Sioux Falls, SD (KELO AM) - To find where the USA's immigration struggles begin, you need to go way back - to 1792.
That's according to Henry Evans, a Sioux Falls immigration lawyer who sounded off on the issue to KELO Radio's Greg Belfrage on Thursday. He took listeners through a crash course in the United States' history with immigration, including the very first immigration act of 1792 which established the requirement that anyone applying to become a citizen must wait five years.
Evans went on to talk about various other immigration laws and how they affected people applying for citizenship. Including those put in place by the Clinton administration in 1996, which were some of the toughest in recent memory, up to the executive orders signed by President Trump last week.
LISTEN: Henry Evans with KELO Radio's Greg Belfrage
He went on to explain the difference between an immigrant and a refugee. "These are stateless people. The United Nations has reorganized these refugees, placed them into a camp, done background checks on them, which can take a year to three years" from there the refugees await orders as to where they will end up, a process that can ultimately see entire families spread across the globe.
The complications in Trump's recent order comes with those refugees that have already been checked out and cleared over the course of two years and are ready to come to the United States. "[Thy're] on the plane, and the President says he we're going to take a time out on that for 90 days. We just want to double check again."
Adding to all that confusion was ambiguity in Trump's order over who to detain and for what reason. "You don't want to mess up the new President's order. It created a lot of chaos because they don't know how to do it and you'd rather err on the side of 'hey we did it'"
And while no one knows what will happen after Trump's orders have passed, if previous administrations tell us anything we may not be done with the laws. "The thing about executive orders for immigration, is that they usually become the future immigration law," said Evans
