An excellent, research-heavy opinion piece at The Hill mentions that the Supreme Court will soon make a ruling that has a chance to positively impact the US visa system. The case, State Department v. Muñoz, centers around the fact that the power to deny a visa request is concentrated in the hands of a very small number of government officials, and is deeply opaque. Visa requests can be denied by government officials for essentially any reason and with no explanation or chance for appeal. The article makes a compelling argument that the reason for this is very simple: racism.
There is too much to even summarize well here, but the article argues that the current visa system was put in place to deny what government officials in the 1920s considered the ‘wrong kind of people’ from entering the US. “After all, who better to judge individuals abroad than the predominantly white, Protestant U.S. diplomats overseas, who, most notoriously, directed consular officers to bar Jewish refugees despite the rise of Hitler?”
(Taken from an email sent to me by Never Again Action.)