Destigmatizing Disability in the Law of Immigration Admissions

Ever since the federal government began comprehensively regulating immigration in the late nineteenth century, noncitizens with traits associated with disability have faced more legal barriers to immigration than noncitizens without disabilities. Federal laws excluding noncitizens on the basis of vague, health-related criteria have existed since 1882. In the early twentieth century, the US Public Health Service instructed medical inspectors to search for evidence of conditions such as bunions, flat feet, hernia, hysteria, poor eyesight, psychoses of various kinds, spinal curvature, and varicose veins.