The Shortsightedness of Trump v. Hawaii

What I found most absurd in Chief Justice John Roberts’ majority opinion in Trump v. Hawaii (the Supreme Court case that upheld the White House’s most recent Muslim travel ban) wasn’t the predictable, blind-eyed endorsement of xenophobia, nor was it the gag-inducing praise of Trump’s communication skills and subsequent dismissal of reasonable contentions against the ban by the state of Hawaii, nor was it the lunatic reasoning that it wasn’t the Court’s place to determine the potential national security consequences—which it isn’t, but still contradicts the notion of ruling on the basis of rationality. Rather, what stood out to me was Roberts’ response to the second of two contentions by the state of Hawaii challenging the travel ban under the grounds of violating federal immigration laws, specifically 8 USC 1152(a)(1)(A), which former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates notably mentioned in her testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee last year, providing that “no person shall receive any preference or priority or be discriminated against in the issuance of an immigrant visa because of the person's race, sex, nationality, place of birth, or place of reside