Where treaties have been concluded with for eign countries, allowing their citizens or sub jects to hold land in the United States the Su preme Court has uniformly held that the treaty right is paramount to any State law to the con trary, notwithstanding the general right of the States, under their reserved powers, to regulate the ownership and disposition of property with in their limit (Chirac v. Chirac, 2 Wheat. 249). There is, however, doubt as to how far the States may go in forbidding the employ ment of alien labor when their legislation con flicts with a treaty between the United States and the country of which the alien affected is a subject. But it has recently been held by the Court of Appeals of New York that a statute of New York forbidding the employment of aliens on the public works of the State was contrary to a treaty between the United States and Italy, providing that Italian subjects re siding in the United States should enjoy the same rights and privileges as citizens of the United States, and was, therefore, null and void so far as it affected Italian laborers. The case is now (1917) before the Supreme Court of the United States for final determination. Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Arizona, Wyoming, Idaho and California have similar laws on their statute books. The ques tion whether a State may prohibit or restrict the employment of aliens in private as well as public work was definitely disposed of by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1915. The legislature of Arizona had passed an act forbidding the employment in any work, pub lic or private, of more than 20 per cent of alien labor. The governments of Great Britain and Italy protested that the statute was in con travention of treaties with the United States and the Supreme Court so held and declared the statute null and void.
The sovereign right of every government to prohibit or restrict the admission of aliens to its territory, so far as it is not contrary to treaty stipulations, is well established. As is
well known, the United States has exercised the power of total exclusion in the case of the Chinese and of various classes on the ground of the public safety, health or morals, and has imposed severe and numerous restric tions upon the coming of aliens generally. See IMMIGRATION.
Flowing from the same right of sovereignty is the right of expulsion in the interest of self protection. In earlier times this right was re sorted to much more commonly than now. Ex cept in times of war, when even then it is rarely exercised, the power of expulsion is only resorted to in the case of dangerous or otherwise highly objectionable individuals. In any case it should not be exercised in an arbi trary manner without good cause, otherwise the government of which .the victim is a sub ject may justly prefer a claim for violation of what is generally admitted to be a well-settled right of aliens under international law. The individual expelled should be informed of the charge against him, and be given an opportu nity to answer, and if he is a domiciled alien he should be given a reasonable time to dispose of his property or wind up his business before leaving. In Europe and Latin America expul sion is generally an administrative act, but in the United States the President has no such power, except as commander-in-chief of the army and during war. In time of peace he could probably exercise such power only in pur suance of an act of Congress. Between 1798 and 1800. when the Alien and Sedition Acts were in force, the President possessed such power, but there was a strong popular opposi tion to the law, and they were speedily repealed after having been in existence two years. See also ALLEGIANCE; CITIZENSHIP IN THE UNITED STATES; M MIGRATION ; NATIONALITY; NATUR ALIZATION AND NATURALIZATION LAWS; SUF FRAGE.
The authorities cited at the end of the article on CITIZENSHIP IN THE UNITED STATES.