Reed Amendment (immigration)
The Reed Amendment, also known as the Expatriate Exclusion Clause, created a provision of United States federal law () attempting to impose an entry ban on certain former U.S. citizens based on their reasons for renouncing citizenship. It was named for its author Jack Reed, and passed into law as part of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996.
Though the Reed Amendment received strong bipartisan support during the committee stage, Democratic lawmakers including Daniel Patrick Moynihan later criticised it as inappropriate, embarrassing, and badly-drafted. Efforts at establishing procedures to enforce the amendment ran into early difficulties, and the executive branch never promulgated the implementing regulations. The Department of Homeland Security has stated that they cannot obtain the information required to enforce the amendment unless the former U.S. citizen "affirmatively admit[s]" his or her reasons for renouncing citizenship, and so from 2002 to 2015, only two people were denied entry to the United States on the grounds of the amendment.
Various Democratic and Republican politicians including Reed himself, Chuck Schumer, Chuck Grassley, Lamar S. Smith, and others have made many unsuccessful efforts to enact clearer definitions of the classes of former citizens to be banned from re-entry, and to enable executive agencies to share information with each other in order to enforce the ban.
The Reed Amendment added the following text to the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952's list of "Classes of aliens ineligible for visas or admissions", under the "Miscellaneous grounds" category:
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