Unanimous Supreme Court: Illegal Immigrants Do Not Have A Right To Green Cards

In a 9-0 decision issued Monday morning, the Supreme Court ruled that a law, barring illegal immigrants from seeking green cards, is constitutional and that those illegal immigrants who later earned a Temporary Protected Status (TPS) are still ineligible to apply for permanent residency.

Justice Elena Kagan, widely recognized as one of the Court’s more liberal justices, wrote the unanimous opinion, upholding a rule that barred “unlawful entrants” who later received Temporary Protected Status from applying to remain in the United States. Temporary Protected Status technically “gives foreign nationals nonimmigrant status,” Kagan noted, but TPS does not rubber-stamp an “unlawful entry.”