I noticed that whoever wrote that article for the New York Times, that once-great newspaper which is now just a leftist rag which has often printed lies, asserted that Trump's proposal was probably unconstitutional. Most of the people who have made this claim, either because they feel sympathy for Islamists or are simply ignorant, seem to have based it on one of two grounds. The first is that excluding Muslim aliens solely on the basis of their religion would violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment; and the second is that it would violate Article VI, cl. 3's prohibition against making a religious test a qualification for federal officials.
It's hard to say which of these is more preposterous. I don't think Trump's original proposal would be a wise policy, but whether it would violate anything in the Constitution is another question. It would not. The notion that Congress doesn't have authority to make a law to exclude aliens from U.S. territory purely on the basis of their religion is just plain false. The Supreme Court has made clear, more than once, that there is no other field in which it defers more strongly to the other two branches as in matters of alienage. The American people, acting through their elected congressmen, can exclude any alien, for any reason, at any time they please, without having to justify it to anyone.
