Race is legislated directly while nation is not

Evidence

It is worth observing that race (or ethnoracial identification) has a thickish history of being legislated - directly, baldly, and in its own (mostly unmediated) terms. Nation has not been so legislated, at least not directly and unmediated. Thus the restrictions of immigration law historically have been predicated in terms either of ethnoracial identification or state origin. Here the reference in some laws to “national origin” is actually to where people were born, or the citizenship they hold. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1715

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the Iraq Body Count numbers on page 1712 — both being questions about immigration law and its relation to the state. — connects to: The meaning of race relations differs across national frames of reference — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 641; Australian statutes list allied race concepts without defining their relationship to ‘race’. — Mareike Riedel, Islamophobia, Racial Discrimination…, 28
• QUESTION: Connects to legal scholarship on how “national origin” in US Immigration and Nationality Act context is really a proxy for race — the racialization-through-law angle worth chasing.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1715