Jackson, J., dissenting
the majority now reads back into the statute.[1]
The majority brushes off Congress’s revision by speculating that Congress was merely “engaged in a cleanup project” and was just “streamlin[ing]” the statutory language. Ibid. This contention, however, gets our ordinary presumption in statutory interpretation cases precisely backwards. We “usually presume differences in language … convey differences in meaning,” absent some indication from Congress to the contrary. BNSF R. Co. v. Loos, 586 U. S. ___, ___ (2019) (slip op., at 10) (internal quotation marks omitted). Thus, we have found the presumption overcome where, for example, Congress has expressly “billed” the changes as “effect[ing] only ‘[t]echnical [a]mendments.’ ” Id., at ___ (slip op., at 9).
Here, the majority points to no signal from Congress that it sought to change the encouragement provision’s language without changing its meaning. It seems that the only support the majority can muster for its “cleanup project” theory is a 1947 Supreme Court case that at several points refers to the statute as a prohibition on “encourag[ing]” or “induc[ing]” certain unlawful immigration. Ante, at 13 (citing United States v. Lem Hoy, 330 U. S. 724 (1947)). From this, the majority infers that, when Congress amended the encouragement provision five years later to remove the words “solicit” and “assist,” it must have been adopting Lem Hoy’s shorthand characterization of the statute. But the majority
- ↑ This revealing revision also sets apart the encouragement provision’s unadorned use of “encourages” and “induces” from the majority’s long list of state solicitation and facilitation laws. Ante, at 8. The majority includes that list in its effort to demonstrate that “encourages” and “induces” in the encouragement provision actually mean “solicits” or “aids and abets.” But in the vast majority of the cited statutes, classic narrowing terms—like “aided,” “abetted,” “solicits,” “commands,” “hires,” “coerces,” or “compels”—appear alongside “encourages” or “induces.” Ibid.; see App. to Brief for State of Montana et al. as Amici Curiae 1–44. Thus, unlike the one before us, such statutes might well be susceptible of a narrower reading.
