Does a U.S. President have the right to exclude Muslims?

 
This is an important question today, after yet another atrocity, the murders of 49 innocent citizens in Orlando on June 12, and the serious wounding of many others.  Just last December, after the attacks in San Bernardino, the same issue arose: can the President exclude certain groups from immigrating to this country?
 
As a result of the accumulation of terrorist attacks in the U.S., the issue of excluding Muslims from immigration to this country is being debated now in the Presidential campaign.  Candidate Donald Trump has proposed banning Muslims from entering.
 
The well-qualified legal scholar, James R. Edwards, says that restoring meaningful ideological exclusion policies is long overdue.  The McCarran-Walter Act of 1952 allowed for the policy, but in following years the Act has been amended and changed.
 
In a January 2016 blog, Edwards calls radical political Islam today’s foremost external threat to America’s existence.  Earlier he had authored a 24-page research paper published by the Center for Immigration Studies, Keeping Extremists Out: The History of Ideological Exclusion and the Need for Its Revival.  A section of his paper discusses the history of the McCarran-Walter Act. 
 
A recent article in the Daily Caller by reporter Alex Pfeiffer lists results of a review of past Presidential orders showing that all of the last 6 Presidents, including Pres. Obama, have used executive authority to block entry of certain classes of people.
 
Pfeiffer lists 6 actions by Pres. Obama, also 6 each by Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Pres. George H.S. Bush used the authority only once, Ronald Reagan 4 times, and Jimmy Carter once.  Pfeiffer describes the circumstances of use by each of these Presidents.
 
Law Professor Jan Ting of Temple University is quoted in the The Daily Caller article as saying  that “absolutely and without any doubt” existing law allows restricting immigration of certain nationalities or religious groups.
 
In a December 8, 2015 Daily Caller article by Christian Datok, lawyer and Power Line blogger John Hinderaker was interviewed.  He said categorically that a U.S. President has the right now to exclude certain groups. Citing Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Naturalization Act, Hinderaker stated that Congress has specifically given the president the authority to block immigration from majority Muslim countries as early as today, if he wanted to.
 
Here is the complete legal reference copied from NumbersUSA’s blog on the subject:
Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) says that "Whenever the president finds that the entry of aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, the president may, by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or non-immigrant's or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate."