Explain the reasoning behind voting to place this question "on hold"

Question

The comment

it is not a question about law or legal process.

is incorrect as to the interpretation of the administrative regulations cited at the question itself

The constitutionality of an ambiguous statute or administrative regulation is a question of law.

which is supported by an abundance of case law, for example Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. NRDC, 467 U.S. 837 (1984)

When a court reviews an agency's construction of the statute which it administers, it is confronted with two questions. First, always, is the question whether Congress has directly spoken to the precise question at issue. If the intent of Congress is clear, that is the end of the matter; for the court,

Page 467 U. S. 843

as well as the agency, must give effect to the unambiguously expressed intent of Congress. [Footnote 9] If, however, the court determines Congress has not directly addressed the precise question at issue, the court does not simply impose its own construction on the statute, [Footnote 10] as would be necessary in the absence of an administrative interpretation. Rather, if the statute is silent or ambiguous with respect to the specific issue, the question for the court is whether the agency's answer is based on a permissible construction of the statute. [Footnote 11]

Can those users whom voted to close the question as "off-topic" kindly explain their reasoning as to exactly how the question

does not appear to be about law

else, in the absence of a legal rationale for their vote, undo their vote to close the question.

Answer 1

I actually did not employ that reason: I VTC'd because the question called for opinions. The problem is that the SE machine does not report all of the reasons, it gives the main or first reason (I think there's some majority-rules thing). The revised / later question was a fact question and could be answered. There is no theory (in any discipline) of the number of black racial groups in Africa, so precision or even reasonable approximation is impossible. Directive 15 is not based on science, so you'd just get bloviative answers ranging from 1 to 1000 (maybe more). The rationale behind the wording is to exclude white South Africans and North African Arab / Berber people, who are slotted elsewhere -- also to exclude non-African blacks from India etc.

The question as first framed is also not clearly about what the law is. Asking how many black racial groups there are does not bear on what the law is. Even if you knew that there are 100 BRGs in non-Northern Africa, you can't apply that fact to yield an interpretation of what is legally required to be done in a specific case (e.g. Hefny).

If you are interested in that specific case, there are a number of questions that you might have asked (although you'd still run into the problem of utter lack of factual details on the case), such as "Would he be classified differently if he had been from Sudan?"; "what regulations if any existed at the time of his naturalization, regarding recording of racial classification?". Or, "what is the congressional authority for asking about or recording racial information?".