Immigration reform in the United States

Overview

Immigration reform in the United States is a process that seeks to shape the past, current, and future policies of immigration in that country, which is often considered a country of immigrants. More than 86 million people legally immigrated to the US between the country's legally recognized independence in 1783 and the early 2020s. During this time, political views and public policy toward immigration have varied, ranging from encouraging immigration to severely restricting or even banning it. According to the 2020 US census, about 45 million immigrants, including those with legal and undocumented status, made their homes in the United States at that time. They accounted for about 14 percent of the country’s population.

The needs of the complex process of immigration have changed over time, and US immigration law seeks to keep up with these changes. The process for entering the United States through various immigration programs can be quite complicated, and, for many, the road to US citizenship through naturalization may take many years, if it occurs at all. Therefore, immigration reform provides changes to improve this process, while keeping the country’s safety; prosperity; and ethical, moral, and political priorities all in balance. In addition, immigration reform also influences the demographics and the social and political culture of the United States. Throughout US history, immigration policies and agencies have evolved as life changes for people moving to, and already in, the United States; some of these policy changes have paved the way for the establishment of a more culturally diverse society in the US, while other policy changes were marked by xenophobia or other forms of discrimination.

Eighteenth Century

When the United States won its independence from the British Empire in 1783 following its victory in the American Revolutionary War (1775–83), the new country did not have much legislation regarding immigration. According to the US census in 1790, the nation had a population of nearly four million people. The White majority of the country was European American and overwhelmingly Protestant, primarily descended from English colonists but also with smaller numbers of Dutch Americans, French Americans, and German Americans. The country also had a large population of enslaved African Americans concentrated in the Southern States, as well as a smaller population of free Black individuals. The country also had a sizeable Native American population, which was not considered in the census. The United States, in general, had a policy of open borders, which allowed free movement of anyone to come to the United States and stay as long as they would like, even make their home there permanently.

The Naturalization Act of 1790 became the first federal law to provide governance to the process of obtaining citizenship, which is known as naturalization. The act required immigrants to be white freemen of good moral character, and it required a two-year residency before applying for citizenship and an oath of allegiance to the Constitution. Any of the applicants’ children under the age of twenty-one could also be included in the naturalization process, but women were generally considered under the applications of their fathers or husbands according to the legal status of women in the eighteenth century. The Naturalization Acts of 1795 and 1798 later amended the 1790 Act to extend the notice and residency requirements for naturalization.

Nineteenth Century

The United States still maintained a relatively open policy for immigrants to settle in the country in the nineteenth century. The Naturalization Law of 1802 reduced the notice and residency limits to that of the original 1795 Act, and the Naturalization Law of 1804 linked a woman’s application for citizenship to her marital status.

Starting in the 1840s with the onset of the Irish Potato Famine, the US began to experience its first wave of mass immigration, which primarily consisted of immigrants from Ireland, Germany, and other countries from northern and western Europe. This wave was notable because for the first time in US history, large numbers of voluntary immigrants did not speak English as a native language (as was the case with Germans) and were not Protestants (as was the case with Irish immigrants, who were largely Roman Catholic). These trends generated significant pushback and xenophobia from many Americans; discrimination against these new immigrants became widespread in many parts of the country and led to the creation of organized political movements, such as the Know-Nothing Movement, which called for stricter controls on immigration and often expressed extreme anti-immigrant views.

Following the US Civil War (1861–5), many states passed their own legislation to regulate immigration, but in 1876, the Supreme Court decided that immigration would be relegated to a federal government responsibility and not up to individual states to decide. Rulings from 1891 and 1895 on immigration created the federally controlled Bureau of Immigration.

Racial-centric legislation was part of the process of immigration reform since more people from countries other than Western Europe began to come to the United States, and the issue of the free African Americans’ citizenship was considered. While some immigrants from certain countries were initially welcomed to meet labor needs, the tide often changed once they arrived and prejudices set in. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 decreed that everyone who was born in the United States would be considered a citizen, and this was ratified with the 14th Amendment of 1868. The Naturalization Act of 1870 included a provision for African Americans in the naturalization process; however, in 1882, immigration from China was banned under the Chinese Exclusion Act. In 1898, the Supreme Court ruled that children of Chinese immigrants could obtain birthright citizenship from either being born in the country or to parents with citizenship.

Twentieth Century

By the start of the 1900s, the US was in the middle of its second “Great Wave” of immigration that resulted in almost 24 million new people arriving in the US from 1900 to 1920, which prompted the need for re-evaluating current legislation. This group proved even more ethnically, religiously, and linguistically diverse than the first wave, with the US seeing the arrival of large numbers of Southern and Eastern Europeans along with smaller populations from East Asia and the Middle East. By 1900, cities such as New York, Boston, and Chicago had been transformed, boasting large populations of Italian Americans, Jewish Americans from the Russian Empire, and other groups which previously had not migrated to the US in large numbers. In 1906, the Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization was created by the Naturalization Act of 1906. The aim of this government agency was to organize immigration policy to better regulate immigration. In 1933, the Immigration and Naturalization Service combined the Bureau of Immigration and the Bureau of Naturalization into one agency.

The Immigration Act of 1917 and the Immigration Act of 1924 further restricted Asian immigrants, and this restriction remained in place until the Chinese Exclusion Repeal Act of 1943. The Nationality Act of 1940 helped to unify immigration law as more and more immigrants sought refuge in the United States. Other acts were aimed at specific countries—for example, the Luce-Cellar Act of 1946 allowed a certain number of immigrants from India and the Philippines to obtain naturalization each year.

War also provided an occasion for immigration reform. Although World War I (1914–8) reduced immigration, large numbers of immigrants sought refuge in the United States in the years following the war. In 1921, a quota system was introduced with the Emergency Quota Act. This was a response to an increase in immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe, and it restricted the number of immigrants that could be admitted from a particular country based on population-based quotas. These quotas were widely viewed as racially discriminatory toward immigrants who were not from Western or Northern Europe.

In 1965, this quota system was repealed with the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. In 1924, the US Border Patrol was created as a division of the Bureau of Immigration, although during the Great Depression, immigration numbers fell again.

After World War II (1939–45), the War Brides Act allowed wives, children, and other family members of American military men to be exempt from country immigration quotas. The Refugee Act in 1980 made a permanent provision for the resettlement of refugees and amended the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 and the Migration and Refugee Assistance Act of 1962. The American Homecoming Act of 1988 allowed children born in Vietnam to American fathers during the Vietnam War the ability to apply for preferential immigration status. Wartime also increased the need for seasonal agricultural labor, and in 1951 an agreement between the United States and Mexico made the Bracero Program for migrant workers a permanent policy.

In 1965, a new immigrant preference system was introduced by Congress that was based on family ties and skills rather than just national origins. As a result, more immigrants from Asia, Africa, and Latin America began applying for immigration visas, permanently altering the ethnic composition of immigrants to the United States.

Undocumented immigration likewise sparked legal reform during the latter part of the twentieth century. The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 allowed certain undocumented immigrants to obtain permanent residency, and it also made it illegal for an employer to hire undocumented immigrants. Although this legislation sought to control undocumented immigration and provide a path to legal residency for undocumented immigrants already in the US, it also fueled fraud, and poor funding reduced enforcement. As a result, undocumented immigration increased in the 1980s.

The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act allowed undocumented immigrants to receive hospital medical care. In 1982, the Supreme Court ruled that undocumented children were able to enroll in public schools and receive an education in the United States. In 1987, deferred action was put in place for the removal of undocumented immigrants with the Family Fairness Program, which allowed immediate relatives of immigrants who were able to obtain legal status to have deferment on deportation to allow for more time to qualify and apply.

In the 1990s, immigration reform was a hot political topic and more legislation was passed. The Immigration Act of 1990 allowed for an annual limit of 700,000 people to enter the country each year and set new standards for immigrants to meet in order to qualify for residency. It also sought to diversify the countries immigrants were coming from through a lottery system. The US Commission on Immigration Reform, also known as the Jordan Commission for Representative Barbara Jordan, ran from 1990 to 1997 to study immigration policy and report on areas that needed further reform.

In 1996, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act made further changes that aimed to reduce undocumented immigration while seeking to protect legal residents. More Border Patrol and Immigration and Naturalization Service agents were added to the budget, a border fence was planned in San Diego, and an automated employment verification pilot program was implemented to improve enforcement for employers and workers.

1990s immigration reform also focused on amnesties. In 1994, an amnesty pardoned over half a million undocumented immigrants, and this amnesty was renewed in 1997 and 2000. In 1997, the Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act was passed to provide legal status to about a million undocumented immigrants from Central America, and in 1998, the Haitian Refugee Immigration and Fairness Act was passed to address discrimination against Haitians.

Twenty-First Century

At the turn of the twenty-first century, a million immigrants a year were entering the United States, so additional reforms to immigration continued to be a popular political platform. In 2001, the Supreme Court made a ruling that if a country will not allow an immigrant to be deported, they cannot be held by the United States and must be given asylum. In 2000, the Legal Immigration Family Equity Act was passed to provide amnesty to illegal immigrants who were in the process of qualifying to become residents. This was necessary due to large processing backlogs from amnesties granted in the 1990s, and millions of hopeful immigrants were waiting years for their applications to be considered.

After the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, national security became a vital issue as it related to immigration. Public policy responded, and the Immigration and Nationalization Service was divided into three organizations: the Citizenship and Immigration Service, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and the Customs and Border Protection agencies. In 2005, the Real ID Act also served to place restrictions on those applying for asylum in the United States, and the Border Protection, Anti-terrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act was proposed. Although not passed in the Senate, it led to immigration reform protests led by a public that demanded more reform. This set the stage for more debate on immigration policy.

Immigration policy also looked to neighboring Mexico as more undocumented immigrants entered the United States across its southern border with Mexico. In 2006, the Secure Fence Act started the border fence along the United States-Mexican border to limit illegal immigration. The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) was adopted in 2012 to provide a path to citizenship for children brought illegally into the United States. A similar program for parents was proposed in 2014, Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA), but was rescinded by the following administration before implementation. A bipartisan political ground known as the “Gang of Eight” created the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013, which would have helped with this legislation, but it met resistance and was not approved by Congress.

The Donald Trump presidential administration held immigration reform as a major campaign trail subject, with his promise to build a border wall with Mexico generating both intense support and opposition. In 2017, after Trump’s election, travel bans that restricted citizens of seven predominately Muslim countries were put into place, DAPA was rescinded, and plans for DACA were to be phased out as well. An enhanced border wall along more of the United States-Mexican border was also planned, and construction began. However, in 2021, the new presidential administration of Joe Biden reversed many restrictions and put into place plans to increase refugee admissions to the United States, maintain deportation relief, and include immigrants in public benefits such as Medicaid.

As in previous decades, immigration remained a contentious topic in the US throughout the 2020s, though significant reform remained elusive during Biden's first few years in office; political polarization in the US made it difficult for Democrats and Republicans to find common ground in immigration policy. While it no longer controlled the White House, the Republican Party continued to favor more restrictive immigration policies. At the time, the US also continued to receive record numbers of asylum seekers and migrants at its southern border; in fiscal year 2023 immigration authorities reported a record-breaking 2.475 million enforcement encounters with migrants crossing the US-Mexico border. This surge of new arrivals placed considerable strain on US immigration infrastructure and services and led to concerns of worsening human rights conditions along the US-Mexico border.

Discourse

Since the founding of the United States, proposals have been put in place to increase the immigration of desired people and/or to decrease the immigration of those that may pose a threat in some way to the safety, economy, or other facets of the country. There has been a continuous movement of people to the United States since colonial times, and defining citizenship was at the forefront of the new nation. As a result, Congress was given the power to establish the rules of citizenship in the Constitution in Article 1, Section 8.

At the founding of the country, it may have seemed illogical to put too many limits on immigration. Therefore, an open policy of immigration existed. Prior to this, the policy of the British colonies brought in newcomers via forced immigration, indentured servitude, or outright enslavement. The Industrial Revolution during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries initiated the need for more workers to the United States. At the same time, the westward expansion of the US, which included the forceful expulsion of Indigenous peoples from these lands, led to government incentives such as the Homestead Act of 1862, which encouraged western migration by offering unclaimed land to settlers. Policies such as these prompted immigrants to come and claim land in the western US.

The United States seemed to hold endless opportunities and space for the immigrants. However, it did not take long for politicians and the public to express backlash against this influx of immigrants and, according to the political and social climate, put restrictions in place. Waves of immigration have faced political and public commentary since the late eighteenth century, oftentimes taking a negative or even hostile and xenophobic tone. This in turn leads to stricter reform and even immigration bans.

The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) is the modern body of law that governs US immigration policy and provides reforms to this policy. It allows the country to grant visas in certain categories, admit family members of U.S. citizens, and administer the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, which provides asylum to a selected number of refugees that meet certain criteria. Other forms of humanitarian relief the INA is involved in include Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for people affected by natural disasters; Deferred Enforced Departure (DED) for people facing deportation to unstable countries; Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) for children who were brought to the United States under the age of sixteen and meet certain criteria; and humanitarian parole for various other urgent humanitarian reasons or to provide some type of significant benefit to the country.

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