Introduction
Immigration is a fact of American life deeply embedded in the nation’s history, politics, economics, and culture. In some respect, immigration policy has paralleled the difficult task of addressing the legacy of slavery in modern American life and the challenges of creating space for Indigenous people whose traditional lands were taken during a period of often-violent expansion. However, whereas until recently the law has moved steadily toward greater respect for the rights of Black and Indigenous people, immigration law has been more a tug of war, subject as it is to a fungible set of goals based on nativist fears, economic need, humanitarian impulses, and political opportunity.
The United States has long been considered a nation of immigrants, with a larger foreign-born population than any other country in the world. Immigration policies determine which people and how many can legally immigrate to the US, and by what processes they are able to enter the country. They also determine the rights and restrictions immigrants face as they integrate into American society.
Closely related to immigration issues are naturalization policies which dictate how immigrants can claim the full rights of US citizenship. Laws regarding immigration and citizenship affect many areas of national importance, including voter eligibility, labor competition, national security, international relations, economic development, availability of resources, and the character of US society. At the same time, these areas influence the making of our laws and policies.
As a nation, we have struggled to balance these competing priorities in the making of immigration policy. Immigrants and their inclusion in American life have been vital to the nation’s economic growth, yet the question of who we let in has at times served as a politically divisive issue used in policy negotiations and election campaigns. Unlike both Black and Indigenous groups, who were long a part of the fabric of the nation, the introduction of new immigrant populations has consistently met with resistance from more established immigrant groups who feared competition for jobs and political power, and who sometimes assumed a nativist view of their US identity. This has been true since passage of the first naturalization act in 1790, and it has never been more so than in recent years, as the immigrant population is on track to turn the country’s White majority into a minority.
“A nation founded on the idea that all men are created equal and endowed with inalienable rights and offering asylum to anyone suffering from persecution is a beacon to the world. This is America at its best ….”
–– Jill Lepore, This America: The Case for the Nation
The arrival of new immigrants is often accompanied by the fear that they will take jobs and resources away from those already living and working here while also driving down wages. Fear of labor competition, though generally but not always unfounded, is typically followed by backlash against immigrants which fuels more restrictive policy. This was the case for laws such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924, and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) of 1996. While these laws were promoted as addressing economic concerns, their design was motivated by racist and xenophobic sentiment.
On the other hand, labor shortages usually lead to a more welcoming immigration policy. The Bracero Program of 1942, the Immigration Act of 1990, and the exemption of foreign-born agricultural workers from COVID-related immigration restrictions illustrate the malleability of immigration policy in support of the country’s economic growth. Likewise, the nation’s leadership in advocating for human rights around the world during the second half of the 20th century put pressure on lawmakers to enact more humanitarian immigration policies at home, as reflected in the Displaced Persons Act of 1948, the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965, and the Refugee Act of 1980.
Even before the country emerged as a global leader after World War II, the US presence on the world stage meant that entanglements with other nations would complicate immigration policy. The Gentlemen’s Agreement of 1907 limited Japanese immigration so as to maintain good relations with Japan as a counter to Russian expansion. The Magnuson Act of 1943 reopened the door for Chinese immigration after China became an official ally of the US during World War II. And the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act created a pathway to permanent residency status for Cubans who fled communist Cuba. Passage of these and other laws reflect the influence of international relations and global scrutiny on American immigration policy.
Today, US immigration policy reflects a mix of all these influences: humanitarianism, economic need, real and imagined national security and employment concerns, racism, nationalism, and political opportunism. The timeline that follows is broken into five distinct turning points that illustrate how the ebb and flow of immigration and shifting priorities have influenced the evolution of US immigration policy.
Hypocrisy and the Nazis
It is worth noting that historian Jill Lepore, after writing the statement quoted above, immediately clarified that “a nation founded on ideals, [and] universal truths, also opens itself to charges of hypocrisy at every turn.” Lepore’s clarification aptly describes circumstances in the United States. Historian James Q. Whitman made that quite clear in his examination of Nazi records, where he found references by Hitler and others to American race and immigration law as a model for Nazi Germany. While the aspirations expressed in the Emma Lazarus poem, “The New Colossus”, and our concept of the melting pot may have contributed to a more humanitarian perspective on immigration, real and imagined fears have kept the nation from establishing a constant set of immigration policies designed to foster the integration and acceptance of immigrants into our communities.
Sources
The URLs included with the sources below were good links when we published. However, as third party websites are updated over time, some links may be broken. We do not update these broken links. If you are interested in the source, it may be possible to find it by copying and pasting the URL into a search on the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. From the search results, be sure to choose a date from around the time our article was published.
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Introduction
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Push for National Identity, Votes, Westward Expansion
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Global Responsibilities Expand Entry
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White Identity, Nativism Color Immigration Actions
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Credits
Related Problems: Immigration, Income & Wealth Inequality
Authors: George Linzer, Sophia Guan
Reviewed: Adina Langer of the Museum of History and Holocaust Education
Published: December 29, 2020
Feature image: Liberty Island photo D Ramey Logan.jpg from Wikimedia Commons by D Ramey Logan, CC-BY 4.0
