History of laws concerning immigration and naturalization in the United States

There is a long history of laws concerning immigration and naturalization in the United States.

The first naturalization law in the United States was the Naturalization Act of 1790, which restricted naturalization to "free white persons" of "good moral character" who had resided in the country for two years and had kept their current state of residence for a year. In 1795 this was increased to five years residence and three years after notice of intent to apply for citizenship, and again to 14 years residence and five years notice of intent in 1798.

The Fourteenth Amendment, passed in 1865, protects children born in the United States. The phrase: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside" was interpreted by the Supreme Court in the 1898 case "United States v. Wong Kim Ark" as covering everyone born in the U.S. regardless of the parents citizenship, with the exception of the children of diplomats. See the articles "jus soli" (birthplace) and "jus sanguinis" (bloodline) for further discussion.

In 1870, the law was broadened to allow African Americans to be naturalized. Asian immigrants were excluded from naturalization but not from living in the United States. There were also significant restrictions on some Asians at the state level; in California, for example, non-citizen Asians were not allowed to own land. Since a significant number of people never go through naturalization, once they are authorized to live in the U.S., this restriction for most was merely a formality.

After the immigration of 123,000 Chinese in the 1870s, who joined the 105,000 who had immigrated between 1850 and 1870, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 which specifically limited further Chinese immigration. Chinese had immigrated to the Western United States as a result of unsettled conditions in China, the availability of jobs working on railroads, and the Gold Rush that was going on at that time in California. The xenophobic "Yellow Peril" expression became popular to justify racism against Asians.

The act excluded Chinese laborers from immigrating to the United States for ten years and was the first immigration law passed by Congress that targeted a specific ethnic group. Laborers in the United States and laborers with work visas received a certificate of residency and were allowed to travel in and out of the United States. Amendments made in 1884 tightened the provisions that allowed previous immigrants to leave and return, and clarified that the law applied to ethnic Chinese regardless of their country of origin. The act was renewed in 1892 by the Geary Act for another ten years, and in 1902 with no terminal date. It was repealed in 1943, although large scale Chinese immigration did not occur until 1965.

The Empire of Japan's State Department negotiated the so-called Gentlemen's Agreement in 1907, a protocol where Japan agreed to stop issuing passports to her citizens who wanted to emigrate to the U.S. In practice, the Japanese government compromised with its prospective emigrants and continued to give passports to the Territory of Hawaii where many Japanese resided. Once in Hawaii, it was easy for the Japanese to continue on to Japanese settlements on the west coast if they so desired. In the decade of 1901 to 1910, 129,000 Japanese immigrated to the U.S. or Hawaii, nearly all were males and on five year work contracts and 117,000 more came in the decades from 1911 to 1930. How many of them stayed and how many returned at the end of their contracts is unknown but it is estimated that about one-half returned. Again this immigrant flow was at least 80% male and the demand for female Japanese immigrants almost immediately arose. This need was met in part by what are called "postcard wives" who immigrated to new husbands who had chosen them on the basis of their pictures. (Similar marriages also occurred in nearly all cultures throughout the female-starved West). The Japanese government finally quit issuing passports to the Territory of Hawaii for single women in the 1920s.

Congress also banned persons because of poor health or lack of education. An 1882 law banned entry of "lunatics" and infectious disease carriers. After President William McKinley was assassinated by an anarchist of immigrant parentage, Congress enacted the Anarchist Exclusion Act in 1901 to exclude known anarchist agitators.Fact|date=May 2008 A literacy requirement was added in Immigration Act of 1917.

In 1921, the United States Congress passed the Emergency Quota Act, which established national immigration quotas. The quotas were based on the number of foreign-born residents of each nationality who were living in the United States as of the 1910 census.

The crucial 1923 Supreme Court case United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind created the official stance to classify Indians as non-white, which at the time retroactively stripped Indians of citizenship, since zealous prosecutors argued Indian Americans had gained citizenship illegally. The California Alien Land Law of 1913 (invalidated in 1952) and others similar racist laws prohibited these aliens from owning land property, thus effectively stripping Indian Americans from land rights. While the decision was placating racist Asiatic Exclusion League (AEL) demands, spurned by growing outrage at the Turban Tide/Hindoo Invasion [sic] alongside the pre-existing outrage at the "Yellow Peril", and while more recent legislation influenced by the civil-rights movement has removed much of the statutory discrimination against Asians, no case has overturned this 1923 classification.

A more complex quota plan replaced this "emergency" system under the Immigration Act of 1924 (Johnson-Reed Act). The reference census used was changed to that of 1890, which greatly reduced the number of Southern and Eastern European immigrants. An annual ceiling of 154,227 was set for the Eastern Hemisphere. Each country had a quota proportional to its population in the U.S. as of the 1920 census.

In 1932 President Roosevelt and the State Department essentially shut down immigration during the Great Depression as immigration went from 236,000 in 1929 to 23,000 in 1933. Total immigration in the decade of 1931 to 1940 was 528,000 averaging less than 53,000 a year.

The Chinese exclusion laws were repealed in 1943. The Luce-Celler Act of 1946 ended discrimination against Indian Americans and Philippines, who were accorded the right to naturalization, and allowed a meager quota of 100 immigrants per year.

The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (the McCarran-Walter Act) revised the quotas again, basing them on the 1920 census. For the first time in American history, racial distinctions were omitted from the U.S. Code. As could be expected, most of the quota allocation went to immigrants from Ireland, the United Kingdom and Germany who already had relatives in the United States.Fact|date=May 2008 The anti-subversive features of this law are still in force.Fact|date=May 2008

The Immigration and Nationality Act Amendments of 1965 (the Hart-Cellar Act) abolished the system of national-origin quotas. There was, for the first time, a limitation on Western Hemisphere immigration (120,000 per year), with the Eastern Hemisphere limited to 170,000. Because of the family preferences put into immigration law, immigration is now mostly "chain immigration"Fact|date=May 2008 where recent immigrants who are already here sponsor their relatives. Family related immigration is often outside the quota system. At the time, the then-chairman of the Senate Immigration Subcommittee Senator Edward Kennedy remarked that -- "The bill will not flood our cities with immigrants. It will not upset the ethnic mix of our society. It will not relax the standards of admission. It will not cause American workers to lose their jobs." "(U.S. Senate, Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, Washington, D.C., Feb. 10, 1965. pp. 1-3.)

The 1980 Refugee Act -- Established policies for refugees redefining "refugee" according to United Nations "norms". A target for refugees was set at 50,000 and the worldwide ceiling for immigrants was reduced to 270,000 annually.

In 1986, the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) was passed, creating for the first time penalties for employers who knowingly hired illegal immigrants. These penalties are very seldom enforced and forged documents are rampant leading to widespread illegal immigrant employment. IRCA also contained an amnesty for about 3,000,000 illegal immigrants already in the United States, and mandated the intensification of some of the activities of the United States Border Patrol or INS (now part of Department of Homeland Security, DHS).

By one account, the actual number of annual legal immigrants was estimated at 500,000 to 600,000 in 1989. This subsequently increased and is now well over 1 million annually, not including illegal migration or temporary work visas.

The 1990 Immigration Act (IMMACT) modified and expanded the 1965 act; it significantly increased the total immigration limit to 700,000 and increased visas by 40 percent. Family reunification was retained as the main immigration criteria, with significant increases in employment-related immigration.

Several pieces of legislation signed into law in 1996 marked a turn towards harsher policies for both legal and illegal immigrants. The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) and Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) vastly increased the categories of criminal activity for which immigrants, including green card holders, can be deported and imposed mandatory detention for certain types of deportation cases. As a result, well over 1,000,000 individuals have been deported since 1996.Fact|date=May 2008

See also

*Judicial aspects of race in the United States