Vote iQ Hot Topics: Immigration
Rick Shenkman, HNN editor-in-chief, is Vice President, Media & Partnerships at Vote iQ.
The United States is a country of immigrants. But that has not stopped immigration from being a hot button topic through much of our history. Each last wave of immigrants often feels the door should be closed to the next wave. It's made for frequently contentious debates between those who believe that America's ever-changing diversity is its strength, and those who prefer to limit newcomers in order to retain an ever-diminishing European-Anglo concentration. Despite frequent attempts to slow or restrict immigration, the U.S. today has more immigrants than the rest of the world combined.
The first stage of modern American immigration started during the colonial period and ran to the mid-1800s. By the time of the American Revolution in 1776, the white population was about 80% British ancestry. The rest were mostly Scots, Irish, French, and African slaves. More than half the European immigrants during the 17th and 18th centuries were indentured servants.
The nation's first immigration law was the Naturalization Act of 1790, which decreed that"any alien, being a free white person, may be admitted to become a citizen of the United States." It required that new citizens have" good moral character," and be residents of the country for two years before applying for citizenship. Five years later, another Naturalization Act extended the period of required residence to three years, and reemphasized that naturalized citizenship was only for" free white person[s]." (Between 1790 and 1952, 52 court cases struggled with the issue of who qualified as a" white person" for purposes of immigration.)
Wars in Europe, combined with Congress's ban on the importation of slaves in 1808, greatly slowed immigration until the 1820s. By then, most of the immigrants who had arrived before the American Revolution had died, and less than 5% of the country was foreign born. But starting in the 1820s, European immigration to the new world picked up. American immigration laws still banned Africans (until 1870) and most East and South Asians (until 1952), but compared to Europe, U.S. statutes were liberal and inviting. Both Catholics and Jews - banned by several other countries - were welcome. The Irish potato famine of 1845-1849 displaced hundreds of thousands of Irish, arriving on so-called" coffin ships," where many died due to overcrowded vessels where disease spread rapidly. Many Germans, British and French also emigrated. Ellis Island, New York's famed first stop for European immigrants opened in 1892.
From 1836 to 1914, some 30 million Europeans immigrated to the U.S. Italians, Swedes, Norwegians, and Eastern Europeans came in large numbers. During this influx, the Supreme Court decided that the Federal government had sole control over immigration (1875). Although Europeans were welcome with open arms, the same could not be said for many others. In 1875, Congress passed the Page Act (named after Horace Page, the Republican congressman who introduced the bill), which banned Chinese immigrant workers, any Asian women who (it was feared) might become prostitutes, and all convicts. In 1882, Congress passed a ten-year ban on all Chinese immigrants (Chinese Exclusion Act). It was extended for another decade upon its expiration, and then made permanent in 1904. (The ban on Chinese was not repealed until the middle of World War II, December 17, 1943, when Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Repeal Act.) In the 1880s, a series of Alien Contract Labor Laws limited foreign workers from flooding the country with cheap labor. None of the initial efforts to restrict immigration focused on Mexicans. For instance, when the Mexican War was concluded in 1848, the treaty required the U.S. to give instant citizenship to 64,000 Mexicans living in California and New Mexico. It wasn't until 1903 that the first statute was passed to try to control the numbers coming across the Mexican border.
Starting in 1917, after the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, anti-immigration organizations fanned fears that foreigners threatened American values with subversive politics and religious beliefs. Congress was dominated by anti-immigration lawmakers. Starting in 1921, Congress passed a series of acts that blocked Asians and virtually stopped all immigration from southern and Eastern Europe, an area from which nearly two million Jews had emigrated over 30 years. President Calvin Coolidge, when signing one of the statutes that had been vetoed by earlier presidents, told the invited guests that," America must be kept American." From 1917 to 1924, passport requirements were established, quotas capped the number of immigrants from each country, and the categories of excluded aliens were expanded. Not only were fewer visas issued but they were also distributed on the basis of national origin.
As World War II got underway, in 1940, Congress passed the Alien Registration Act, which required all non-citizens living in the U.S. to register with the federal government and receive an Alien Registration Receipt Card (predecessor of the"Green Card"). During the war, immigration policies got stricter at the urging of the State Department, largely from fears that refugees could be blackmailed into working as Nazi agents. After the war, Harry Truman issued an executive order so that thousands of displaced Jewish Holocaust survivors could enter the U.S. from 1945 to 1947. The War Brides Act allowed the foreign-born wives of U.S. soldiers to emigrate to the U.S., and the following year fiancés were included. In 1948, Congress passed the Displaced Persons Act, which expanded on Truman's executive order. Modified twice later to accommodate more immigrants, about 600,000 refugees - outside the regular immigration quota system - came into the U.S. through 1953.
While refugees from World War II were welcomed, the start of the Korean War in 1950 was marked by the McCarran Internal Security Act, which barred members of the Communist Party and anyone who would" endanger the welfare or safety of the United States." The quota system still limited annual immigration to 175,455 a year (calculated as 1/6 of 1% of the population of the U.S. in 1920). In 1954, the U.S. launched Operation Wetback, an interagency taskforce of Border Patrol agents complemented by state and local police. Complaints of" police-state" techniques killed the program within a year, but by then nearly one million illegal immigrants were found and in most cases deported or forced back to Mexico.
In 1965, a Democratic-controlled Congress passed major immigration reform in the Hart-Celler Immigration law, which was championed by a then junior senator from Massachusetts, Teddy Kennedy. It phased out the quota system which had been in effect since 1921. The result was a dramatic increase in immigration. Before the 1965 law, only 175,455 annually could enter the country. Since 1965, some 28 million have legally immigrated to the U.S. In 2006 a million legal immigrants entered the country. In place of the"national origins system," the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) instituted family preferences--so-called" chain migration"--where recent immigrants sponsor their relatives. In 1968, Congress banned discrimination based on race, place of birth, sex and residence. All restrictions on Asian immigration were also lifted. By 1976, preferential treatment for Western Hemisphere immigrants was eliminated.
Ronald Reagan left his mark on immigration with a landmark law, the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. Its focus was cutting back on illegal immigration and it introduced the first-ever sanctions program for employers who knowingly employed illegal aliens. But it is remembered mostly as the Amnesty Act because it provided a direct path to citizenship for seasonal migrant workers and also all illegal immigrants who had entered before 1982 and had been in the U.S. continuously. Several million illegal immigrants became legal as a consequence.
After 9/11, the Patriot Act strengthened some immigration screening tools in an effort to better intercept potential terrorists trying to emigrate to the U.S. In 2003, the INS was folded into the post-9/11 Department of Homeland Security.
Immigration debates during the past decade have called for increased enforcement of current laws against illegal immigrants, building a fence along the 2,000-mile border with Mexico, and creating a new guest worker program that favors tech-savvy immigrants. As of April 2010, few of those proposals had become law, though a partial border fence had been approved. The country remains split on how to best address the issue of its estimated 10 to 11 million illegal immigrants. Some major cities, including Washington D.C., New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, Dallas, Seattle, and Portland, have adopted sanctuary ordinances prohibiting police from asking people about their immigration status. Meanwhile, in April 2010, Arizona passed the nation's strictest law cracking down on illegal immigrants. It prompted calls for a boycott of the state and demonstrations against the statute across the nation.
As of May 2010, President Obama indicated he wanted to make immigration reform an administration priority after having finished a grueling 15 month battle over healthcare. Citing the Arizona law as a mistake, Obama used a Cinco de Mayo celebration at the White House to say:" Make no mistake, our immigration system is broken, and after so many years in which Washington has failed to meet its responsibilities, Americans are right to be frustrated. ... But the answer isn't to undermine fundamental principles that define us as a nation. Comprehensive reform - that's how we're going to solve this problem."
On July 6, three weeks before the Arizona law was set to take effect, the Justice Department filed suit to block its enforcement. Most legal experts expect the case eventually will find its way to the Supreme Court, not only as a test of federal power versus states rights, but also as a key ruling providing guidance for the country's courts when it comes to enforcing rules on immigration.