United States Immigration Policy Review

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Historical Background: Colonial America and The United States that followed were created by repeated waves of immigration. Those immigrants came from every part of the globe, but particularly from England, France, Germany, and Western Europe. The descendants of this first wave of immigrants would view later immigrants from Italy, Poland, and Russia with a great deal of suspicion and uncertainty. This is not surprising as our country’s uncertainty about immigrants is reflected in our policies. For instance, there were no numerical restrictions or central regulation on immigration until one hundred years after our nation’s founding. When they were finally introduced they were created with bias against would be immigrants from certain countries. Among the first on that list were Chinese laborers followed by immigrants from the Asian Pacific (Ewing, 2012). These restrictions were first adopted in 1921, and were in favor of European immigrants. They would later be followed by national quotas that placed restrictions on immigrants based on existing proportions of the population. A shortage in laborers brought on by World War II would result in lifting those restrictions. This eventually led to a growth in immigration and a change in the origin of those arriving from Europe to Latin America and Asia. As the number immigrants from these countries began to grow, so did the concern about the number of them who were illegal (Ewing, 2012). Resulting policies issued to address those concerns would arguably lead to a resurgence of the problem that they were intended to correct.

Open Door Policy: Throughout the colonial era, there was no centralized regulation of immigration to North America. Relaxed immigration policies brought tens of m...

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...//www.immigrationpolicy.org/sites/default/files/docs/opportunity_exclusion_011312.pdf

Kanazawa, Mark. "Immigration, Exclusion, and Taxation: Anti-Chinese Legislation in Gold Rush California". The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Sep., 2005), pp. 779-805. Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Economic History Association.

The Ellis Island Foundation (2010). Ellis Island - The Peopling of America. Retrieved January 20, 2014, from http://www.ellisisland.org/immexp/wseix_5_1.asp?

The Immigration Act of 1924 (The Johnson-Reed Act) - 1921–1936 - Milestones - Office of the Historian. (1924). Retrieved January 20, 2014, from http://history.state.gov/milestones/1921-1936/immigration-act

Martin, Philip (2006-07-03). "The Bracero Program: Was It a Failure?" History News Network, 3 July 2006. Retrieved from http://hnn.us/articles/27336.html.

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