Key Moments When the U.S.
Welcomed & Excluded Immigrants: A Brief Timeline
Context Before U.S. Independence: Native Americans, European Colonizers and Enslaved Africans
The area of North America that was to become the United States was inhabited by hundreds of thousands of thriving and distinct Native American cultures and tribes for an estimated 23,000 years prior to European North and South American exploration that began in the 15th and 16th centuries. By the 17th century, European North American exploration transitioned to colonization. For the Native Americans who had inhabitated the area for millenia, exploration and colonization represented a time period profound uprooting of their way of life, and led to displacement, violence, disease and enslavement. The introduction of the slave trade that began in 1619 when the first ship carrying enslaved African people arrived in Virginia was an important factor in colonial prosperity. By the time the Revolutionary War started in 1775, the English and their descendents were the main ethnic group living in the colonies, with the Dutch having settled in parts of what was to become the New York region. Freed and enslaved Africans and their descendants and Native Americans also lived in the colonies, with Native American genocide and forced migration continuing during this time period.
First Immigration Policy in the Newly independent United States of America
The first U.S. immigration law was the 1790 Naturalization Act, enacted only 2 years after the Constitution was ratified. It stipulated that only free white people could become naturalized. Children under age 21 of naturalized citizens were also eligible to become citizens. In practice, naturalization was granted to children of naturalized men, and women rarely became naturalized citizens. As early as 1795, anti-immigrant sentiment began growing in the new nation. This led to the residency requirement for naturalized citizens to be expanded from 2 to 5 years.
1800s – 1920s: Early U.S. Immigration
The U.S. encouraged immigration in the 19th and early 20th centuries. This open immigration stance enabled immigrants from many countries to escape war, poverty, food insecurity and religious and political persecution. At the same time, this broad receptiveness began to change when the Chinese became the earliest target of restrictive immigration law with the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. This laid the groundwork for additional restrictive policies against other Asian immigrants such as the Japanese and Koreans.
Immigrants were part of westward expansion, establishing homesteads in the Midwest. Immigrants and their children also provided much of the manual labor for the growth of the industrial revolution. They helped to build the nation’s infrastructure – railroads, canals, roads and shipping industries. They also supplied labor for mining, manufacturing and construction. Immigrant families also helped to expand new markets for manufactured goods, adding to the economy as both workers and consumers.
Immigration rates ramped up after the Civil War. Mostly European and Canadian in origin, the 1880s saw over 5 million new Americans come to its shores. In 1890, 14.8% of Americans were immigrants, the highest percentage at any point in U.S. history. Between 1900 and 1910, 8.2 million more immigrants arrived, with the peak of this wave hitting 1.25 million newcomers passing through Ellis Island in 1907. While immigrants before 1900 were primarily from Northern Europe, by the turn of the century large numbers of Eastern and Southern Europeans sought refuge in the U.S.
Record High Immigration Leads to a Backlash in the Early 20th Century
The shift to higher rates of non-English speaking immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe led to a backlash against immigration. This xenophobia was institutionalized with the passage of the Immigration Act of 1917, preventing immigration from most of South and Southeast Asia and the Middle East, the Emergency Quota Act of 1921 imposing a 3% quota on each of the countries of origin of the U.S. foreign born population and no cap on Western Hemisphere immigration, and the Immigration Act of 1924, which codified the Emergency Quota Act, explicitly to set quotas on Eastern and Southern European immigration. The 1924 law also permitted unlimited immigration from the Western Hemisphere, leading to the expansion of Latin American immigration.
1910s-1964: Mexican Immigrants and Americans - Changing Attitudes Towards Mexican Labor & the First Mass Deportations
The U.S. economy started booming in the 1910s and 20s while simultaneously Chinese and Japanese workers were leaving the U.S. due to anti-Asian policies and discrimination. These conditions resulted in increased labor needs, particularly in agriculture. Because there was no limits on Western Hemisphere immigration at that time, Mexicans came to the U.S. to fill the labor shortages. In the 1930s during the Great Depression when work became scarce, the U.S. government targeted and forcibly removed an estimated 1.5 to 2 million Mexicans living and working in the U.S. to open up the jobs they were occupying. Upwards of 60% of these “repratriated” to Mexico, as it was euphemitically called, were actually U.S. citizens.
World War II created a worker shortage, changing attitudes about the value of Mexican labor to the U.S. economy. In response, the U.S. and Mexican governments signed what was known as the Bracero Agreement in 1942, which created a Mexican guest worker program both to fill U.S. labor shortage needs and redress the forced removal of Mexicans and Mexican Americans during the 1930s. Bracero agreements were extended to 1964, with Mexican workers meeting labor shortages in both agriculture and railroad industries. The Bracero Program became the largest guest worker program in U.S. history, employing over 4 million Mexicans during the 22 year history. However, despite protocols to protect workers put in place by the U.S. government, the conditions under which Mexican guest workers labored were exploitative. Many employers underpayed workers or practiced outright wage theft, placed high surcharges on worker's’ housing and food, and submitted workers to dangerous working and living conditions. In response, labor leaders and activitists called for the discontinuation of the program. The U.S. government abruptly ended the Bracero Program in 1964 but did not replace it with a more humane programe, leaving millions of Mexican workers unemployed and with few job prospects in Mexico. Many Bracero program workers stayed in the U.S. to find other work.
There were also many Mexicans living and working in the U.S. who were not part of the Bracero Program, both legally and some illegally. After World War II, the number of undocumented Mexicans working in the U.S. grew alongside the Bracero Program. Public pressure for the government to respond, some of which was due to undocumented immigrants being blamed for the era’s social ills, grew. The mounting pressure led to President Eisenhower launching Operation Wetback from 1953-1954, a military-style, mass deportation effort across the Southwest U.S. Over 1.3 million Mexicans, once again some of whom were U.S. citizens, were violently deported, with some starving or dying along the way. "Operation Wetback” is now understood to have been a systematic violation of the human rights and dignity of Mexicans who were deported.
1960s: Ending Discrimination in Immigration Policy & Unintended Consequences
By the mid-20th century attitudes towards immigrants began to change. The Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed in 1943. While the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act upheld the national origins quota system, continuing to prioritize Western and Northern European immigration, it added Asian countries to the quota system. With the rise in the momentum of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, these laws were increasingly viewed as inherently discriminatory. President Kennedy made it an election promise to end the national origin quota system and President Lyndon Johnson enacted the late president’s vision into law with the passage of Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. This gave priority to skilled immigrants and family members of U.S. citizens and permanent residents. This policy opened the U.S. to immigrants from all corners of the world and reunited families. The population of the U.S. significantly diversified with the passage of this act. However, it was the first time that there was a cap imposed on Western Hemisphere immigration, which was particularly detrimental to the many Mexicans who had been living and working in the U.S. prior to 1965. Undocumented immigration began to expand due to this newly imposed cap.
1980s: Welcoming Refugees and the World’s Largest Immigration Amnesty
Refugees had been permitted to enter the U.S. at various times during the 20th century, for example, in response to the Mexican Revolution between 1910 and 1920, following World War II, and in the 1950s through 1970s when refugees and escapees from communist countries left their homes. A small number of refugees per year were permitted under the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. Following the Vietnam War and communist revolutions in Southeast Asia, there became support to increase the numbers of refugees permitted to enter the U.S. and to create a separate system to help make this a reality. The Refugee Act of 1980 was signed into law by President Jimmy Carter, enabling over 3 million refugees to resettle in the U.S.
In response to the growing number of undocumented immigrants, many of whom come from Mexico after the Bracero Program ended in 1964, President Ronald Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 that enabled 2.7 million undocumented immigrants to receive a green card and a pathway to citizenship. To date, this is the largest immigration amnesty in the world. Over 70% of those who befitted were Mexican, but people from all over the world applied for amnesty. Research has shown that amnesty increased formerly undocumented workers’ wages, educational opportunities, tax contributions, homeownership, and opening up of businesses, while lowering poverty rates.
1990: Expanding and Diversifying Immigration
The Immigration Act of 1990 signed by President George H.W. Bush revised the nation’s immigration laws for the first time since 1965. This law increased the cap on annual immigration, created a Diversity Visa lottery program to expand immigration from nations that had been underrepresented in American immigration to date, and expanded the number of skilled work visas. It also created the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program, allowing immigrants who could not return to their countries due to war or natural disaster to stay in the U.S. for a limited period of time. Salvadorans were the first immigrant group designated for TPS. Nearly 25 million immigrants have come to the U.S. since the passage of the 1990 law and, by 2019, the percentage of foreign-born people living in the U.S. was 13.7%, approaching the all-time high back in 1890. Today more than 45 million immigrants make the U.S. their home, with Mexicans, Indians, Chinese, Filipinos and Salvadorans making up the five largest immigrant groups.
The 1990s was also a decade of expanding safe haven for asylees and refugees. In 1990, the Lautenberg Amendment made it easier for people from the former Soviet Union, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam to gain refugee status. In 1991, the INS (now the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services) created the Asylum Officer Corps to become specialists in asylum policies and opened offices specifically for asylum seekers. Relief was also granted to Nicaraguans, Cubans, Guatemalans and Salvadorans who qualified to become lawful permanent residents or protection from deportation under the 1998 Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act. Finally, the 1998 Haitian Refugee Immigrant Fairness Act extended lawful permanent residency opportunities to Haitians asylees.
2012: Relief for Undocumented Young People
One of the goals of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA) was to stop the flow of undocumented immigrants coming into the U.S. In reality, the number increased to an estimated 11-12 million in the 21st century. First, IRCA did not permit people who came into the U.S. after 1982 from applying, leaving many undocumented immigrants who had spent several years in the U.S. without any options. Second, because more immigrants could petition family members living abroad, the wait lengthened considerably to up to 10 years, leading some family members to come illegally. Finally, the government underestimated the growth of unskilled labor sectors. Many employers in high needs sectors continued to hire undocumented low-skilled immigrants even though it was now illegal under IRCA to do so.
Since the early 21st century, there has been a desire to address the large number of undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. but despite a number of attempts at passing another immigration reform bill, Congress has failed to reach an agreeable solution. One program – Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) – was signed by President Barack Obama in 2012, giving temporary relief to young people who were brought to the U.S. as children.
To date, approximately 825,000 individuals have received DACA, allowing them to live, study and work in the U.S. legally. This program has increased the number of college degrees granted to DACA recipients and their access to jobs in professional careers. Their income has doubled, and their households contribute $760 million in mortgage payments and $2.5 billion in annual rental payments. These households also pay $6.2 billion in federal taxes and $3.3 billion in state and local taxes annually. Around 343,000 DACA recipients work in what the Department of Homeland Security considers essential industries. This includes nearly 20,000 educators, 34,000 healthcare workers, and 100,000 food industry workers. These roles are what allowed our country to make it through the pandemic.
Additional Online Immigration & Refugee Timelines
Council on Foreign Relations U.S. Postwar Immigration Policy
Library of Congress Immigration and Relocation in U.S. History
Pew Research - How U.S. immigration laws and rules have changed through history