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Immigration
Contents
Immigration >
Processing New Arrivals
> The Administration of Immigration > Immigration
-- Current U.S. and New York City
The Administration of Immigration
The U.S. Constitution placed the right to regulate
immigration in the hands of Congress as part of its responsibility
to regulate foreign trade, or so the Constitution was interpreted
by the Supreme Court. City and state governments frequently attempted
to restrict the flood of new arrivals, but the courts repeatedly
declared such legislation unconstitutional.
The most important U.S. port of entry was New York City. When immigration
was at its peak, New York received nearly three-fourths of the European
immigrants to the United States. In 1882, the city finally balked
at having to administer, at its own cost, something it could not
regulate. It threatened to close Castle Garden (where immigrants
were processed before Ellis Island opened in 1892) if the federal
government didn't provide financial support. Congress quickly imposed
a 50 cent head tax on all immigrants. Then in 1891 the federal government
created the Immigration and Naturalization Service to handle the
administration of all immigration to the United States.
Congressional Restrictions
The first congressional legislation restricting immigration -
the Chinese Exclusion Act - was passed in 1882. It denied Chinese
laborers entrance to the United States and forbade naturalization
of those already in America. The Act was renewed a number of times
and remained in effect until 1943.
Race or nationality based immigration restrictions affected other
Asian groups soon after the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act,
but Europeans remained unaffected for some time. Congress did
bar certain classes of "undesirables" from immigrating
- such as convicts, lunatics, alcoholics, vagrants, and anarchists,
among others - beginning in 1882. But Europeans were basically
allowed to immigrate freely to the United States, regardless of
national origin, until the 1920s.
The campaign for restricting European immigration by nationality
began in the late 1880s. As it became apparent that the sources
of immigration were shifting from northern and western to southern
and eastern Europe, American nativism reared its ugly head. Fueled
by the theories of eugenics - a racist pseudo-science dividing
people into "superior" and "inferior" races
- and a general fear of the urban working class, the restrictionists
(who were mostly of British descent) first lobbied Congress for
laws requiring immigrants to pass literacy tests. The newer immigrants,
who had lower literacy rates than the old ones, were the clear
targets of this legislation. But literacy requirements, first
put before Congress in 1896, weren't enacted until 1917. The restrictionists
were opposed by powerful business leaders in need of cheap labor
and immigrants, both old and new, who lobbied hard against any
immigration restrictions.
Johnson-Reed Act of 1924
Following the First World War and the Red Scare
of 1919-20, the restrictionists achieved a long-lasting victory.
In 1921, the Quota Act, passed by Congress, placed ceilings on
the number of immigrants admitted from each country outside of
the Western Hemisphere. Then the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 limited
the total European immigration to 150,000 per year, and reduced
each nationality's allowance to 2 percent of its U.S. population
in 1890. Because significantly fewer Southern and Eastern Europeans
were recorded in the 1890 census than in 1920, this effectively
reduced immigration from these regions while making more room
than was necessary for countries like Great Britain. In 1929,
when the quota system was finalized, the ratio of immigrants admittable
from northern and western Europe versus southern and eastern Europe
was roughly five to one.
Immigration since 1924
In 1924, America had effectively shut its "Golden
Door." Fewer than 350,000 Europeans immigrated to America
during the 1930s, and a high percentage of these were political
refugees, particularly from nazi Germany and, at the end of the
decade, occupied Europe. In general, these immigrants came from
a much higher socio-economic class than their predecessors. They
included no less than twelve Nobel Prize winners.
Not until the passage of the Immigration Act of 1965 was the quota
system abolished and relatives of U.S. citizens exempted from
most immigration restrictions. After 1965, the character of immigration
changed significantly yet again. The number of European immigrants
was surpassed by those coming from Asia and Latin America, particularly
the Caribbean Basin. This is still true today.
Public Charge Policy
During the Great Depression, letters sent to Washington,
D.C. expressed concern over job competition between "foreigners"
and native-born Americans. One way in which the federal government
attempted to address already staggering unemployment was to prevent
the arrival of new immigrant workers on the labor market.1
Using an obscure clause in the Immigration Act of 1917 (known
as the LPC clause), the federal government sanctioned the denial
of entry to any immigrant "likely to become a public charge."
While the State Department noted that the LPC clause was not invoked
during normal times when able-bodied immigrants could realistically
expect to find remunerative jobs in the United States, they argued
for its present use, stating that because "there is no reasonable
prospect of prompt employment for an alien laborer or artisan,"
immigrants needed to prove that they would not require financial
support from the government. As a result, the U.S. embassy of
each country was instructed to determine whether or not the prospective
immigrant was likely to become a public charge at any time after
their arrival.2
Never authorized by executive order, the LPC clause was instead
brought into effect by a 1930 press release from President Herbert
Hoover. Press reaction in the United States was generally favorable.
By November 1930, Secretary of State Stimson reported that immigration
figures for the first month under the newly-invoked policy permitted
a projection of 135,000 fewer immigrants in 1931.3
There was, however, popular opposition to the public charge policy.
In New York City, a group of Jewish women who were American citizens
formed the Citizen Wives Organization to win admission for their
alien husbands. In 1931, a letter written to Secretary of State
Stimson informed him that the young women had married while abroad
with the expectation that their new husbands could soon join them
in America. These women objected that, despite their own secure
financial positions, their newlywed husbands were being refused
visas under the LPC clause for fear they would become public charges.4
Despite the objections of the Citizen Wives Organization and other
opponents, the public charge provision continued to be used during
the 1930s as a means of curtailing immigration. Introduced in
1930 as a temporary measure, during the 1932 campaign for the
White House President Hoover touted the LPC clause as one of the
most successful of his efforts to combat the Depression. In later
years, the Roosevelt Administration, confronting increasing numbers
of refugees from war-torn Europe and Asia, began to handle some
aspects of immigration law more sensitively. However, despite
the efforts of the Depart of Labor to amend the interpretation
of immigration law, little was done to change the basic LPC policy
itself.5
Voluntary Repatriation
Policy
Along similar lines, in 1931 the Hoover Administration
began financing the voluntary repatriation of destitute immigrations.
Invoking Section 23 of the Immigration Law of 1917, between spring
1931 and 1940 the federal government assisted the voluntary repatriation
of 9,549 aliens, including 1, 322 from New York. Thus, while the
government's public charge policy restricted tens of thousands
of potential immigrants in only its first year, the voluntary
repatriation policy accounted for only a small number of removals.6
An equally dismal economic situation in Europe helped make the
policy less successful than initially expected. Reports from abroad
painted a bleak picture of escalating unemployment, scarce housing,
and nations reluctant to receive destitute returnees. Both repatriated
immigrants and immigrant aid societies in Europe did not recommend
repatriation. Potential returnees with native-born children or
spouses who were American citizens faced the painful question
of whether or not to leave their families behind-the law only
provided federal funds to transport aliens back to their countries
of origin. In addition, many male returnees faced the threat of
enforced military service as many European governments readied
their armed forces for a possible war. Those who did return not
only found few available jobs, but experienced difficulty in readapting
to life in their old homes.7
Both the Hoover and Roosevelt administrations viewed the size
of the alien population in the U.S. during the Great Depression
as dangerous. In the face of skyrocketing unemployment and potential
social disorder, both the public charge policy and the assisted
repatriation policy were invoked to reduce the nation's alien
population. In the wake of the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924, both
programs further curtailed the settlement of new immigrants in
the U.S., resulting in a smaller and older foreign-born population.
More importantly, perhaps, these measures seemed to suggest that
during the 1930s Americans were more determined than ever to prevent
new immigrants from arriving on their shores.8
Immigration and Nationality
Act, or the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952
The McCarran-Walter Act maintained the highly discriminatory
restrictive quotas of the 1920s, still favoring northern and western
Europeans, but also marked the beginning of some important shifts
in U.S. immigration policy. The national origins quota system
applied to Eastern Hemisphere nations and the annual limit of
immigrants was about 156,000. Asian immigration was extremely
restricted by the limit applied to the "Asia-Pacific triangle"
of 2,000 persons annually. Asians were further restricted as visas
for them were awarded based on race and ethnicity, not solely
nativity. Independent Western Hemisphere nations, on the other
hand, were not subject to any quota restrictions continuing the
"good neighbor" policy of the 1930s.
While continuing the discriminatory practices of the immigration
laws of the previous three decades, there was the beginning of
the shift toward an emphasis on family reunification and occupational
skills. Spouses and unmarried minor children of U.S. citizens
were exempt from all quota restrictions and focus was placed on
the skills needed in the U.S. labor force. These trends were expanded
in the amendments of 1965.
Immigration and Nationality
Act amendments - 1965 and on
The Immigration and Nationality Act has been amended
a number of times since its conception; the most dramatic amendments
were in 1965 when the national origins quota system was abolished.
A visa preference system, based on family relations was put into
place for Eastern Hemisphere countries with an annual limit of
170,000 including an annual cap of 20,000 per country. A limitation
was also placed on Western Hemisphere countries for the first
time, with an annual limit of 120,000, though no per-country restrictions
were enacted. In 1976, per country limits were applied to the
Western Hemisphere, followed in 1978 by the change to an annual
worldwide limit of 290,000 visas. Discrimination on the basis
of nationality was essentially eliminated. The emphasis on family
reunification, however, limited immigration from Western Europe
to a certain degree, and benefited the more recent immigrants.
Immigration Reform and
Control Act of 1986
This act gave amnesty to approximately three million
undocumented residents. For the first time, the law punishes employers
who hire persons who are here illegally. The aim of employer sanctions
is to make it difficult for the undocumented to find employment.
The law has a side effect: employment discrimination against those
who look or sound "foreign."
Immigration Act of 1990
In 1990, legislation was passed approving an annual
immigration level of 675,000 per year based on visa preferences
including a combination of family reunification (480,000), occupational
skill and job creation preferences (140,000), and a "diversity"
visa lottery (55,000).
Following is an overview of the breakdown of these visa preferences:
Family Based Immigrant Visas apply to spouses of lawful permanent
U.S. citizens/residents, their immediate relatives (spouses, children,
parents, brothers and sisters), or for the fiancé of a
U.S. citizen or resident (they would receive a nonimmigrant visa
and would be able to apply for an immigrant visa upon marriage).
Employment Based Immigrant Visas include a number of situations.
It can be obtained with company sponsorship after demonstration
of the inability to find a legal resident or citizen to perform
the job or when it has been determined that there are not sufficient
United States workers who are able, willing, qualified, and available
for certain occupations, and that the wages and working conditions
of United States workers similarly employed will not be adversely
affected by the employment of aliens. Certain religious workers,
business owners and those planning to invest and create employment
in the U.S., may be eligible as well.
Diversity visas are available by lottery to people from countries
with low immigration rates. Usually the low rate is a result of
the 1965 shift to family-based visa preference. The eligible countries
change from year to year.
Illegal Immigration Reform
and Immigrant Responsibility Act-1996
Enacted to discourage illegal immigration, this
act barred anyone who had been living illegally in the US for
more than six months from returning for a period of 3-10 years.
Border enforcement was increased and it became more difficult
for undocumented immigrants to adjust their status. Provisions
were passed requiring legal resident family members of immigrants
to sponsor them financially, thus imposing barriers to the availability
of family unification visas. Residents were required to show that
they earned at least 125% of the federal poverty level and to
sign a document binding them legally to support the potential
immigrant family member. This had the effect of preventing lower-paid
workers from reuniting with their families. Congress also passed
legislation that citizenship become a condition of eligibility
for public benefits for most immigrants. The period of the early
1990s was one of a persistent recession in the US which contributes
to the call for stricter immigration restrictions.
In the following years, provisions were modified to mitigate some
of the restrictions of 1996. Some public benefits are restored
for some elderly and disabled immigrants who had been receiving
them prior to the 1996 changes, and eventually the benefits are
extended to more groups. In 2000, Congress continues to move incrementally
in a pro-immigrant direction, passing the compromise Legal Immigration
Family Equity Act, which creates a narrow window for immigrants
with family or employer sponsors to adjust to legal status in
the U.S. For the second time in three years, Congress significantly
raises the ceiling for skilled temporary workers.
1 Mary Anne Thatcher,
Immigrants and the 1930s: Ethnicity and Alienage in Depression and
On-Coming War (New York: Garland Press, 1990).
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid.
6 Mary Anne Thatcher, Immigrants and the 1930s: Ethnicity and
Alienage in Depression and On-Coming War (New York: Garland
Press, 1990).
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid.
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