United States Immigration Debate

Immigration has been a major source of population growth and cultural change throughout much of the history of the United States. In absolute numbers, the United States has a larger immigrant population than any other country in the world, with 47 million immigrants as of 2015. This represents 19.1% of the 244 million international migrants worldwide, and 14.4% of the United States' population.

According to the 2016 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, the United States admitted a total of 1.18 million legal immigrants (618k new arrivals, 565k status adjustments) in 2016. Of these, 48% were the immediate relatives of United States citizens, 20% were family-sponsored, 13% were refugees or asylum seekers, 12% were employment-based preferences, 4.2% were part of the Diversity Immigrant Visa program, 1.4% were victims of a crime (U1) or their family members were (U2 to U5), and 1.0% who were granted the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) for Iraqis and Afghans employed by the United States Government. The remaining 0.4% included small numbers from several other categories, including 0.2% who were granted suspension of deportation as an immediate relative of a citizen (Z13); persons admitted under the Nicaraguan and Central American Relief Act; children born after the issuance of a parent's visa; and certain parolees from the former Soviet Union, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam who were denied refugee status.

Between 1921 and 1965, policies such as the national origins formula limited immigration and naturalization opportunities for people from areas outside Western Europe. Exclusion laws enacted as early as the 1880s generally prohibited or severely restricted immigration from Asia, and quota laws enacted in the 1920s curtailed Southern and Eastern European immigration. The civil rights movement led to the replacement of these ethnic quotas with per-country limits for family-sponsored and employment-based preference visas. in 1965. Since then, the number of first-generation immigrants living in the United States has quadrupled. The total immigrant population has stalled in recent years, especially since the election of Donald Trump and the COVID-19 pandemic. Census estimates show 45.3 million foreign born residents in March 2018 and 45.4 million in September 2021; the lowest 3 year increase in decades.

Research suggests that immigration is beneficial to the United States economy. With few exceptions, the evidence suggests that on average, immigration has positive economic effects on the native population, but it is mixed as to whether low-skilled immigration adversely affects low-skilled natives. Studies also show that immigrants have lower crime rates than natives in the United States.*
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* The economic, social, and political aspects of immigration have caused controversy regarding such issues as maintaining ethnic homogeneity, workers for employers versus jobs for non-immigrants, settlement patterns, impact on upward social mobility, crime, and voting behavior.

History

American immigration history can be viewed in four epochs: the colonial period, the mid-19th century, the start of the 20th century, and post-1965. Each period brought distinct national groups, races and ethnicities to the United States.

Colonial period

During the 17th century, approximately 400,000 English people migrated to colonial America. They comprised 83.5% of the white population at the time of the first census in 1790. From 1700 to 1775, between 350,000 and 500,000 Europeans immigrated: estimates vary in sources. Regarding English settlers of the 18th century, one source says 52,000 English migrated during the period of 1701 to 1775, although this figure is likely too low. 400,000–450,000 of the 18th century migrants were Scots, Scots-Irish from Ulster, Germans, Swiss, French Huguenots. Over half of all European immigrants to Colonial America during the 17th and 18th centuries arrived as indentured servants. They numbered 350,000. From 1770 to 1775 (the latter year being when the American Revolutionary War began), 7,000 English, 15,000 Scots, 13,200 Scots-Irish, 5,200 Germans, and 3,900 Irish Catholics migrated to the Thirteen Colonies. According to Butler (2000), up to half of English migrants in the 18th century may have been young, single men who were well-skilled, trained artisans, like the Huguenots. Based on scholarly analysis of names recorded at the time of the first census in 1790, ''English'' was the largest single ancestry in all U.S. states, ranging from a high of 82% in Massachusetts to a low of 35.3% in Pennsylvania, where Germans accounted for 33.3%.

Origins of immigrant stock in 1790

The Census Bureau published preliminary estimates of the origins of the colonial American population by scholarly classification of the names of all White heads of families recorded in the 1790 Census in a 1909 report entitled ''A Century of Population Growth''. These initial estimates were scrutinized and rejected following passage of the Immigration Act of 1924, when the government required accurate official estimates of the origins of the colonial stock population as basis for computing National Origins Formula immigration quotas in the 1920s. In 1927, proposed quotas based on CPG figures were rejected by the President's Committee chaired by the Secretaries of State, Commerce, and Labor, with the President reporting to Congress "the statistical and historical information available raises grave doubts as to the whole value of these computations as the basis for the purposes intended". Concluding that CPG "had not been accepted by scholars as better than a first approximation of the truth", an extensive scientific revision was produced, in collaboration with the American Council of Learned Societies, as basis for computing contemporary legal immigration quotas. For this task scholars estimated the proportion of names of unique derivation from each of the major national stocks present in the population as of the 1790 census. The final results, later also published in the journal of the American Historical Association, are presented below:

Historians estimate that fewer than one million immigrants moved to the United States from Europe between 1600 and 1799. By comparison, in the first federal census, in 1790, the population of the United States was enumerated to be 3,929,214.

Early United States era

The Naturalization Act of 1790 limited naturalization to "free white persons"; it was expanded to include black people in the 1860s and Asian people in the 1950s. This made the United States an outlier, since laws that made racial distinctions were uncommon in the world in the 18th century.

In the early years of the United States, immigration (not counting the enslaved, who were treated as merchandise rather than people) was fewer than 8,000 people a year, including French refugees from the slave revolt in Haiti. Legal importation of enslaved African was prohibited after 1808, though many were smuggled in to sell. After 1820, immigration gradually increased. From 1836 to 1914, over 30 million Europeans migrated to the United States. The death rate on these transatlantic voyages was high, during which one in seven travelers died.

After an initial wave of immigration from China following the California Gold Rush, Congress passed its first immigration law, the Page Act of 1875 which banned Chinese women. This was followed by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, banning virtually all immigration from China until the law's repeal in 1943. In the late 1800s, immigration from other Asian countries, especially to the West Coast, became more common.

Exclusion Era

The peak year of European immigration was in 1907, when 1,285,349 persons entered the country. By 1910, 13.5 million immigrants were living in the United States.

While the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 had already excluded immigrants from China, the immigration of people from Asian countries in addition to China was banned by the Immigration Act of 1917, also known as the Asiatic Barred Zone Act, which also banned homosexuals, people with intellectual disability, and people with an anarchist worldview.James Whitman, ''Hitler's American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law'', (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017), p. 35 The Emergency Quota Act was enacted in 1921, limiting immigration from the Eastern Hemisphere by national quotas equal to 3 percent of the number of foreign-born from each nation in the 1910 census. The temporary quota system was superseded by the National Origins Formula of the Immigration Act of 1924, which computed national quotas as a fraction of 150,000 in proportion to the national origins of the entire White American population as of the 1920 census, except those having origins in the nonquota countries of the Western Hemisphere (which remained unrestricted).

While the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 had already excluded immigrants from China, the immigration of people from Asian countries in addition to China was banned by the Immigration Act of 1917, also known as the Asiatic Barred Zone Act, which also banned homosexuals, people with intellectual disability, and people with an anarchist worldview. The Emergency Quota Act was enacted in 1921, followed by the Immigration Act of 1924. The 1924 Act was aimed at further restricting immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, particularly Italian, Slavic, and Jewish people, who had begun to enter the country in large numbers beginning in the 1890s.Old fears over new faces
", ''The Seattle Times'', September 21, 2006 The 1924 Act also consolidated the prohibition of Asian immigration.

Origins of immigrant stock in 1920

The National Origins Formula was a unique computation which attempted to measure the total contributions of "blood" from each national origin as a share of the total stock of White Americans in 1920, counting immigrants, children of immigrants, and the grandchildren of immigrants (and later generations), in addition to estimating the colonial stock population descended from the population who had immigrated in the colonial period and were enumerated in the 1790 census. European Americans remained predominant, although there were shifts toward Southern, Central, and Eastern Europe from immigration in the period 1790 to 1920. The restrictive immigration quota system established by the Immigration Act of 1924, revised and re-affirmed by the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, sought to preserve this demographic makeup of America by allotting quotas in proportion to how much blood each national origin had contributed to the total stock of the population in 1920, as presented below:

Immigration patterns of the 1930s were affected by the Great Depression. In the final prosperous year, 1929, there were 279,678 immigrants recorded, but in 1933, only 23,068 moved to the U.S. In the early 1930s, more people emigrated from the United States than to it. The U.S. government sponsored a Mexican Repatriation program which was intended to encourage people to voluntarily move to Mexico, but thousands were deported against their will. Altogether, approximately 400,000 Mexicans were repatriated; half of them were US citizens. Most of the Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazis and World War II were barred from coming to the United States. In the post-war era, the Justice Department launched Operation Wetback, under which 1,075,168 Mexicans were deported in 1954.

Since 1965

The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, also known as the Hart-Cellar Act, abolished the system of national-origin quotas. By equalizing immigration policies, the act resulted in new immigration from non-European nations, which changed the ethnic demographics of the United States. In 1970, 60% of immigrants were from Europe; this decreased to 15% by 2000. In 1990, George H. W. Bush signed the Immigration Act of 1990, which increased legal immigration to the United States by 40%. In 1991, Bush signed the Armed Forces Immigration Adjustment Act 1991, allowing foreign service members who had served 12 or more years in the US Armed Forces to qualify for permanent residency and, in some cases, citizenship.

In November 1994, California voters passed Proposition 187 amending the state constitution, denying state financial aid to illegal immigrants. The federal courts voided this change, ruling that it violated the federal constitution.

Appointed by Bill Clinton, the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform recommended reducing legal immigration from about 800,000 people per year to approximately 550,000. While an influx of new residents from different cultures presents some challenges, "the United States has always been energized by its immigrant populations", said President Bill Clinton in 1998. "America has constantly drawn strength and spirit from wave after wave of immigrants... They have proved to be the most restless, the most adventurous, the most innovative, the most industrious of people."

In 2001, President George W. Bush discussed an accord with Mexican President Vincente Fox. Due to the September 11 attacks, the possible accord did not occur. From 2005 to 2013, the US Congress discussed various ways of controlling immigration. The Senate and House were unable to reach an agreement.

Nearly 14 million immigrants entered the United States from 2000 to 2010, and over one million persons were naturalized as U.S. citizens in 2008. The per-country limit applies the same maximum on the number of visas to all countries regardless of their population and has therefore had the effect of significantly restricting immigration of persons born in populous nations such as Mexico, China, India, and the Philippines—the leading countries of origin for legally admitted immigrants to the United States in 2013; nevertheless, China, India, and Mexico were the leading countries of origin for immigrants overall to the United States in 2013, regardless of legal status, according to a U.S. Census Bureau study.

Nearly 8 million people immigrated to the United States from 2000 to 2005; 3.7 million of them entered without papers. In 1986 president Ronald Reagan signed immigration reform that gave amnesty to 3 million undocumented immigrants in the country. Hispanic immigrants suffered job losses during the late-2000s recession, but since the recession's end in June 2009, immigrants posted a net gain of 656,000 jobs. Over 1 million immigrants were granted legal residence in 2011.

For those who enter the US illegally across the Mexico–United States border and elsewhere, migration is difficult, expensive and dangerous. Virtually all undocumented immigrants have no avenues for legal entry to the United States due to the restrictive legal limits on green cards, and lack of immigrant visas for low-skilled workers. Participants in debates on immigration in the early twenty-first century called for increasing enforcement of existing laws governing illegal immigration to the United States, building a barrier along some or all of the Mexico-U.S. border, or creating a new guest worker program. Through much of 2006 the country and Congress was engaged in a debate about these proposals. few of these proposals had become law, though a partial border fence had been approved and subsequently canceled.

Modern reform attempts

Beginning with Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, presidents from both political parties have steadily increased the number of border patrol agents and instituted harsher punitive measures for immigration violations. Examples of these policies include Ronald Reagan's Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 and the Clinton-era Prevention Through Deterrence strategy. The sociologist Douglas Massey has argued that these policies have succeeded at producing a perception of border enforcement but have largely failed at preventing emigration from Latin America. Notably, rather than curtailing illegal immigration, the increase in border patrol agents decreased circular migration across the U.S.–Mexico border, thus increasing the population of Hispanics in the U.S.

Presidents from both parties have employed anti-immigrant rhetoric to appeal to their political base or to garner bi-partisan support for their policies. While Republicans like Reagan and Donald Trump have led the way in framing Hispanic immigrants as criminals, Douglas Massey points out that "the current moment of open racism and xenophobia could not have happened with Democratic acquiescence". For example, while lobbying for his 1986 immigration bill, Reagan framed unauthorized immigration as a "national security" issue and warned that "terrorists and subversives are just two days' driving time" from the border. Later presidents, including Democrats Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, used similar "security" rhetoric in their efforts to court Republican support for comprehensive immigration reform. In his 2013 State of the Union Address, Obama said "real reform means strong border security, and we can build on the progress my administration has already madeputting more boots on the southern border than at any time in our history".

Trump administration policies

ICE reports that it removed 240,255 immigrants in fiscal year 2016, as well as 226,119 in FY2017 and 256,085 in FY2018. Citizens of Central American countries (including Mexico) made up over 90% of removals in FY2017 and over 80% in FY2018.

In January 2017, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order temporarily suspending entry to the United States by nationals of seven Muslim-majority countries. It was replaced by another executive order in March 2017 and by a presidential proclamation in September 2017, with various changes to the list of countries and exemptions. The orders were temporarily suspended by federal courts but later allowed to proceed by the Supreme Court, pending a definite ruling on their legality. Another executive order called for the immediate construction of a wall across the U.S.–Mexico border, the hiring of 5,000 new border patrol agents and 10,000 new immigration officers, and federal funding penalties for sanctuary cities.

The "zero-tolerance" policy was put in place in 2018, which legally allows children to be separated from adults unlawfully entering the United States. This is justified by labeling all adults that enter unlawfully as criminals, thus subjecting them to criminal prosecution. The Trump Administration also argued that its policy had precedent under the Obama Administration, which had opened family detention centers in response to migrants increasingly using children as a way to get adults into the country. However, the Obama Administration detained families together in administrative, rather than criminal, detention.

Other policies focused on what it means for an asylum seeker to claim credible fear. To further decrease the amount of asylum seekers into the United States, Attorney General Jeff Sessions released a decision that restricts those fleeing gang violence and domestic abuse as "private crime", therefore making their claims ineligible for asylum. These new policies that have been put in place are putting many lives at risk, to the point that the ACLU has officially sued Jeff Sessions along with other members of the Trump Administration. The ACLU claims that the policies that are currently being put in place by this Presidential Administration is undermining the fundamental human rights of those immigrating into the United States, specifically women. They also claim that these policies violate decades of settle asylum law.

In April 2020, President Trump said he will sign an executive order to temporarily suspend immigration to the United States because of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States.

Origins of the U.S. immigrant population, 1960–2016

Note: "Other Latin America" includes Central America, South America and the Caribbean.

;Refugee numbers

According to the Department of State, in the 2016 fiscal year 84,988 refugees were accepted into the US from around the world. In the fiscal year of 2017, 53,691 refugees were accepted to the US. There was a significant decrease after Trump took office; it continued in the fiscal year of 2018 when only 22,405 refugees were accepted into the US. This displays a massive drop in acceptance of refugees since the Trump Administration has been in place.

On September 26, 2019, The Trump administration announced it plans to allow only 18,000 refugees to resettle in the United States in the 2020 fiscal year, its lowest level since the modern program began in 1980.

In 2020 The Trump administration announces that it plans to slash refugee admissions to U.S. for 2021 to a record low, 15,000 refugees down from a cap of 18,000 for 2020. This is the fourth consecutive year of declining refugee admissions under the Trump term.

Contemporary immigration

, approximately half of immigrants living in the United States are from Mexico and other Latin American countries. Many Central Americans are fleeing because of desperate social and economic circumstances in their countries. Some believe that the large number of Central American refugees arriving in the United States can be explained as a "blowback" to policies such as United States military interventions and covert operations that installed or maintained in power authoritarian leaders allied with wealthy land owners and multinational corporations who stop family farming and democratic efforts, which have caused drastically sharp social inequality, wide-scale poverty and rampant crime. Economic austerity dictated by neoliberal policies imposed by the International Monetary Fund and its ally, the U.S., has also been cited as a driver of the dire social and economic conditions, as has the U.S. " War on Drugs", which has been understood as fueling murderous gang violence in the region. Another major migration driver from Central America (Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador) are crop failures, which are (partly) caused by climate change. "The current debate... is almost totally about what to do about immigrants when they get here. But the 800-pound gorilla that's missing from the table is what we have been doing there that brings them here, that drives them here", according to Jeff Faux, an economist who is a distinguished fellow at the Economic Policy Institute.

Until the 1930s most legal immigrants were male. By the 1990s women accounted for just over half of all legal immigrants. Contemporary immigrants tend to be younger than the native population of the United States, with people between the ages of 15 and 34 substantially overrepresented. Immigrants are also more likely to be married and less likely to be divorced than native-born Americans of the same age.

Immigrants are likely to move to and live in areas populated by people with similar backgrounds. This phenomenon has remained true throughout the history of immigration to the United States. Seven out of ten immigrants surveyed by Public Agenda in 2009 said they intended to make the U.S. their permanent home, and 71% said if they could do it over again they would still come to the US. In the same study, 76% of immigrants say the government has become stricter on enforcing immigration laws since the September 11, 2001 attacks ("9/11"), and 24% report that they personally have experienced some or a great deal of discrimination.

Public attitudes about immigration in the U.S. were heavily influenced in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. After the attacks, 52% of Americans believed that immigration was a good thing overall for the U.S., down from 62% the year before, according to a 2009 Gallup poll. A 2008 Public Agenda survey found that half of Americans said tighter controls on immigration would do "a great deal" to enhance U.S. national security. Harvard political scientist and historian Samuel P. Huntington argued in his 2004 book '' Who Are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity'' that a potential future consequence of continuing massive immigration from Latin America, especially Mexico, could lead to the bifurcation of the United States.

The estimated population of illegal Mexican immigrants in the US decreased from approximately 7 million in 2007 to 6.1 million in 2011 Commentators link the reversal of the immigration trend to the economic downturn that started in 2008 and which meant fewer available jobs, and to the introduction of tough immigration laws in many states. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, the net immigration of Mexican born persons had stagnated in 2010, and tended toward going into negative figures.

More than 80 cities in the United States, including Washington D.C., New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, San Diego, San Jose, Salt Lake City, Phoenix, Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, Detroit, Jersey City