History of immigration laws in America

by Alia Beard Rau - Jul. 4, 2010 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic

A brief history of immigration law in the United States:

1790 - Congress establishes a process enabling people born abroad to become U.S. citizens.


1875 - Congress passes its first restrictive immigration law. It prohibits the immigration of criminals and prostitutes.

1882 - Congress passes the Chinese Exclusion Act, which prohibits Chinese laborers from coming to the U.S. It is repealed in 1943. Congress expands its list of unacceptable immigrants to include "convicts, lunatics, idiots and persons likely to become public charges."

1913 - California's Alien Land Law prohibits "aliens ineligible for citizenship," which at the time included Chinese, Japanese and Korean immigrants, from owning property in the state. Ten other states follow with similar laws over the next decade. In 1952, the California Supreme Court rules the law unconstitutional.

1917 - Congress expands the 1882 list of unacceptable immigrants to also cover alcoholics, beggars, criminals and the "mentally and physically defective." It also establishes a literacy test for immigrants and bars people living in most of eastern Asia and the Pacific Islands from immigrating to the U.S.

1921 - Congress creates a quota system for visas based on an individual's country of birth. It limits the number of annual immigrants from Europe to 3 percent of the number of foreign-born members of that same nationality in the U.S. during the 1910 census.

1924 - Congress reduces the limits to 2 percent of the number of foreign-born members of each nationality in the U.S. during the 1890 census, favoring immigrants from northwestern Europe, which had higher numbers based on the earlier census, further discriminating against the newer immigrants from southern and eastern Europe and barring immigrants from the Far East, which had no representation in the 1890 census.

1930-1939 - A joint local and federal effort called Mexican Repatriation includes raids, roundups and the denial of jobs to Mexicans. Hundreds of thousands of immigrants, including U.S. citizens, return to Mexico either forcibly or on their own.

1942-1964 - The Bracero program allows Mexican nationals to legally come to the U.S. for temporary agricultural work.

1952 - Congress makes some tweaks to the quota system and abolishes remaining exclusions against Asians.

1954 - A joint local and federal effort called Operation Wetback includes raids and identification checks. Hundreds of thousands of immigrants, including U.S. citizens, return to Mexico either forcibly or on their own.
1965 - Congress replaces the quota system with one that gives preference to individuals who have either special skills or relatives who are U.S. citizens.

1986 - Congress makes it illegal to knowingly hire illegal immigrants, grants amnesty to certain immigrants who entered the U.S. before 1982 and creates a citizenship path for certain agricultural workers.

1994 - California voters enact Proposition 187, which prohibits providing of public educational, welfare, and health services to undocumented immigrants. The courts later declare the law unconstitutional.

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