In the Internet World, a look at the present through the Eyes of the Past: United States Immigration Policy Past and Present
The research focuses on the significance of immigration in the American history and how the United States maintains its reputation as the most open immigration policy in the world. Since the beginning of the United States, immigration laws of the country have been enacted, reformed and repealed. These laws have not only demonstrated the needs of the time but has also represented political statements of the perception of people that have rotated back and forth from favorable to intimidating. This research paper aims at glancing at the immigration policies and the relevant rules that have been formed since its inception to the challenges that it face in the contemporary era. Since the founding of the republic, the Americans and their legislators have always taken into consideration the benefits that are related to ushering new citizens from all over the world against the benefits of restricting immigration, subjecting the activities of the foreign born in the USA to monitoring and surveillance and narrowing the path to citizenship.
The immigration policies of the United States of America persist to undergo changes over time and the issues that are considered while developing such policies include the role of the immigrant in labor force, rates of immigration to the US and the growing concerns relating to terrorisms. The primary question to consider is the fairness of the policies so long it considers the immigrants and benefits of the United States. The research method that will be used to obtain information about development in the immigration policies would be secondary research method. This is because secondary sources include various articles, journals, books, etc which ensures certainty and accuracy as the former researchers have relied upon such books, articles to conduct their research. Hence, to conduct the research, secondary research methodology shall be a reliable and valid source.
The research shall also include legislations that act as evidence for the development of the immigration policies over the years, in the United States. It shall also include the impact of the policies on the nation and the nationals over the years. Since the research shall include the quality of fairness I the policies that have been developed over the years, it shall use a qualitative analysis of the immigration policies in the USA.
This research examines the various immigration policies that have been developed in the United States and the changes the policies have undergone since past to this contemporary era. The country commenced regulating immigration as soon as it gained independence from Great Britain and the laws enacted since it independence have demonstrated migrant and politics flows of that time. The legislations enacted earlier tends to impose constraints that proved to be favorable for the Europeans but legislations enforced in the year 1965 unlocked the doors to immigrants from the other parts of the world. In the contemporary era, presidential and legal actions have been formulated taking into account issues like unauthorized immigration, refugees and terrorism.
The main aim and objectives of this research is as follows:
The author of this book has aimed at addressing the essential questions ‘who immigrates’ and ‘why people immigrate’. The author addresses the effects of immigration, firstly, on the destination country and thereafter the source country. This book aims at providing relevant information and theories on immigration and provides empirical evidence to support such information and theories.
The author discussed about the immigration policy of the United States of America. It entails about the stringent measures that has been undertaken by America since the year 1980 to prevent illegal immigration to the country. The author talks about the lack of reform in respect of immigration policy which results in a conflict between the State and the Federal level. The main purpose of the author was to demonstrate how immigration policy has been influenced and its impact of such changes on the country in the past as well as its future impact on the country.
The author of the book talks about the measures undertaken by America in the wake of 9/11, where the country created the Department of Homeland Security to prevent any further terrorist attack in the country in the future. This led to an increase in the immigration law enforcement- raids, deportations and detentions and analyses the impact of such stringent US immigration policies on human right. The author also talks about the consequences of the immigration policies on the families, communities as well as on the citizens of the country.
The author critically analyzes the impact of social capital on immigrant entrepreneurship and the high-value added immigrant entrepreneurship and he further discusses about the implications of policymaking.
The author laid emphasis on the citizenship and assimilation as a new perspective that is marked as a turn away from post-national and multicultural perspectives. On pages, 110-129, the author talks about how the migrants in the contemporary era are concurrently transnationalising and assimilating.
The author of this book takes about the gap between the policy outcomes and goals that exists in major destination countries such as US, Australia, Canada, etc. It talks about the tension that was formed by post-colonial immigration and how the countries have initiated measures to exercise control over the legal and illegal flows of low-skilled workers.
This scholarly article examines the attitude of the Americans towards immigration. One pages 1 and 2 of the article, it is stated that where Americans have a positive perspective about educated immigrants and favors them in high status jobs while they do not favor immigrants who lacks work plan, or do not have English proficiency or have entered into the country without authorization.
This book reflects a deeply stimulating work of the author who attempted to explain how and why illegal immigration became one of the significant concerns in the US immigration policy process that developed ideas about practices and ideas about race, state authority and citizenship in the contemporary era.
This book talks about the significant role that compassionate migration can play in the context of migration patterns prevalent in the United States. The author has explored the compassion boundaries from various perspectives be it philosophical, political, legal and inter-disciplinary perspectives. This demonstrates engagement of state and non-state actors portraying humanity and compassion through informal and formal regimes.
This journal article talks about the Titles IV and V of the Civil Rights Act 1964 stipulates the rights of children to equitable and free public education irrespective of their race, religion, national origin, color, sex or legal status.
Purpose of the study
The United States has been a land of immigration by tradition. This research paper purports to explain the significance of immigration in the development of the national ideals and identity of the United States of America. It also discusses about the impact of immigration on the country and its nationals as well as narrates the experiences of the immigrants. The research lays emphasis on the various immigration policies that have been implemented by the United States and how they have changed over time. It discusses about the characteristics of the recent immigrants to the United States as well as the various different types of US immigration policy immigrants may experience. Rachbauer (2017) states that it highlights the impact of immigration on the nation and how the immigration policies of the country shall have a positive impact while negative impact shall result from illegal immigration. However, there are certain constraints that restrict the causation of illegal immigration. In the past decades, the United State has observed a significant revival of mass immigration. The accelerated movement portrays mobility globally to certain extent however; there is a difference in the diversity of its immigration and its willingness of the United States from majority of countries to consider the immigrants to be a part of the permanent population of the country.
The United states have been a destination of opportunities and freedom for millions all over the world. Immigration is considered as fundamental element for the development of this nation both socially and economically. Although the country has relied on the persisting flow of the immigrants as a medium to give a boost to its economy and diversify the society, the immigration history has not always been a tale of welcoming people with open arms. However, the changes made in the immigration law and policy and the enactments of statutes signify changes from the past policy to the rising trend of global policy.
Immigration has strongly affected the character of the United States several time in the history of the country, in particular, the colonial period, mid-nineteenth century, early twentieth century and the last twenty-five years. The most significant change in the contemporary era is although the largest but its impact has not been equally significant. The first major immigration to the United States after the independence of the country commenced in the late 1840s attracting mainly Europeans from the UK, Germany, Scandinavia and Ireland. According to Golash-Boza (2015), the immigration rate witnessed a significant incline in the 1880s when the immigrants that arrived in the US exceeded 5 million. The next group immigrants came mainly from the southern and central Europe. In the 1900s, the immigrants exceeded 9 million when Poles, Italians, eastern European Jews entered into the country in huge numbers. With the enactment of the Immigration Act 1990, in the 1990s, this resulted in 10 million immigrants, hailing mainly from Asia and Latin America marking its historical peak. The goals and structure of US immigration policy, in the contemporary era, is often misconstrued and not perceived as three essential set of rules. The first set of rules tends to govern legal immigration; the second set of rules governs humanitarian admissions (asylums and refugees) and lastly, the rules govern illegal entry into the country.
The enactment of Naturalization Act in 1790 marked the first uniform rule of naturalization in the country that excluded non-white people from becoming eligible to naturalize. The statute required the applicant to be a resident for two years with good moral character and a ‘free white person’. The requirement provisions of this statute was extended to 14 years in 1798 after the enactment of the four laws collectively known as the Alien and Sedition Acts which includes stringent immigration enforcement provisions. The enactment of Immigration Act 1864 created the position of the Commissioner of Immigration who has been assigned the role to report to the Secretary of State and ensure that labor contracts made by immigrants outside the United States are enforceable in the US courts.
The enactment of the Immigration Act 1882 levied a tax of 50 percent for every passenger arriving by ship from foreign port and is not US citizens where the tax is to be paid by the ship owner. The proceeds were to be deposited in ‘immigration fund’ to be used to pay off expenses incurred in regulating immigration. As per the enactment of the Chinese Exclusion Act, the United States attempted to regulate immigration along the racial lines where the law prohibited immigration of Chinese laborers for ten years. On the other hand, the enactment of Scott Act in 1888, the Chinese immigration was prohibited for lawfully residing Chinese that deported US from returning into the country as was observed in Chae Chan Ping v USA [130 US 581].
The enactment of the Immigration Act in 1917 prohibited nationals belonging to Middle East and Southeast Asia from immigrating. The act exempted the students and professionals along with their wives and children from immigrating into the US. In 1942, the Magnuson Act repealed the Chinese Exclusion Acts permitting the Chinese nationals to become citizens of the country. The Refugee Relief Act of 1953 and the Migration and Refugee Assistance Act of 1962 authorized admission of non-quota immigrants and assisted foreign nationals who fled from western hemisphere due to fear of persecution. According to Refugee Act of 1980, the country permitted admission and processing of refugees and asylum seekers from overseas that are physically present in the country or at its borders. In 1996, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act introduced new grounds of deportation and inadmissibility of applicants into the country. In 2001, the USA Patriot Act was established that broadened the grounds for terrorism in order to exclude foreign nationals from entering into USA and enhanced monitoring and surveillance of foreign students (Joppke & Morawska, 2014).
The 9/11 attack led the country to implement several enforcement measures in order to safeguard the security of the country and ensuring safety of its nationals (Ngai, 2014). The enactment of the Enhanced Border Security and Visa Reform Act introduced new verification methods of documents while people visited the country for travelling purpose and initiated stringent security measures. The enactment of the Homeland Security Act in 2003 held that the functions of the Department of Justice and that of the US Immigration and Naturalization Service, which includes border enforcement, immigration services and border inspection to be divided into three categories. They are the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), US Citizenship and Immigration Services and the US Immigration and Customs Enforcements.
The immigrations policies that were developed and the immigration laws enacted in 1996, 2002 and onwards had given more priority to deter crimes like unauthorized immigration and terrorism (Hollifield, Martin & Orrenius, 2014). The immigration policies laid more emphasis on border control and gave utmost importance to the enforcement of laws related to hiring or permitting immigrants entering into the country by ensuring stringent grounds for admissibility of such immigrants into the country.
The development of the immigration policies and the legislations usually dealt with reformation in both legal and illegal immigration. The main purpose of immigration policies of the United States has always been to extend support to the individuals and groups who have fled from their countries in the fear of persecution. The reformations made in the immigration policies have always aimed at deterring illegal immigration. To sum up the credibility in the immigration policy, it can be said that those who are eligible to enter into the country should be allowed to enter into the country. Similarly, those who are eligible to remain in the country should be permitted to remain in the country. Further, those who are not eligible to remain or enter into the country, shall not be allowed to enter into or remain in the country.
The provisions of the immigration policies were aimed at introducing stronger penalties against the illegal immigration and including procedures that deport the immigrants. The deportation process marks the change in the age-old legal appeal process that was time-consuming and enabled the immigration lawyers to keep their clients in the US until a judge granted deportation. On the other hand, the other provisions of the immigration policies aim at reducing the ability of terrorists to enter into the country by accessing the immigration process and operate in the United States. The purpose behind the introduction of such provisions is to restrain the terrorists as well as the new immigrants entering into the country from using the public welfare benefits as against the intention of the immigration law of the country.
The immigration policies have a significant impact on the country. Although the immigrants highly affect certain workers in some industries but their impact cannot be said to be widespread in the job market. However, the immigrants that arrive in the country mostly have one thing in common that is, their incompetence in speaking English which reduce their ability to compete with the US born workers or employees. The lack of language proficiency often holds the immigrants back and reduces their chances to get jobs that require string communication skills. On the contrary, the adverse impact of the immigrations is that immigrant workers who do not have a qualified college degree are immigrants who are likely to be employed in the construction and agriculture sectors (Bhachu, 2017).
Consequently, such immigrants agree to work on low wage, which drives out the US born nationals from such areas and compels them to take up jobs involving personal and sales services, which requires high communication skills. Further, immigrants that highly skilled and possess advanced degrees are pushed towards technical and scientific jobs that does not require high communication skills, thus, reducing scopes for the native-born workers in such area. Nevertheless, the positive impact of immigration is it is beneficial for the consumers of the country who receives services and goods at lower price. Hainmueller and Hopkins (2015) states that they provide labor at cheap rates thus, allowing the companies to reduce the prices of the consumer products and services. Moreover, immigrants are less likely to commit crimes the country as compared to the native-borne of the country.
There have been instances where the country faced a decline in the ‘quality’ of immigrants during the development of the immigration policies in terms of their legal status instead of their origin. In regards to the experience of the immigrants, it is often found that majority of the immigrants are of the opinion that it is imperative learn English to obtain a good job and earn a living I this country while some of the immigrants perceive learning of English as an ethical obligation. The government of the country had given importance to the attitude of the immigrants, which signified how the immigrants desired their children to learn English. The Title IV and VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was introduced to ensure that all children have a right t to a free and equitable public education irrespective of their color, race, religion, sex, legal status or national origin (Chen & Gill, 2015).. This right was applicable for the Unaccompanied Immigrant Children (UIC) who are below the age of 18 years and have entered the country without any legal status or any primary caregiver. The UICs are placed with adult sponsors or foster parents who takes care for the children in communities throughout the country (Bender & Arrocha, 2017).
The history of the immigration policies of the United States reflects an obvious pattern of policy decisions that were made only to fulfill the economic need of the country, which subsequently inculcated fear of the strangers amongst its nationals. During the period, when the economy of the country was experiencing rapid growth and development and there was a necessity of cheap labor to fill any particular industry, the country welcomed immigrants whole-heartedly and with open arms. However, during the downfall of the economy of the country, the flow of immigrants instilled fear in the minds of the politicians and the Americans who decided to develop more stringent immigration policies and enclosed the borders, thus, throwing the immigrants out of the country. This signifies that the immigration policies of the country though were developed to ensure security of the country and its nationals, failed to endow with permanent or long-term solutions to the issues pertaining immigration. Therefore, it is imperative to develop an immigration system that is not only practical but also reasonable in terms of every aspect of immigration in the country to address future flow of immigrants entering into the United States of America.
Conclusion/summary
From the above discussion, it can be inferred that currently, the United States is witnessing a surge of immigration mainly from developing countries similar to other destination countries with much of it being unrecorded. The politicians in the United States are attempting to ensure that the perceived impact of immigration persists to be positive towards the country and its nationals but to remain prepared to face and combat any adverse impact of immigration as well. However, there are several reasons to consider that the consequences of immigration shall not have any adverse impact on the country and its nationals in the future. Firstly, given the long history of welcoming immigrants from new areas, it ca be said that though the accommodation of the immigrants have been subjected to difficulties but has perpetually taken place. The US immigration policies have developed immigration policies that have not only allowed the immigrants to adopt the US citizenship even through naturalization. It is evident from the incline in the rate of naturalization that was significant for the immigrants coming from several countries like Asian countries, in particular.
Despite the high level of immigration rate in the country and its social and economic impact, in particular of the legal immigrants seems to be positive. However, the extent to which the immigration may have an adverse impact, it may attribute to the pecuniary effects of illegal immigration and the local economies to certain extent. Consequently, the incline in the immigration rate in the country implies significant population with ethnic, and language ties to some of the economies that will make the country most active and forceful over the next decades. These ties may be considered as fundamental for the country to become a successful actor in the rapidly growing interconnected world economy.
References
Bender, S. W., & Arrocha, W. F. (2017). Introduction. In Compassionate Migration and Regional Policy in the Americas(pp. 1-15). Palgrave Macmillan UK.
Bhachu, P. (Ed.). (2017). Immigration and entrepreneurship: culture, capital, and ethnic networks. Routledge.
Bodvarsson, Ö. B., & Van den Berg, H. (2013). Immigration Policy in the USA. In The Economics of Immigration (pp. 375-405). Springer New York.
Chae Chan Ping v USA [130 US 581].
Chen, A., & Gill, J. (2015). Unaccompanied children and the US immigration system: challenges and reforms. Journal of International Affairs, 68(2), 115.
Chinese Exclusion Act
Enhanced Border Security and Visa Reform Act
Golash-Boza, T. M. (2015). Immigration nation: Raids, detentions, and deportations in post-9/11 America. Routledge.
Hainmueller, J., & Hopkins, D. J. (2015). The hidden American immigration consensus: A conjoint analysis of attitudes toward immigrants. American Journal of Political Science, 59(3), 529-548.
Hollifield, J., Martin, P., & Orrenius, P. (2014). Controlling immigration: A global perspective. Stanford University Press.
Homeland Security Act in 2003
Immigration Act 1864
Immigration Act 1882
Immigration Act 1990
Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act
Joppke, C., & Morawska, E. (2014). Integrating immigrants in liberal nation-states: policies and practices. In Toward assimilation and citizenship: Immigrants in liberal nation-states(pp. 1-36). Palgrave Macmillan UK.
Magnuson Act1942
Naturalization Act in 1790
Ngai, M. M. (2014). Impossible subjects: Illegal aliens and the making of modern America. Princeton University Press.
Rachbauer, M. (2007). Immigration Policy in the USA
Refugee Act of 1980
Refugee Relief Act of 1953
Scott Act in 1888
USA Patriot Act 2001
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