One of the biggest issues in today's society and something that has been a problem for a while has been immigration. The problems concern what to do with all the immigrants and how to deal with the increase in them and whether or not we should take all of them in and give them housing or if they should be turned away. For years people have immigrated to America in hope for a better life for themselves and their families and even though this has been going on for so long, the United States still has not figured out a good, surefire way of dealing with all of these people. When trying to find a solution, we need to look at has what has been done in the past as well as what has been done in the recent years and see which has been more effective, or if one president has been more effective with instating an immigration policy that works.
Let’s start by looking at how we have dealt with immigration in the past. One of the first immigration acts put into place was the Immigration Act of 1924, which was signed in under President Calvin Coolidge. The Immigration act of 1924 “limited the number of immigrants allowed entry into the United States through a national origins quota” (Office of the Historian). The government was very strict on who was given visas and who wasn’t, allowing only two percent of people from each nationality in the United States at the time of the 1890 census. While it is something to help immigration at the time, this wasn't very beneficial for some because it completely excluded immigrants from Asia. But before the Immigration Act of 1924, the United States Government implemented the first widely restrictive immigration law in 1917. It paved the way for the immigration act in 1924. The act of 1917 “ implemented a literacy test that required immigrants over 16 years old to demonstrate basic reading comprehension in any language” (Office of the Historian). This act allowed officials to have more power when deciding who to let in and who to turn away. Once the United States realized that the literacy test wasn't enough to prevent mist immigrants from passing and gaining entrance, so they implemented quotas that restricted the number of visas that could be given yearly to 350,000 each year. With the Immigration Act of 1924 being put into place and not overwritten for decades, the amount of German Jews incoming rose abruptly in 1937 because they were trying to flee their homeland to get away from Hitler and the Nazis. The act allowed the highest number of immigrants from Germany, more than 51,000. “Roughly 4,500 Jews immigrated each year from 1934 through 1937” (Gilmore 219). The act of 1924 went through many revisions to try to make it more effective, but in the end, the main purpose of the act boils down to the government trying to preserve the homogeneity of the United States. After the Immigration Act of 1924, the next big immigration policy was The Hart-Celler act, which was “the most sweeping immigration reform in decades” (Gilmore 408).
The Hart-Celler Act, also known as the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, was signed in by President Johnson in October of 1965 but wasn't put into full action until three years later, in 1968. This was a very important act because it lifted immigration quotas that were nation-specific. This gave special status to those immigrants and their families fleeing communist rule and allowed for family reunification. There were consequences for immigrants from Latin America unfortunately. They had the first numerical cap put on immigration which was set at 120,000 per year. This, in turn, reduced the ability of Mexican people to legally migrate to the United States. With this new act in place and many people from Latin America attempting to migrate to the United States, the population got very diverse, very quickly. Even today this diversity is still very vast and dense, and according to an article written by Josh Zeitz, “Today, foreign-born immigrants comprise roughly 13 percent of the total population, approaching the all-time high of 14.7 percent in 1910. Another 20 percent were born in the United States but have at least one foreign-born parent. In other words, first- and second-generation Americans comprise a third of the country” (Zeitz). He even goes onto say that “90 percent of new Americans since 1965 hail from outside Europe—from countries like Mexico, Brazil, the Philippines, Korea, Cuba, Taiwan, India and the Dominican Republic” and that “By 2050, non-Hispanic white Americans will comprise less than half of the U.S. population” (Zeitz). It's crazy to think about these numbers and how many immigrants are in the United States and about how many people are still trying to immigrate over here. Even with this insane influx of people looking for visas and citizenships to move over here, the government still hasn't found a foolproof plan to effectively deal with immigration. Before we look into how the past few presidents have dealt with immigration, let's look at the Immigration and Control Act of 1986.
What the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 did was it legalized about three million currently undocumented immigrants who have been in the United States since about 1982 as well as it now required employers to make sure that they checked the immigration status of the people that worked for them and the people they hired. With this act, the United States also tightened border control and expanded the United States border patrol organization. With tightened border security came undocumented immigrants who stayed in the United States because they could go home. This created an anti-immigrant backlash in the 90s. Once this backlash began, laws started coming left and right basically taking everything away from these undocumented immigrants. Things such as social security, public education, and healthcare. The Democratic party was more open and willing to get behind immigration while the Republican Party was very split on the issue. The one thing that both parties agreed upon was “tightening border patrol and reducing the number of undocumented immigrants” (Gilmore 573). Now that the immigration reforms of the past have been discussed in depth, what have our last and our current president done for immigration?
Our 44th President, President Barack Obama, did many positive things for immigration. One of Obama's biggest and most positive programs put into action for immigration was the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, better known as DACA. What DACA does is “provide protection from deportation and work authorization to certain undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children” (ImmigrationImpact.com). This bill was signed in 2012 and has since then helped 740,000 people who have benefitted from the initiative. Another thing that President Obama did in his time in office was “focus immigration enforcement in serious criminals and threats” (ImmigrationImpact.com). He did this because he wanted to prioritize deporting the people who were seen as potential threats to the United States, not just any immigrant that they saw due to the limited amount of resources. To help with this process, changes were made to the Fugitive Operations Program and their priorities. Many enforcement priorities were made by the Obama Administration, in order to prioritize deportations. Throughout the entire time President Obama was in office, the United States saw higher deportation numbers than any other preceding president at 2.7 million people being deported. This caused the number of people trying to cross the border without first having all the proper documentation to drop significantly.