Today is the anniversary of the passage of America's first immigration and naturalization law, the Naturalization Act of 1790. Passed in the first Congress, it had zero restrictions on immigration. You read that right, the first immigration law passed in the United States, by the Founders themselves, supported open immigration.
The Naturalization Act created few requirements for naturalization. Eligible persons had to reside here for two years, have a good moral character (that is, not be a criminal), and be a free white person. That last provision shamefully excluded indentured servants, slaves, and former slaves. But there were no restrictions on who could come here and work for the American dream.
The government began keeping records of immigrants only in 1820. The post-Civil War 14th Amendment to the Constitution granted citizenship to freed slaves and their descendants. At the time it was also recognized to extend citizenship to all children of non-naturalized immigrants, regardless of race, because all immigrants, including unauthorized ones, are "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States.
The first federal restrictive immigration law was the Page Act in 1875. It sought to eliminate the immigration of undesirables coming as contracted labor, prostitutes, and all people considered to be convicts in their country of origin. That law was strengthened by the Chinese Exclusion Act, signed into law in 1882.
In 1898, the Supreme Court ruled, in the United States v. Wong Kim Ark, that children of immigrants, including non-whites, are to be granted birthright citizenship. Yet even after that ruling, Congress enacted more restrictions on Japanese immigrants, "undesirables," and the illiterate.
During the late 19th and early 20th century, a new mass wave of migration began. Attracted by American prosperity, millions of Jews, Italians, Poles, Russians, Greeks, Japanese, and others joined the traditional cohorts of English, Irish, German, and Nordic immigrants. On the eve of World War I, annual immigration to the U.S. was over 1.2 million. After the war, immigration resumed and almost reached 1 million a year when Congress closed the door.
Progressives, eugenicists, anti-Catholics, prohibitionists, and labor unionists pushed for the Emergency Quota Act of 1921, which imposed numerical limits on immigration for the first time. Under that law, the annual number of immigrants from a given nationality was limited to no more than 3 percent of the U.S. population, as per the 1910 census. The Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 lowered the immigrant quota further and shifted it even more toward favoring those from Western Europe. Family reunification and other now-familiar provisions were also enacted.
Unauthorized immigration took off after the Quota Act. Before, only small numbers of people were unauthorized, shamefully the Chinese but also "undesirables" like prostitutes, those harboring violent political ideologies, and those with deadly diseases. After 1921 many peaceful people who just wanted to live and work in America couldn't, so they broke the law.
Beginning in World War II, the Bracero Program provided hundreds of thousands of temporary worker visas for low-skilled Mexican farm workers. When that program was ended in 1965, the economic incentive to seek a job from a willing American farmer without government authorization overrode the incentive to obey the law. Since then, the few work visas of limited issuance that exist today are inadequate to provide a viable legal alternative to unauthorized immigration.
The vestiges of the lousy quota system, mountains of regulations detailing the specifics of work visas, restrictions on changing firms, E-Verify, and unimaginably silly regulations make the American immigration system a big-government mess alien to the philosophy of the Founders.
Among their complaints against King George III, written in the Declaration of Independence, was that, "He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither" It applies just as well to our government today.
To truly reform immigration, we should look back to the nation's first immigration and naturalization laws, which are a far cry from restrictive laws like Arizona's SB 1070 and Alabama's HB 56.
Combining the Founder's openness for immigration with the 14th Amendment race-neutral grant of birth-right citizenship--with proper checks for criminals, terrorists, and the seriously ill--would legalize almost all immigration, hearken back to our traditions of individual liberty, and confer vast wealth on Americans as millions of consumers, entrepreneurs, workers, and inventors come to our shores. It is the right thing to do.
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When cars were first driven in the US there were zero restrictions on drivers and no licenses. But as the numbers increased along with accidents, it had to be controlled. The US has the weakest immigration laws on the planet. Japan picks up illegal aliens off the streets and deports them. People say the US has hard laws to get them from enforcing them.
The US already admits more people than the rest of the world put together. Pressure other countries to accept illegal aliens. They won't because they know better.
You are making a good point, however, since 1) the USA opted not to enforce its laws for a couple of decades out of greed and allowed more than ten million illegal aliens to become de facto residents and part of the economy and communities across the country, and 2) The Americans opted to break the law (and continue to do so) by hiring unauthorized immigrants, those who are here should be legalized swiftly and E-verify should be made mandatory.
the people that you are punishing are those hurt by the illegals and the people that you reward are those who broke the law.
And don't forget, the people who you want to listen to now are the people who openly complained when someone tried to enforce the law. Why should we listen to them again.
Sooner or later you just have to enforce the law.
And all the illegals new they had to sneak into the country, use phony documents, and hide from law enforcement. No one told them that they were behaving legally. They knew they were breaking the law. Just because they got away with it doesn't make it legal or moral.
"More than half of the illegal immigrant families in many states are on welfare — as many as 62 percent in Arizona — and they’re getting the taxpayer-funded benefits through their American-born children, Judicial Watch reports."
http://www.newsmax.com/US/illegal-immigrant-families-welfare/2011/04/06/id/392017
Solution would be more enforcement. 1986 amnesty was passed with no enforcement which lead to chain migration and even more illegal aliens coming into the country.
The UK changed their birthright citizenship law in the 1980s, but a child born in the UK who lives there until age 10 can register as a UK citizen regardless of the status of the parents. It's not quite birthright citizenship, as one wouldn't technically be a UK citizen at birth, but it establishes a right to UK citizenship at the time of registration.
http://www.ind.homeoffice.gov.uk/britishcitizenship/eligibility/registration/borninuk/
The very concept of our immigration laws is that instead of securing equal freedom to pursue happiness for all American citizens, the government goes into the business of guaranteeing happiness for less entrepreneurial citizens at the cost of limiting the freedoms of the most entrepreneurial among us. Is this constitutional? I doubt.
After analyzing this issue, I arrived with the Freedom of Migration act concept, which addresses all these issues,
http://www.freedomofmigration.com
What century is this? Can't you come up with a more logical argument than "well, well 222 years ago, we used to let anybody in who wanted in?" Pathetic.
We were a raw frontier then, with wide open spaces to be settled. Most importantly, we had absolutely no safety net. Whether an immigrant lived or died made no difference to the country. There was no income tax. You pulled your own weight or you died. You got sick, you died.
Today, there is a panoply of social benefits at taxpayer expense for those incapable of taking care of themselves and/or their kids. Therefore, the day of just letting any old person into the country legally is long over and we should be cracking down very hard on anyone in the country illegally.
Alex, you can do better.
Now, too many American want to enjoy prosperity coming not from their work but from cutting off coupons from the wealth accumulated by previous generations. Immigrants, generally willing to work harder for less are perceived as inconvenient truth that one still may succeed by working.
Unrestricted immigration reduces the labor of the working poor and increases the wealth of the "coupon clippers."
Second, today there are only 3 countries with "oversubscribed chargeability areas". Mexico, Phillipines and China. ICE assigns evaluators per-country, creating a per-country backlog, likely a way of engineering arrival numbers. But it doesn't work, because if you want to legally immigrate through a family relation from say, Mexico to the US, right now (see Visa Bulletin Feb 2012) they are reviewing applications made in 1992 (F2) and 1996 (F4). A 16-20 year wait. In those years, your family cannot visit you in the US (once you start the process they recommend you stay put). Add the insecurity of the drug wars ("Hello US drug consumers!") making travel the other way dangerous and you have a recipe for more illegality.
And that's the policy for the neighboring country, with long historical, family and security ties. Talk about "Pathetic".
So, where's *your* analysis of immigration policy?
BTW, many illegals have pay stubs and do pay into the system. Fed, State, SocSec+Medicare. So they do contribute. Regarding Social security, they will never get this money. I read that if you could get the rest on payroll and legalize them all you'd bring down the SocSec deficit 30%.
So crack down on services meant for citizens, sure, but fix the immigration system.
But we would have more new citizens on welfare, getting government loans, SS, medicare-medicaid, unemployment insurance. What do you think they come here for?
Cut out the benefits and E-Verify, they will go home.
In fact, almost all countries have done away with it for the same reason illegal aliens come here to have children.
For the most part, the Dept of State notes that it hasn't really become that big an issue, but that Customs does have the authority to turn away foreign tourists who are obviously pregnant and appear to be prepared to give birth in the US. I would note that Bruce Lee was always a US citizen (was never even registered as a Hong Kong citizen) and came back to the US with his hospital birth certificate. His parents were in the US as part of some performing arts tour.
There have also been stories of cases where Canadian women were sent to the US because only US hospitals had space for special medical care needed in certain cases. The children born in the US were generally dual-citizens at birth.
Today, Americans want to make the U.S. as most other countries; not free form the totalitarian government.
It's not just wrong, but immoral. Maybe in a world without limits but we can't realistically take every person who would like to come here. Alex, your 1790 vision is unsustainable. The U.S. is already in ecological overshoot even if future immigration were zero. Every time a person moves from a lower ecological footprint country to a higher ecological footprint country (like ours), the world eco-footprint rises further into overshoot. Thus, immigration to the U.S. exacerbates not just our problem, but the world's. Opening our doors discourages the most overpopulated countries who need to dump their excess population from ever changing their unsustainable ways. So while it would be nice if everyone who would like to live in the U.S. could, that would not just be impractical but unethical considering the environmental consequences. This is the moral case not to cause harm through immigration.
http://www.freedomofmigration.com/roy-beck-the-master-of-deception/
British and Spaniards both brought death to natives of their colonies. Spaniards just invaded a larger, more populated area so they left many more alive to (rightfully) complain. Ever visited a reservation or talked to a Native American? I have. Do you ever wonder why racial mix in the US is so low for that period? Read any 17-1800s quotes on NatAms and you'll understand - and be ashamed. Spanish were no better, but at least they often married locals and brought up the kids as their own.
Well, just visit your local US farm or chicken plant to see underclass. The people making under minimum wage illegally *are* an underclass. Mexico today is 52% middle class. Lots of inequality still, but not as bad as you picture. Rights record is bad, mostly due to a drug war fought to provide what so many Americans can't seem to stop consuming, with any recognition of their role in +50K dead to satisfy their need for a dime-bag.
Different wealth between the original Spain and British colonies is due to the different attitudes of puritan/conquistador, industrialization and invention. But "Liz vs Phillip" is over, and everyone knows it. Well, everyone but you.
A great American citizen is Responsable for making the right desision even if those are hard to swallow...This country history demands it...