Immigration Reform in the Us

Immigration reform is something that is needed in our country today. It is also one of the most complex and emotionally charged issues the federal government is dealing with today. To understand the complexity and need of reform one would need to have an idea of how immigration has evolved over the years. The next important step would be to review some of the problems and issues that the U.S . is currently facing. Being able to identify the problems and issues is the easy part, but finding the solutions is the hard part to figuring out immigration reform. Now that the foundation has been laid let’s start from the beginning.

In the early years of our country, immigration was not always illegal. In 1665, all immigrants could enter the U.S. by crossing the Canada or Mexico borders or by entering through one of our many ports. A reason why immigration was not an issue during the early years was because immigrants were needed to help our country grow and prosper. The main way the U.S. promoted its self was by declaring itself as a country of immigrants and welcoming all who immigrated seeking to create a new life for them in the country of opportunity (Karmiol, 2007, p. 9). Then in 1790 Congress passed the first immigration law that placed a residency requirement of two years before a person could be qualified for citizenship. Five years later, in 1795, the residency requirement was raised to five years. Not long after the five year requirement was enacted it was increased to fourteen years; this was intended to halt the French and Irish immigration. The reason for targeting those two groups was because they were active in government protests. About four years into the fourteen year residency requirement it was repealed and immigration laws continued with little change for the next sixty years. (Karmiol, 2007, p. 10)

Between 1862 and 1882 new laws were enacted that restricted immigrants from China. These laws had additional exclusions such as convicts, lunatics, idiots, and those who are unable to take care of themselves. With these new laws in place immigrants started entering the country through centralized points. They began to enter through Ellis Island, all along the eastern seaboard, and the Gulf coast. These immigrants were allowed entry if they were judged to be capable of working, self support, and if they didn’t exhibit evidence of one of the prohibited diseases. The Office of Immigration was created in 1891, and then in 1907 they determined that imbeciles, feeble-minded, those suffering from tuberculosis, or those with a physical or mental defect would be ineligible to gain entry into the U.S. Many factors played a role in determining immigration laws like the anti-Catholic backlash of Italian immigrants and economic concerns of the increasing number of poor Jewish peasants from Eastern Europe arriving. (Karmiol, 2007, p. 10)

Around the same time that these new laws were created (1904 to be exact)