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Nationality Act of 1790
The criteria for naturalization citizenship were originally established by this statute, along with the guidelines for how immigrants might become citizens. This fundamental privilege was first restricted by Congress to "free white individuals." -
Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798
In reaction to the conflicts in Europe, Congress passed deportation rules that target those who are considered political dangers to the US. -
Ban of "Importation" of "any Negro, Mulatto, or Other Persons of Color"
In response to the Haitian revolt, Congress decided to impose a prohibition on free Black immigration in order to stifle abolitionists. -
Indian Removal Act of 1830
This statute was passed under Andrew Jackson's presidency and gave the go-ahead for the forceful displacement of Native Americans west of the Mississippi River as well as the right to be robbed of their land. -
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848
This treaty confirmed the United States' annexation of a significant area of northern Mexico, known as El Norte, and granted citizenship to Mexicans who chose to stay in the territory. It also marked the end of the Mexican-American War. -
Passenger Cases 1849
According to the Supreme Court, only the federal government has the jurisdiction to pass and enforce immigration restrictions, not state or municipal governments. -
People v. Hall
Chinese, Native Americans, and African Americans no longer have the right to testify in court against white people as a result of the California Supreme Court's decision that the evidence of a Chinese man who saw a white man commit murder was inadmissible. -
Dred Scott v. Sandord
According to this Supreme Court decision, African Americans who were neither slaves or free citizens of the country were not granted citizenship rights and benefits, including the ability to file lawsuits in federal courts. -
Acto to Prohibit The "Coolie Trade"
The Republican-controlled Congress attempted to stop southern plantation owners from replacing their enslaved African American employees with slave laborers on contract or "coolies" from China during the Civil War. -
Emancipation Proclamation
presidential order issued by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863 that freed slaves kept in Confederate states. -
Immigration Act of 1864
This statute, which was intended to promote immigration to the United States, permitted labor recruiting techniques akin to indentured slavery, but it was shortly overturned. -
Burlingame Treaty of 1868
This international agreement, which was negotiated during the Transcontinental Railroad's construction, safeguarded US access to Chinese laborers by ensuring that both Chinese and Americans had the right to free migration. -
14th Amendment
The Fourteenth Amendment, which was ratified in 1868 to ensure equal treatment for African Americans following the Civil War, gave all people born in the country the right to citizenship. Equal protection under the law and due process were also included. -
Naturalization Act of 1870
Other non-white immigrant groups were denied access to citizenship rights and protections as a result of the Naturalization Act of 1870, which specifically extended naturalization privileges already enjoyed by white immigrants to "aliens of African nativity and to people of African descent." -
Chinese Educational Mission 1872-1881
This initiative, which sent roughly 120 Chinese students to study in New England, is frequently credited as a pioneering effort in mutually beneficial systems of international education that facilitated the exchange of information and understanding and strengthened intergovernmental ties. -
Chy Lung V. Freeman
The federal government has exclusive jurisdiction to control immigration, the Supreme Court's ruling confirmed. -
Page Law
This rule forbade the recruitment of slaves and women for "immoral purposes" into the United States, but it was largely used against Chinese people. -
Angell Treaty of 1880
The United States was granted the right to limit the migration of specific kinds of Chinese laborers under this pact, which amended the 1868 Burlingame Treaty with China. It brought American immigration law one step closer to total Chinese exclusion. -
Immigration Act of 1882
The Chinese Exclusion Law was passed a few months later, and this immigration law widened the definition of excludable immigrants to include additional undesirable people and characteristics including "convicts," "lunatics," and "those likely to become a public charge." -
Chinese Exclusion Act
This statute marked a significant turn in the direction of tighter restrictions in U.S. immigration law. Chinese immigrants were singled out by race and class as the first group to be severely restricted from lawful immigration and denied citizenship. -
Elk v. Wilkins
The Fourteenth Amendment was found to not apply to Native Americans, who were potentially denied the right to vote since they did not immediately become citizens at birth. -
Foran Act od 1885
This law forbids the hiring of employees who are under contract. -
The Dawes Allotment Act
Congress gave the president permission to distribute, or partition into individual landholdings, tribal reserve lands as a result of complaints about the reservation system for Native Americans. Native Americans who received allotments might become citizens of the United States, but frequently lost their land. -
Scott Act of 1888
To strengthen the implementation of the Chinese exclusion legislation, Congress increased domestic control over immigration. About 20,000 Chinese who had Certificates of Return were left stranded outside of the United States when it revoked one of the exempt categories for returning laborers. -
Chad Chan Ping v. United States
In this case, even when revisions to U.S. immigration legislation contradicted past policy and practice, the Supreme Court's ruling upheld the full authority of U.S. federal authorities over immigration problems. -
Immigration Bureau established
Congress rapidly became aware of the difficulties in implementing immigration exclusions, which prompted it to approve and establish a special immigration agency charged with both processing legal immigrants and carrying out immigration limitations. -
Immigration Act of 1891
This immigration statute from 1891 increased the list of aliens who might be excluded from citizenship and deported as well as defined and concentrated the federal government's responsibility over immigration enforcement. -
Geary Act
By forcing Chinese citizens to carry a Certificate of Residence, a forerunner to the green card system, as proof of their legal presence in the country, Congress revived the Chinese exclusion legislation and strengthened enforcement measures. Failure to comply might result in arrest and deportation. -
Fong Yum Ting v. United States
The 1892 Geary Act's requirement that Chinese residents—and only Chinese residents—carry Certificates of Residence to demonstrate their lawful arrival into the United States was upheld by the Supreme Court as constitutional. Failure to comply would result in detention and expulsion. -
Immigrations Restriction League
The Immigration Restriction League was founded by three important Harvard graduates in response to rising immigration, mostly from southern and eastern European nations, and a string of economic downturns. -
Wong Wing v. united States
The lower rights of excludable foreigners are upheld by the Supreme Court's ruling that imprisonment by immigration officials does not constitute a criminal penalty. -
Plessy v. Ferguson
By holding that "separate but equal" facilities may uphold the equal protection standards required by the Fourteenth Amendment, the Supreme Court in this decision justified racial segregation. -
United States v. Wong Kim Ark
Regardless of color or parental status, this Supreme Court decision established the rule that every individual born in the United States is a citizen by birth. -
Immigration Act of 1903
Anarchists were designated as those who should be excluded under this rule, and also provided for their expulsion if they were detained once inside. -
Extension of the Chinese Exclusion Act
In reaction to the Chinese government's attempts to secure better circumstances for Chinese tourists to the United States by abrogating prior accords, Congress prolonged the Chinese exclusion rules in perpetuity. Chinese communities protested by organizing a boycott of American goods. -
Anti-American Boycott
To protest the Chinese Exclusion rules, a global coalition of Chinese businesspeople and students organized boycotts of American products and services in China and certain Southeast Asian cities. -
Expatriation Act of 1907
When American-born women married non-citizen immigrant males, their citizenship was revoked under the theory that wives took the citizenship of their husbands. -
Dillinghom Commission Reports
In order to gain support for major curbs on European immigration, Congress financed this high-level committee to study the reasons and effects of recent immigration. In 1911, the panel completed a 41-volume investigation. -
Alien Land Laws in California
Many western states, including California, passed legislation prohibiting "aliens ineligible for citizenship" from buying or leasing land. These statutes were upheld as constitutional by the Supreme Court. -
Jones-Shafroth Act
Following the United States' acquisition of Puerto Rico as an incorporated territory in 1898, this legislation granted Puerto Ricans U.S. citizenship. -
Immigration Act of 1917
Although the principal restriction of this law was a literacy test meant to stop European immigration, it is most remembered for its construction of a "barred zone" from the Middle East to Southeast Asia from which no people were permitted to enter the United States. -
Wartime Measure of 1918
Following the United States' acquisition of Puerto Rico as an incorporated territory in 1898, this legislation granted Puerto Ricans U.S. citizenship. -
The Palmer Raids
To hunt up, arrest, and deport alleged anarchists and left-wing radicals, the U.S. Department of Justice carried out a number of raids. -
Emergency Quota Law
This "emergency" bill setting draconian quantitative limitations on immigration was passed by Congress in response to concerns about rising immigration following the end of World War I and the development of radicalism. -
Cable Act of 1922
The Expatriation Act of 1907 caused American-born women who married non-citizen husbands to lose their citizenship, but Congress soon passed this statute once the Nineteenth Amendment gave women the right to vote in 1920. -
Ozawa v. United States
The Supreme Court's decision to uphold the 1790 Nationality Act's restriction that Asians are racially ineligible for naturalization notwithstanding their evident acculturation and integration laid the foundation for the hardening of U.S. isolationism. -
Thind v. United States
The Supreme Court determined that Bhagat Singh Thind was likewise ineligible for citizenship, defying the reasoning for its decision in Ozawa v. U.S., despite the fact that he was ethnically white and an Asian Indian, both of whom were Caucasians. -
Immigration Act of 1924
This law introduced enhanced "national origins" quotas, a severely restrictive and statistically discriminatory mechanism, to further restrict immigration. Up until 1965, the major method of determining whether immigrants might enter the country was the quota system. -
Indian Citizenship Act of 1924
All Native Americans born in the country were required to be citizens by virtue of this rule. The last significant group to acquire this privilege under the Fourteenth Amendment was Native Americans. -
Labor Appropriations Act of 1924
Up until 1965, there was no restriction on immigration into the American hemisphere; however, in 1924, Congress approved funds for the Border Patrol to control crossings between immigration checkpoints. -
Mexican Repatriation
The Border Patrol undertook various initiatives to imprison Mexicans, including some Americans-born citizens, and deport them across the border during the economic and political crises of the 1920s and 1930s. -
Undesirable Aliens Act of 1929
Outside of a legitimate port of entry, crossing the border became illegal under Blease's Law. The law made "illegally entering the nation" a misdemeanor and "returning after deportation" a crime, with the main goal of limiting Mexican immigration. -
Tydings-McDuffie Act of 1934
By granting the Philippines ultimate independence, Congress completed the racial isolation of Asians by placing limitations on Filipino immigration. Before, Filipinos from a US colony could easily move to the US as US citizens. -
Bracero Agreement
The United States and Mexico entered into negotiations during World War II to hire male Mexican laborers, all of whom were unmarried and without children, on short-term contracts to work on farms and in other war-related businesses. The program in agriculture carried on after the war until 1964. -
Executive Order 9066
This executive order from World War II authorized the roundup and imprisonment of Japanese Americans residing within 100 miles of the west coast. It was issued by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. -
Repeal of Chinese Exclusion
Congress repealed the Chinese Exclusion rules, putting China under the same immigration limits as European nations, due to the significance of China as the primary ally of the American government in the Pacific War against Japan. -
Korematsu v. United States
In addressing Fred Korematsu's challenge to Executive Order 9066, which ordered the deportation and internment of Japanese Americans, the Supreme Court supported the federal government's power to disregard civil rights safeguards in the name of "military necessity." -
Ex Parte Endo
By holding that "concededly loyal" Americans could not be detained, regardless of the idea of "military necessity," the Supreme Court approved the conclusion of the Japanese American internment in December 1944. -
War Brides Act
In order to assist World War II servicemen and veterans in bringing back foreign wives and fiancees they had met while serving in the military, Congress passed exceptions to the national origins limits established by the Immigration Act of 1924. -
Fulbright-Hays Act of 1946
Senator Fulbright of Arkansas recommended utilizing the money from the sale of war surplus items to pay for initiatives that would promote international education and personnel exchanges as a way to increase understanding between the United States and the rest of the globe. -
Luce-Celler Act of 1946
By granting Indians and Filipinos citizenship rights and immigration quotas as compatriots in the fight, this measure significantly eroded Asian exclusivity. -
Displaced Persons Act
Unlike the general lack of concern shown by lawmakers prior to World War II, after the war, in response to pressure from the White House and the Department of State, Congress authorized the admission of refugees from Europe and allowed those who had already applied for asylum in the country to regularize their status. -
the 1951 Refugee Convention
The UN Refugee Convention established global norms for the treatment of refugees and resettlement efforts. The High Commission for Refugees of the United Nations is in charge of running it. President Truman declined to have the United States sign on to the convention because he was wary of foreign responsibilities. -
Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952
Some of the blatantly discriminatory elements of immigration law were changed by the McCarran-Walter Act. The bill increased immigration control and kept insulting national origins quotas while providing quotas for all nationalities and eliminating racial prohibitions on citizenship. -
H-2 Guestworkker Visa Program
The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) of 1952 authorized a nonimmigrant visa category, known as H-2, permitting the recruitment of foreign farmworkers to the United States on a temporary basis. -
Refugee Relief Act
Support for this law, which gave 214,000 visas to refugees, mostly from Europe but with 5,000 set aside for the Far East, was motivated by dissatisfaction with the 1952 McCarran-Walter Act. -
Operation Wetback
Mexican nationals were rounded up by the Immigration Bureau even as the bracero program continued to hire temporary labor from Mexico. One million Mexicans were allegedly deported, according to the Bureau. -
Chinese Confession Program
With the help of this effort, the Immigration Bureau and the FBI attempted to regularize the statuses of the numerous Chinese Americans who had entered the country illegally in violation of the discriminatory laws banning Chinese immigration. -
Parole of Hungarians, Cubans, Chinese
Three times, the 1952 McCarran-Walter Act's parole authority provided to the attorney general was utilized to assist communist refugee movements. Each parole usage was supported by intensive advertising campaigns to foster acceptability in order to prevent public uproar. -
Act of September 26, 1961
By classifying international adoption as a type of family reunion, this law allowed greater exemptions to the immigration restrictions imposed by national quotas. -
An Act: to facilitate the entry of alien skilled specialists and certain relative ion United States citizens, and for other purposes
In order to prepare for the Entry Act of 1965's emphasis on employment preferences, this statute opened the door for the immigration of highly educated workers from nations with low immigration quotas. -
Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965
The fundamental rules for immigration regulation established by this statute are still in place today. For the first time, it limited immigration from within the Americas and implemented a system of favors for family reunification (75 percent), work (20 percent), and refugees (5 percent). -
Cuban Adjustment Act
Because they originated from a historically close U.S. neighbor and friend, anti-communist Cubans were granted preferential immigration policies following Fidel Castro's revolution. This statute gave them a permanent status and tools to aid in adjusting to life in the United States. -
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Refugee Protocol
This protocol was published by the UNHCR in 1967 to carry out the objectives of the 1951 Refugee Convention, which outlined the fundamental precept of refoulement, or the idea that people who are fleeing persecution and danger cannot be made to return to such dangers. -
Indochina Migration and Refugee Assistance Act
Following the fall of Saigon, the United States made plans to relocate some 135,000 Vietnamese and other Southeast Asians across the country and provide them with the tools they needed to start new lives. -
Immigration and Nationality Act Amendments of 1976
The 1976 Amendments expanded the 20,000 per nation cap and the modified arrival preference scheme to the Western Hemisphere. The regulation was further modified in 1978 to set a 290,000 yearly cap on the whole planet. -
Refugee Act of 1980
By implementing yearly admissions limits that may be modified annually following consultation between Congress and the White House, this bill strengthened U.S. refugee policy while maintaining compliance with the UN norm for designating refugees. -
Mariel Boatlift of 1980
Approximately 125,000 Cuban asylum applicants were transported in large numbers to the United States from April to October 1980; this event is known as the Mariel boatlift. The Cuban-Haitian Entrant Program was born as a result of it. -
Polymer v. Doe
In this Supreme Court decision, it was decided that public school districts could not legally bar children of undocumented immigrants from enrolling since the costs would be offset by the harm to the community. -
Korematsu v. united States
The justices overturned Fred Korematsu's 1944 conviction by the Supreme Court for disobeying curfew regulations placed on Japanese Americans following the assault on Pearl Harbor. -
Immigration Reform and Control Act
Bipartisan legislation passed by Congress to address the issue of undocumented immigrants included amnesty for long-term residents, stronger border security, stricter employer standards, and expanded guestworker visa programs. -
Immigration Act of 1990
The H-1B visa program for talented temporary workers, which includes certain opportunities for conversion to permanent status, and the diversity visa lottery for groups unable to enter through the preference system were both implemented by Congress as revisions to the Immigration Act of 1965. -
American Baptist Churches Settlement Agreement
Asylum requests by Salvadorans and Guatemalans escaping violence in their home countries were often denied throughout the 1980s, which prompted this court challenge and required modifications to U.S. processes for handling such cases. -
Chinese Student Protection Act
This law allowed Chinese students residing in the United States to get lawful permanent status in reaction to the deadly Chinese government crackdowns on student protests in Tiananmen in 1989. -
Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act
IIRIRA strengthened federal authorities' ability to enforce immigration limitations by providing resources for border patrol and the verification of work credentials, building on the efforts made with IRCA in 1986. -
Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act
Some Salvadorans, Guatemalans, and Nicaraguans who had left the violence and poverty in their home countries in the 1980s were able to apply for asylum and stay in the United States thanks to the Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act (NACARA). -
Flores Settlement
The Reno v. Flores Supreme Court decision, which involved the treatment of unaccompanied youngsters in immigration detention, led to the Flores settlement in 1993. The settlement, which is presently being contested, established federal guidelines for the care and discharge of detained children. -
Haitian Refugee Immigrant Fairness Act
On October 21, 1998, the Haitian Refugee Immigration Fairness Act (HRIFA) was passed by Congress, allowing those Haitian nationals who had been living in the US to apply to become citizens and lawful permanent residents. -
Zadvydas v. Davis
According to this Supreme Court decision, immigration officials cannot hold individuals who have been ordered to be deported but for whom no destination can be established forever. -
Enhanced Border Security and Visa entry Reform Act
The American government took action to increase the funding, personnel, and authority of the immigration enforcement bureaucracy following the September 11th attacks. -
Homeland Security Act
By combining 22 different departments and bureaus, the Homeland Security Act established the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). DHS was established in response to growing immigration concerns following the September 11 terrorist attacks. -
Secure Fence Act
This bill, which was passed in October 2006, required the Secretary of Homeland Security to take prompt action in order to establish operational control over the international land and sea boundaries of the United States, including an extension of the current barriers, fences, and monitoring. -
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals
This executive order gave those who entered the country as minor minors and have resided there since June 15, 2007, protection from deportation and work permits, in an effort to deal with the long-term presence of millions of unlawful immigrants. -
Deffered Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents
The Obama administration issued this executive order in an effort to delay deportation and provide certain additional safeguards for undocumented immigrants with children who were either citizens of the United States or lawful permanent residents. -
Muslim Travel Ban
The term "Muslim Ban" refers to a number of executive orders issued by the Trump administration that forbade travel to and the resettlement of refugees from a number of mostly Muslim nations. The Supreme Court affirmed the majority of the third iteration of the ban's provisions following multiple legal challenges. -
Final Rule on "Public Charge Ground of Inadmissibility"
The Department of Homeland Security under the Trump administration adopted a regulation in 2019 that increased the list of benefits obtained and other considerations to be taken into account when considering whether a candidate for admission or status adjustment is likely to become a public charge. -
Gentlemen's Agreement of 1907-1908
President Theodore Roosevelt aimed to avoid insulting the burgeoning international power of Japan by this negotiated accord under which the Japanese government restricted the immigration of its own nationals rather than passing racially discriminatory and objectionable immigration regulations.