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Naturalization Act restricts citizenship to "free white persons" who reside in the United States for five years and renounce their allegiance to their former country.
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Failed Eurpopean revolutions and the Irish Potato Famine caused the first major immigration rush to the United States.
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Contract Labor Law. Unlawful to import unskilled aliens from overseas as laborers. Regulations did not pertain to those crossing land borders.
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Ellis Island opened to screen immigrants entering on east coast. (Angel Island screened those on west coast.) Ellis Island officials reported that women traveling alone must be met by a man, or they were immediately deported.
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After President William McKinley is assassinated by a Polish anarchist, Congress enacts the Anarchist Exclusion Act, which allows immigrants to be excluded on the basis of their political opinions.
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Immigration Act provided for literacy tests for those over 16
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The Alien Registration Act requires the registration and fingerprinting of all aliens in the United States over the age of 14.
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Congress creates the Bracero Program a guest worker program bringing temporary agricultural workers into the United States from Mexico. The program ended in 1964.
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Operation Wetback forces the return of undocumented workers to Mexico.
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The Immigration Reform and Control Act gives amnesty to approximately three million undocumented residents and provides punishments for employers who hire undocumented workers.
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The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act strengthens border enforcement and makes it more difficult to gain asylum. The law establishes income requirements for sponsors of legal immigrants.
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USA Patriot Act amended the Immigration and Nationality Act to broaden the scope of aliens ineligible for admission or deportable due to terrorist activities to include an alien who: (1) is a representative of a political, social, or similar group whose political endorsement of terrorist acts undermines U.S. antiterrorist efforts; (2) has used a position of prominence to endorse terrorist activity, or to persuade others to support such activity in a way that undermines U.S. antiterrorist effort
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Arizona Senate Bill 1070 is signed into law by Arizona Govenor Janet Brewer. This controversial bill calls on police officers to check immgration status during routine stops.
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United States supreme court strikes down some parts of the law as unconstitutional. Most controversial parts are not struck down.
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The senate "gang of eight reveals" the new compromise that the bipartisan group has put into the form of a bill. They are currently attempting to garner support for the bill, but it has not yet gone to a vote in either house.