Immigrants are foreign-born people who have moved into another country for a better life style. Immigration is the introduction of new people into a habitat or population. People have migrated all over the world, especially in the United States. But in the end of the 1800’s, the US began to make take their first steps against immigration.

Immigrants Arriving in the "Land of Promise," 1901 Immigrants Aboard the S.S. Patricia

Between 1865 and 1890 a great wave of people migrated in the United States, mostly from northwest of Europe. Then, from the 1890 to 1914, another group of approximately 15 million people from eastern and southern Europe came to the US. Not all immigrants planned to stay, the so called ‘Birds of Passage’ mostly consisted of young men who intended to make money in the US then to return to their native countries. Those who did stay, brought their families to live the new and improved American life style.

In the end of the nineteenth century, laws against immigration started to take place. On the year of 1875 Congress passed the first restrictive immigration law by barring criminals, anarchists, polygamists, and prostitutes to enter the country. Congress later passed a series of Alien Contract Labor laws from 1885 through1891, that restrained immigrants from entering the U.S to work under contracts made before their arrival and prohibited U.S employers from advertising job opportunities in other countries. By World War I people believed that the country was becoming overcrowded. Many Americans complained that new immigrants were taking good jobs but that they worked too much for little money. Congress responded by passing new immigration laws in 1917, 1921, and The 1921 law established a quota system, in which the total number immigrants from any nation in a year could not surpass three percent of the number of foreign-born residents of that nationality living in the U.S. Immigration slowed down during the Great Depression, as economic opportunities in the U.S. also became weak.

In May of 2006 President Bush responded to pressure from the Congress over the amount of illegal immigrants coming into the country by crossing the Mexican border, and he promised to send as many as 6,000 National Guards troops to reinforce the Border Patrol in the southwestern U.S. Since immigration reform is often debated in the halls of Congress and by state legislators, actions are taken. But the public also has strong feelings about the topic. The United States is divided on solutions for immigration reform. Many American have taken strong actions against undocumented immigrants, and many have led to tragedies. But others feel like everyone has the right to personal success. Difficult questions arise when immigration reform is brought up. Human rights, economic opportunities, racism, poverty, exploitation, and employment are just some of the issues of this particular subject.

Numbers of immigrants continue to go up til today.