1. Immigration Reform

2. Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore, Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me: I lift up my lamp beside the golden door.“
-Emma Lazarus

3. 1820s 1st mass immigration: 300,000 Why:
Post Napoleonic Wars
Landless
Employment/land in America, freedoms
: 15 million immigrants

4. 1840s “Old Immigrants”: white Anglo-Saxon, West/Northern Europe
Irish: Catholic, work for low wage jobs in cities
Germans
Chinese immigrants begin arriving to West Coast (CA gold rush, transcontinental railroad)
American Reaction: nativism (ex Know-Nothing Party), protest
American heritage/national identity

5. 1880s Immigration Flood
“New Immigrants”: South/Eastern Europe (Germany, Italy, Hungary, Poland, Russia)
Less skilled/intelligent…more of a social problem
More xenophobia…Immigration Restriction League
1907 alone: 1 million immigrants, 50% S/E Europe

6. Immigration Laws 1875: exclude criminals
Chinese Exclusion Act 1882: 10 year ban on Chinese immigrants
1907: exclude feeble minded, tuberculosis patients, immoral women
Dillingham Commision: learn English, acquire citizenship, abandon native customs
1917 literacy test

7. Immigration Laws
1921 Immigration Act (Emergency Quota Act): 3% of 1910 census
1924 Immigration Act: 2% from 1890 census
Discriminates against S/E Europeans
1945 War Brides Act

8. Immigration Laws
1952 McCarran Walter Immigration Act: confirms quotas, limits total immigration
1954 Operation Wetback: return of 1000s of illegal Mexican immigrants (over 1 mil)
Increased US border forces

9. Immigration Laws
1965 Immigration & Nationality Act (Hart-Celler Act): ends national origins quotas, preferences to families/skilled workers
LBJ, civil rights legislation
Opens up more immigration from Asia
% Asian/Latin American, %

10. Immigration Laws
1980 Immigration Reform & Control Act (IRCA): penalties for employers hiring illegal immigrants, amnesty for illegal immigrants
1980 4,289,000 Mexican
1990 7,841,000 Mexican
,000,000 Mexican
2001 Patriot Act:

11. Court Cases
1875 Chy Lung v Freemon: immigration control is an implicit federal power
1982 Plyler v Doe: TX tries to deny free public education to kids of undocumented alien
Violated Equal Protection Clause of 14th amendment

12. More Recently…
1994 California Prop 187: illiegal aliens ineligible for social services except in emergency situations, more documentation control
Preempted by federal law…dropped

13. Illegal Immigration: Cons
: 1.6 million
1970s: 8.3 million
2005: around 12 million
50% in CA/TX/FL/NY
economic/social stress
Use citizen tax dollars as they benefit from social services
Take American jobs
Dilute America

14. Illegal Immigration: Pros
Economic benefit: cheap labor, without which goods (especially food) in America would be much more expensive
Ex 30-50% farm workers in CA= illegal immigrants (cheaper…less labor standards, lower wages)
Add diversity of cultures, languages, religions…
America was founded by immigrants