The Reform of Immigration and Naturalization

本文讲述了美国对移民方面的规划。作为一个著名的“大熔炉”，美国一直是一个多种族国家，包含了不同种族和来自世界各地的人们。美国人的起源是英国移民。毫不夸张地说，移民不仅创造了美国，而且还发展和改变了美国。移民的法律改革是关键的，因为社会逐渐转变了政治模式和世界经济。

As the famous “Melting Pot”, the US has been a country mixing different races and people from all over the world. The origins of the Americans were British immigrants. It is no exaggeration to say that immigrants not only created, but also developed and changed the United States. The legal reform of immigration and naturalization was crucial as the society gradually changed with political patterns and the world economy.

The US government has been updating its policies on immigration and naturalization as early as the 18th century when the Constitution was established and later published a rule of naturalization in 1787. Since then, pursuant to this power, in 1790 the Congress passed the first naturalization law for the United States, the Naturalization Act of 1790, which enabled those who had resided in the country for two years and had kept their current state of residence for a year to apply for citizenship. However, as time goes by, the US government has changed the restrictions of immigration several times, challenging those who want to immigrate to this country. These restrictions became slack during the 19th century, as the gold rush and Asian immigrants came to live on the continent. Then, in the 20th century, several Acts such as “Chinese Exclusion Act” and “Emergency Quota Act” were established to reduce the number of immigrants. In the 21st century, the legislations became more specific and diversified the policy on new immigrants. It leans towards those with technology and capital investments and limits quotas on labor immigrants. 

Several years after the constitution was established, the first act about immigration, the Naturalization Act of 1790, was written. The legislation allowed an individual to apply for citizenship if they were a free white person, have good characters, and have been living in the United States for two years. Upon receiving the courts approval they took an oath of allegiance, which was recorded. The individual's citizenship was also extended to any children under the age of 21, regardless of their birthplace. If the applicant had never been a U.S. resident the application was disregarded . Although it seemed easy to apply for citizenship, such benefits didn’t last long. The Naturalization Act of 1795 increased the residency requirement to five years and added a requirement of giving a three-year notice of intention to apply, and the Naturalization Act of 1798 further increased residency requirement to 14 years and required a five-year notice of intent to apply. Unfortunately, because of the overwhelming amount of applicants and illegal residents, the government had to be strict with the rules to protect the country. It is understandable that even though the fairest way was to treat everyone equally with the same custom policy, during that time it was a specific situation. The government’s mission back then was to fortify the young nation and concentrate its power to eliminate any possible harm that could have come. Therefore, considering the country’s interest as a whole, the government did nothing wrong on regulating and raising the standard of naturalizing. 

After that, the Naturalization Law of 1802 repealed the Naturalization Act of 1798. The 14th Amendment, passed in 1868, protects children born in the United States. "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside"  was interpreted by the Supreme Court in the 1898 case United State v. Wong Kim Ark, with the exception of the children of diplomats. In Wong’s case, this Chinese young man had been denied to enter the US boarder since he was not naturalized as a US citizen, although he was born in American. Therefore after, the government could not deny citizenship to anyone born in the United States.  

One of the largest wave of immigration occurred in 1820 to 1860 with a total number of 5 million. They mainly come from Western Europe and Northern Europe, and there were also a large number of African American slaves. Meanwhile, there were a small number of immigrants from Asia, mainly because of the Gold Rush. To prevent African American slaves to legally become citizens and have equal rights with their slave owners, many of these people were not able to be naturalized as an American citizen even if they were born in the U.S or had been there for more than the required time. Such discrimination is to be blamed but also think of it from another angle: if the government really ignored the social factors of discrimination and treated the African Americans equally, there would definitely be dissatisfactions in the south, which might lead to severe consequences. Back then, thoughts were already given to racial equally on the immigration aspect but were difficult to put into real action. 

The second wave of immigration climaxed from 1861 to 1880, when about 5 million immigrants came to the U.S. After the Civil War, the country was at the peak of industrialization and was in strong demand for labor. President Lincoln lobbied the congress to pass the 1864 Immigrant Act  in order to attract more European immigrants, making it the most important diplomatic task at that time. Thanks to immigration, the U.S got hundreds of thousands of skilled workers from Europe without having to invest much in education and training. According to statistics, during 1871 to 1892, about 23% of immigrants from western and northern Europe were skilled workers . They brought technology from iron, steel, textile and other industries, and later became an important force of U.S’s industrial revolution.

The third immigration peak occurred from 1881 to 1920, when number of immigrants soared to 23.5 million. In this stage, the US government has repeatedly make legislation restricting European immigration and excluding Asian immigrants. The minor races of immigrants were treated in a way no different than how African Americans were treated. As more and more contract labor came to the U.S, the immigration law took this topic into consideration. In 1882 an act to exclude Chinese was established  and following that was the 1892 Geary Act  and the 1902 Scott Act , all requiring certain levels of prohibition and extended the length of time on the exclusion of Chinese. Considering how much immigrants had contributed, the exclusion acts were irrational decisions. For example, Samuel Slater was an immigrant to the US who successfully replicated the efficient cotton spinning machine, starting the American industrial revolution. The inventor of telephone, Alexander Bell, father of telegraph, Samuel Morse, and many other great inventors are descendants of immigrants or immigrants themselves. In addition, immigrants from China, Japan and the Philippines brought agricultural and horticultural techniques, while Italian immigrants contributed to gas, electricity, water and many other construction technologies to the U.S. Also, in the changing political landscape and early "westward movement", the role of Chinese workers cannot be ignored.

As people from different races started to enter America, the straightforward and simple naturalization process for Federal citizenship stood in sharp contrast to the restricted access to naturalization in European countries, the original home for vast majority of nineteenth-century immigrants. Such simplicity, which allows foreigners to become American citizens, disguised the fact that there are limited citizenship rights accompanying naturalization. The contours of political citizenship, as linked to naturalization, only gradually emerged between the passage of the Bill of Rights and the 15th Amendment. As the rights of political citizenship became more clearly defined and more comprehensive during the nineteenth century, struggle over who would be eligible to exercise these rights to their fullest degree became crucial to the government.  However, during the court hearings, the different attitude of judges toward these immigrants gradually decided where they were going. The system of naturalization based on what John Buenker has called “organic networks” had a number of different consequences. For one, it ended to exclude more recent immigrant groups from naturalization in disproportionate numbers, unless the enlisted the help of “old timers” as facilitators.  

From 1940 to 1990, the legal regulations on immigration had transited from “strictly limited” to “flexible”. After the immigrant quota system was established in the early 20s, the economic crisis broke out and the government had to put a strict limit on quotas. During 1931 to 1940, there were only 68,000 immigrants, which marked the lowest time of all since 1820 .  After World War II broke out, the steady stream of military orders pulled U.S economy out of a prolonged recession. Labor shortages became a great problem, and the U.S government signed several labor contracts in 1942 with Mexico, Canada, New Zealand and other countries. This finally overthrew of the act of exclusion on contract labor . The congress authorized the President to continue to introduce contract labor, and required strict management from the government to prevent illegal immigration. The abolition of the Chinese Exclusion Act is the continuance of such consideration that China became an important alliance to the U.S during the World War II. The U.S Congress did so in December 1943 and granted 105 quotas to China each year, allowing Chinese to be naturalized as US citizens . In 1952, the congress promulgated the Alien Immigration and Nationality Act, resulting in an increase of total annual quota to 156,000. 

In 1990 the congress passed the Immigration and Nationality Act , which instituted the Diversity Visa Lottery Program. An obvious result from U.S’s new immigration law is how it affects the U.S. society’s structure and functions. The new immigration law has a large coverage with a total length of 279 pages. Its main feature is to increase the quota of legal immigrants in the United States, with a significant increase of quota for technical immigration candidates. In this case, scientists and engineers and other professionals can enter the US easily and furthermore, help boost the country’s competitiveness, finally winning the battle in future global economy. Another feature of the new immigration law is that a significant increase in the relevant quotas to effectively accelerate small family reunion. As a result, family related immigrants, technical professionals, those amnestied, and businesses investment immigrants are all among the biggest beneficiary of this act. As for the working class, including many scholars, baby sitters, or white-collar workers who apply H1 visas in the U.S, it may look like that their quota has increased. In fact, the new act combined the third priority and sixth priority into the same category, thus reducing a decrease of the quota of labor immigration in general. Therefore the opportunity to become permanent resident or citizen for these people is becoming even smaller. The 1990 new act has taken U.S’s legislative history of immigration and its social reality into consideration, meeting national needs and highlighting the significance of time. 

After centuries of development, the US formed a relatively complete legal system on immigration and naturalization. The original rigid provisions were abolished; principles and structure of the new legislation are becoming more reasonable with significantly enhanced flexibility and practicality. Although the entry requirements have been stricter, due to an increase in immigration quotas, the country has come into a new peak migration period. The technical composition of immigrants is also higher than ever before. By controlling the amount of immigrants who enter the US every year, the government can have a broad view of how many people would be living in the country, also allowing it to predict the statistics in the future.

Generally speaking, the reform of immigration and naturalization is more beneficial than detrimental to the U.S society. It raised debates and political reforms in a good way and helped to improve the quality of new immigrants to the United States, introducing new technology, capital and human resources to the country. As a result, U.S has retained its economic strength to face all sorts of challenges in the coming century. 

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