The United States has always had mixed feelings about immigrants. It has always been possessive of land taken by trickery and force, and always created exceptions to its reverence for liberty and justice. Many of the “wretched refuse” who moved to the U.S. have remained poor and “tempest tossed” in the face of rejection and contempt.
Currently, immigration is in crisis for various reasons: immigration laws have not always been enforced, immigrants have abused public charity, people have entered the country illegally, and bigotry in the U.S. is real. Stakeholders in the crisis have lost trust in each other. The Trump administration’s recent crackdown on immigrants makes it hard for citizens and noncitizens alike to trust amnesty proposals. Immigrants who commit crimes and defraud government programs makes it hard for the compassionate to demand amnesty.
The republic has a record of bigotry. Indigenous people were not considered citizens until 1924, slavery was considered a legitimate economic system, and religious intolerance across the centuries has been manifest various forms of discrimination against Catholics, Jews, Muslims, and others (Corrigan and Neal, 2010). The Nationality Act of 1790 favored free white people. The Alien and Sedition Acts (1798) authorized deportation of unwanted immigrants. The goal was to homogenize the nation and expel political radicals influenced by the French Revolution who wanted more power for the people and heavy taxes for the rich. The Immigration Act of 1882 barred “convicts and lunatics” from entry, and the Immigration Act of 1903 banned anarchists. In 1942, President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066 authorized the incarceration of Japanese Americans in detention camps. War hysteria convinced many Americans that all Japanese immigrants were spies and traitors.
In 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act banned the Chinese from the U.S. In 1917, the U.S. expanded immigration restrictions based on ethnicity and nationality, with special bias against people from the Middle East and Asia. It also imposed the first literacy tests on European immigrants. The Emergency Quota Act (1921) and the Immigration Act of 1924. Both set quotas for non-white, non-European immigrants. These quotas lasted until 1965.
Immigration laws were often driven by economic interests rather than humanitarian concerns. There were some exceptions, including the 1803 ban on the “importation” of African slaves, and the 1862 act to Prohibit the ‘Coolie Trade,’ which discouraged the “importation” of Chinese laborers to act as substitutes for African slaves. After the Civil War, which killed about 2% of the U.S. population, the nation needed more strong bodies for its industrialization and westward expansion. The Immigration Act of 1864 legalized the recruitment of foreigners to populate the U.S., but it allowed harsh terms of servitude, and so it was repealed in 1868.
The Burlingame Treaty (1868) secured immigration for Chinese labors who built railroads, while enduring poor wages and discrimination. In 1942, the U.S. concluded the Bracero Agreement with Mexico, which permitted Mexican men (no families allowed) to work in the U.S. as temporary contracted laborers. The need for more laborers did not alter American bigotry. Well into the 20th century, Mexicans, Native Americans, African Americans, and Asians were prevented from voting, testifying in court, and running for office. In 1953, Operation Wetback deported about one million Mexicans. American ambivalence about whether to be a nation of opportunity or one of exclusion is a constant in the nation’s history (Ewing, 2012).
The 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act ended the quota system abased on country of origin, but limited the number the country would admit annually. It distributed visas according to family ties, job skills, and exceptional expertise in the sciences. In the late 1900s, immigration became synonymous with job loss for American citizens. (Lansing & Alabart, 1983). During the 1980s, automation replaced workers, and corporations relocated their factories abroad to escape high taxes, regulation, and expensive labor. Many Americans refused to take low-paying jobs that immigrants were willing to take and unions were often forced to concede labor demands for the sake of employment. Reagan was tough on unauthorized immigration — increasing penalties for hiring undocumented workers and altering benefits for asylum seekers — but he also granted asylum to 3 million people (Saluja, 2025).
There were between 800,000 and 1.6 million cases of undocumented entry annually from 1980-2000. Between 2021 and 2023, that number soared to over 2 million (Mollica & Cadwell, 2023). Immigrants were scapegoated for America’s economic woes, and President Trump launched an aggressive campaign to deport unauthorized immigrants. He was supported by liberals and conservatives who wanted law enforcement, and from authorized immigrants who resented those entering the country illegally (McHardy, 2025). The campaign routinely lied about immigrants. Trump claimed that immigrants were overly reliant on public benefits, but research found that, noncitizen immigrants— both authorized and unauthorized — “consumed 54 percent less welfare than native-born Americans” (Nowrasteh & Famularo, 2025). He said that immigrants were mostly criminals, but data indicate U.S. citizens have higher rates of crimes than immigrants (Abrego, et al., 2017; Soto, 2024).
Trump tried to end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. He buttressed border security and surveillance, stripped sanctuary cities of federal funding as punishment for their policy, and increased the capacity of detention centers. He unleashed an army of ill-trained, trigger-happy ICE agents in select cities. The campaign’s malice conjures the ghosts of fugitive slave hunters, calvary slashing and shooting peaceful Native American encampments, and police officers who got away with gay bashing, lynching, and murder. The campaign is another chapter in the saga of America’s love/hate relationship with foreigners who want to call America “home.” It reveals a partisan agenda that asks Americans to eviscerate charity and compassion from their hearts, and replace it with pomposity and malice. It asks us to be confident that this campaign will improve our safety and prosperity without explaining who will take up the economic slack when millions of workers, volunteers, taxpayers, and consumers are deported.
References
Abrego, Leisy, et al. Making Immigrants into Criminals: Legal Processes of Criminalization in the Post-IIRIRA Era. Journal on Migration and Human Security, 5(3): 694-715. (2017)
Corrigan, John & Lynn S. Neal (Eds.) Religious Intolerance in America: A Documentary History, 2nd Ed. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2010.
Ewing, Walter A. opportunity and Exclusion: A Brief History of U.S. Immigration Policy. Immigration Policy Center. January 2012. Success or Stagnation.
Lansing, Paul and Javier Alabart. The Reagan Administration Proposals on Immigration: The problem of the Undocumented Alien in the United States. Western International Law Journal, 13:1 (1983).
McHardy, Martha. Immigrants are Embracing Trump’s Crackdown on Immigration. Newsweek, June 13, 2025. Immigrants Are Embracing Trump’s Crackdown on Immigration – Newsweek.
Nowrasteh, Alex & Jerome Famularo. Immigrant and Native Consumption of Means-Tested Welfare and Entitlement Benefits in 2022. Cato Briefing Paper, February 18, 2025. Immigrant and Native Consumption of Means-Tested Welfare and Entitlement Benefits in 2022.
Saluja, Paul. “When Reagan Gave Amnesty: Remembering the 1986 Immigration Reform that legalized 3 Million People.” Saluja Law, May 4, 2025. When Reagan Gave Amnesty: Remembering the 1986 Immigration Reform That Legalized 3 Million People | Saluja Law Offices PLLC.
Soto, Ariel G. Ruiz. Explainer: Immigrants and Crime in the United States. Migration Policy Institute, October 2024. Explainer: Immigrants and Crime in the United States | migrationpolicy.org.
