Issues & Controversies
Last Updated: January 22, 2021
Immigration Policy: Do Stringent
Immigration Policies Benefit the United
States?
Introduction
hello hello
Drew Angere
Getty Images
New U.S. citizens recite the the Oath of Allegiance during an immigrant naturalization ceremony
in New York City in September 2019.
The appeal that the United States holds for many immigrants, combined with its restrictive immigration policy, has
led millions of people to enter the country illegally. Many of these illegal, or undocumented, immigrants end up
living in the United States for many years. Experts estimate that at least half of the illegal immigrant population has
SUPPORTERS ARGUE
The United States must take drastic action to secure
its borders. Illegal immigrants are a drain on the
U.S. economy and pose an urgent security threat.
Building a border wall and limiting
immigration from certain countries will benefit the
United States.
OPPONENTS ARGUE
Immigration is a core aspect of the United States'
national identity. Building a border wall, banning
immigration from certain countries, and denying
undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship are
cruel policies that will ultimately harm the United
States.
een in the country for a decade or longer. According to the Pew Research Center, the largest percentage of
undocumented immigrants living in the United States hails from Mexico, followed by El Salvador, Guatemala,
India, Honduras, and China.
Entering the United States illegally is risky. Unauthorized immigrants must either use falsified documents to deceive
immigration officials, come ashore by boat without being detected, or sneak across the nation's land borders with
Mexico or Canada, which the government spends billions of dollars a year to protect. Hundreds of people die each
year attempting to cross the border between the United States and Mexico, most of heatstroke or dehydration in the
treacherous deserts that separate the two countries. If caught, illegal immigrants can be deported and banned from
e-entering the country for 10 years. Nevertheless, people from other countries continue to take these risks on a
daily basis. Others enter the country legally, but stay long after the expiration of their visas, official documents that
allow them to stay in the country on a temporary basis.
For years, debate has raged in the United States over how to handle the estimated 11 million people living in the
country illegally. Many argue that the presence of undocumented immigrants poses a national security danger and
hurts American workers, and they urge the U.S. government to prioritize finding and deporting these immigrants as
well as stopping new undocumented immigrants from coming in. Others, insisting that undocumented immigrants
help fuel the U.S. economy and contribute to U.S. communities in many other valuable ways, argue that deporting
otherwise law-abiding immigrants who have set down roots in the United States is unnecessarily cruel and
inhumane.
Policy toward undocumented immigrants is just one aspect of the immigration debate in the United States.
Legislators also often disagree over how many and which immigrants and refugees to let into the country every
year. Conservatives, for example, have sometimes criticized policies that emphasize diversity in immigrant selection
or grant preference to family members of immigrants already here, while liberals sometimes argue that the United
States admits too few refugees and asylum seekers every year from impoverished and war-torn countries.
The debate over immigration to the United States took center stage during the presidency of Donald Trump (R, 2017
–21). The Trump administration built hundreds of miles of new ba
iers along the U.S.-Mexico border; drastically
educed the number of refugees and asylum seekers the United States accepted annually; ratcheted up deportations
of undocumented immigrants living in the United States; limited travel from certain countries, most of which had
large Muslim populations; repeatedly urged Congress to drastically slash the number of legal immigrants the United
States accepts every year; and adopted a variety of other controversial immigration policies throughout Trump's
four years in office. President Trump's immigration policies sparked debate over how to contend with
undocumented immigrants cu
ently in the United States as well as how the country should go about accepting
newcomers in the future.
Joe Biden (D), who was inaugurated president on January 20, 2021, em
aced immigration policies markedly
different than those of President Trump. On his first day in office, President Biden issued orders lifting the travel ban
imposed on certain countries, stating that it was "just plain wrong," and suspending construction of the border wall.
He also called on Congress to pass a sweeping immigration proposal that would offer the estimated 11 million
undocumented immigrants living in the United States a path to legal status and ultimately citizenship. How
Congress will address immigration policy during the Biden administration remains to be seen.
Do stringent immigration policies benefit the United States?
Supporters of taking drastic steps to secure U.S. borders argue that illegal immigrants pose an urgent threat to the
United States. Taking strong measures such as building a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border and banning
immigration from countries known to export te
orists, they contend, are necessary to protect the United States. The
government, advocates of a strict immigration policy argue, should emphasize skills and education rather than
diversity when deciding who to allow to enter the United States. Granting a path to citizenship to undocumented
immigrants, they insist, would be a mistake.
Opponents of stringent immigration policies argue that the United States was built on immigration. Immigrants
enefit the U.S. economy, they contend, and undocumented immigrants pose no major threat to the country.
President Trump's efforts to build a wall between the United States and Mexico and ban immigration from majority
-Muslim nations, they assert, were ineffective policies based on fear and ignorance. Undocumented immigrants who
have built lives here, opponents of strict immigration policies argue, should be allowed to stay.
Immigration Laws in American History
The first immigration-related legislation in the United States was the Naturalization Act of 1790, which allowed
"free white persons" who had lived in the United States for at least two years to apply for citizenship. In 1795,
Congress raised this period to five years. In 1798, President John Adams (Federalist, 1797–1801) signed four laws
known collectively as the Alien and Sedition Acts. The United States at the time was teetering on the
ink of war
with France, and the laws were intended to cu
opposition to the U.S. government, particularly from immigrants
suspected of spreading pro-French and radical sentiments. The Alien Enemies Act allowed the president, during a
time of war, to deport citizens of an enemy nation, and the Alien Friends Act allowed the president to deport any
alien he deemed "dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States."
The Naturalization Act of 1798 increased the amount of time immigrants had to stay in the United States before
they could apply for citizenship from 5 years to 14 years, while the Sedition Act restricted criticism of the U.S.
government. The unpopularity of the Alien and Sedition Acts contributed to President Adams's defeat in the 1800
presidential election by Thomas Jefferson (Democratic-Republican, 1801–09), who staunchly opposed the laws as
an incursion on Americans' civil liberties. Most of the provisions expired in 1800 and 1801.
In the mid-19th century, the United States experienced a massive wave of immigration to its shores. Between 1820
and 1880, millions of western Europeans—mostly from Great Britain, Germany, and Ireland—left their homelands
to start new lives in the United States. Although tensions between native-born Americans and immigrants did
exist—and occasionally exploded into violence—the influx was, for the most part, welcomed. The United States
needed a larger population to help settle its western states and te
itories and to contribute to its growing economy.
Not all immigrants were well received, however, especially those from countries outside of western Europe. In the
1850s, a wave of Chinese immigrants entered the United States, settling mostly in western states and te
itories and
helping to build the nation's infrastructure, including the Transcontinental Railroad. These immigrants had initially
een welcomed for their willingness to perform low-wage manual labor, but resentment against them grew in the
1870s, once the railroad was completed.
Amid increasing hostility toward Chinese immigrants, which included discriminatory state and local measures and
numerous acts of violence and murder against the Chinese, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882. The
first law to restrict immigration based on race or nationality, the Chinese Exclusion Act ba
ed virtually all Chinese
immigrants from entering the United States for 10 years. Renewed in 1892 and made permanent in the early 1900s,
the law also prevented Chinese immigrants already living in the country from becoming citizens. (The law would
emain in effect until 1943, when many of its provisions were repealed to solidify the alliance between the United
States and China during World War II.)
Immigration from Europe boomed again in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with millions coming from Italy,
Poland, Russia, and other countries. In 1907, the peak year, more than 1.2 million newcomers a
ived in the United
States. Immigration remained controversial, however, particularly after the out
eak of World War I (1914–18),
when growing anxiety over national security prompted lawmakers to tighten restrictions on entry to the United
States. The Immigration Act of 1917, passed despite a veto by President Woodrow Wilson (D, 1913–21), gave
officials greater power to deport resident aliens; closed the U.S. border to almost anyone from Asia; required
immigrants to pay a steep tax and prove their literacy before entering the country; and formally ba
ed a wide
ange of "undesirables"—a group that included poor people, "imbeciles, epileptics, [and] alcoholics"—from entering
the United States.
In 1921, President Wa
en G. Harding (R, 1921–23) signed the Emergency Quota Act, which allowed only 3 percent
of the immigrant population of each country living in the United States as of the 1910 census to enter the country
each year. The quotas largely favored western European countries, which represented the largest immigrant
populations in 1910, and were intended to discourage immigrants from southern and eastern European countries,
such as Italy and Poland, from entering the United States. Congress again tightened quotas in 1924 with the
National Origins Act, signed by President Calvin Coolidge (R, 1923–29). The law reduced the annual immigration
quotas to 2 percent and dated the benchmark population amount backward from 1910 to 1890, when there were
even fewer