How should a 'nation of immigrants' function?
Published Dominion Post, Aug. 31, 2025. Reprinted with permission.
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-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!— Emma Lazarus, 1883
Exclusion — by race, religion, nationality, socioeconomic status — has always been part of the American story. U.S. immigration law from 1864 to 1924 (reviewed last month, DP, 7/28/2025) revealed the variety of early methods to exclude immigrants from admission to the United States or from citizenship, once admitted. Such selectivity did not change with World War II and subsequent decades.
By 1942, labor shortages caused by WWII prompted the United States to enter into the Bracero Agreement that allowed Mexican nationals to work in the U.S. as seasonal agricultural workers. This arrangement served agribusiness and was extended in 1949 and 1951. U.S. employers were to pay transportation, living expenses and wages equivalent to Americans doing similar work.
The Chinese Exclusion Acts were repealed in 1942, an unusual opening up of the immigration portal.
After WWII, new immigration laws accommodated war brides (1945) and displaced persons affected by Nazi persecution (1948). However, President Truman expressed concern that the 1948 law would exclude many Jewish refugees.
The Immigration and Nationality Act (the McCarren-Walter Act, 1952) preserved national origin quotas (with updated calculations), but for the first time provided for Asian immigration quotas.
Two more laws provided for refugee immigration from Europe (1952) and other Western Hemisphere countries (1962). The latter principally addressed Cuban nationals. Similar laws followed for Cambodia and Vietnam (1975).
In 1964, a program called The A-Team (acronym for “Athletes in Temporary Employment as Agricultural Manpower”) was concocted to push out immigrant farm workers and replace them with American high school students. Ironically introduced on Cinco de Mayo 1965, the U.S. Secretary of Labor announced this program to recruit 20,000 high school students to spend the summer doing the work of migrant farmworkers. The program failed in year one; hundreds quit in its first two weeks.
The 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act abolished the national origins quota system in favor of a system based on relationships to a U.S. citizen, permanent resident or U.S. employer. Still, the law came with caps on the number of immigrants who could qualify.
The Refugee Act of 1980 redefined who could be deemed a “refugee” and established a new system for processing and admitting them to the country.
During the Reagan Administration (1986), the Immigration Reform and Control Act created legal pathways for about 2.7 million people “illegally” in the U.S. The Act covered two groups: unauthorized aliens who had lived in the U.S. since 1982 could regularize their status; and persons who had worked in selected agricultural jobs for 90 days could apply for permanent resident status.
Then, a shift occurred. New laws (1988, 1990, 1994, 1996, 2001, 2002, 2005, 2006) focused primarily on law enforcement, including border control, deportations and building a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Thus, we see two distinct features of immigration law across our history. First, laws targeting specific races, ethnicities, nationalities, directly or indirectly. Second, since the 1980s, laws emphasizing law enforcement, crimes, penalties.
With few exceptions, immigration laws since 1924 have been designed to keep people out, not welcome them in. The U.S. also has conducted periodic aggressive removal actions, some recent.
The Eisenhower Administration (1954-1955) targeted Mexican immigrant farmworkers, but hasty Federal efforts ensnared American citizens for deportation too. Under two Trump Administrations (2017-2021, 2025+), mass deportations again became official policy. Specific tactics have included child separation and indiscriminate abduction, imprisonment, deportation of individuals (including some citizens, many longtime residents) without due process. Families are being separated again.
Is this how a “nation of immigrants” ought to function? For years, political rhetoric has focused on “comprehensive immigration reform” as the solution. Yet, reform is never realized.
Consider this … What did your ancestors overcome to become Americans? We know immigrants add value to our society with their hard work and paying taxes. What if immigration law were rewritten to create the nation we need and benefit from? What would a “Lazarus Law” look like?