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Nationality Act of 1790
This was the first law to define eligibility for citizenship by naturalization and establish standards and procedures by which immigrants became US citizens. In this early version, Congress limited this important right to “free white persons.” -
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848)
In the settlement of the Mexican-American War, this treaty formalized the United States' annexation of a major portion of northern Mexico, El Norte, and conferred citizenship on Mexicans choosing to remain in the territory. -
Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857)
This Supreme Court ruling established that slaves and free African Americans were not citizens of the U.S. and were not entitled to the rights and privileges of citizenship, such as the right to sue in federal courts. -
14th Amendment
Ratified in 1868 to secure equal treatment for African Americans after the Civil War, the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed birthright citizenship for all persons born in the United States. -
Naturalization Act of 1870
The Naturalization Act of 1870 explicitly extended naturalization rights already enjoyed by white immigrants to “aliens of African nativity and to persons of African descent,” thus denying access to the rights and protections of citizenship to other nonwhite immigrant groups. -
Chinese Exclusion Act
This law was a major shift in U.S. immigration policy toward growing restrictiveness. The law targeted Chinese immigrants for restriction- -
Elk v. Wilkins (1884)
The Supreme Court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment did not apply to Native Americans who did not automatically gain citizenship by birth and could therefore be denied the right to vote. -
The Dawes Allotment Act
Complaints about the reservation system for Native Americans led Congress to authorize the president to allot – or separate into individual landholdings – tribal reservation lands. Native Americans receiving allotments could gain U.S. citizenship, but often lost their land. -
United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898)
This Supreme Court case established the precedent that any person born in the United States is a citizen by birth regardless of race or parents' status. -
Expatriation Act of 1907 & Gentlemen’s Agreement of 1907-1908
Under the principle that women assumed the citizenship of their husbands, this act stripped citizenship from U.S.-born women when they married noncitizen immigrant men.
Gentlemen’s Agreement of 1907-1908
Rather than enacting racially discriminatory and offensive immigration laws, President Theodore Roosevelt sought to avoid offending the rising world power of Japan through this negotiated agreement by which the Japanese government limited the immigration of its own citizens. -
Alien Land Laws in California (1913 & 1920)
California, along with many other western states, enacted laws that banned "aliens ineligible for citizenship" from owning or leasing land. The Supreme Court upheld these laws as constitutional. -
Jones-Shafroth Act (1917)
Jones-Shafroth Act (1917)
This act enacted U.S. citizenship for Puerto Ricans after the United States acquired the island as an incorporated territory in 1898. -
Cable Act of 1922
After women gained suffrage with the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, Congress swiftly enacted this law to restore citizenship to U.S.-born women who had married noncitizen husbands and thereby lost their citizenship under the Expatriation Act of 1907 -
Thind v. United States (1923)
Contradicting the logic behind its ruling in Ozawa v. U.S., the Supreme Court found that Bhagat Singh Thind was also ineligible for citizenship even though as an Asian Indian, who were as caucasians, he was racially white. -
Indian Citizenship Act of 1924
Indian Citizenship Act of 1924
This law stipulated that all Native Americans born in the United States were automatically citizens by birth. Native Americans were the last main group to gain this right set forth in the Fourteenth Amendment -
Mexican Repatriation (1929-1936)
Mexican Repatriation (1929-1936)
During the economic and political crises of the 1920s and 1930s, the Border Patrol launched several campaigns to detain Mexicans, including some U.S.-born citizens, and expel them across the border. -
Ex Parte Endo (1944)
Ex Parte Endo (1944)
In December 1944, the Supreme Court authorized the end of Japanese American incarceration by ruling that "concededly loyal" U.S. citizens could not be held, regardless of the principle of "military necessity." -
Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (The McCarran-Walter Act)
Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (The McCarran-Walter Act)
The McCarran-Walter Act reformed some of the obvious discriminatory provisions in immigration law. While the law provided quotas for all nations and ended racial restrictions on citizenship, it expanded immigration enforcement and retained offensive national origins quotas. -
An Act: To facilitate the entry of alien skilled specialists and certain relatives of United States citizens, and for other purposes (1962)
An Act: To facilitate the entry of alien skilled specialists and certain relatives of United States citizens, and for other purposes (1962)
This law opened the door to immigration by highly skilled workers from countries with low immigration quotas, anticipating the Immigration Act of 1965's emphasis on employment preferences. -
Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA) and DACA Program expanded
Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA) and DACA Program expanded
This executive order issued by the Obama White House sought to defer deportation and some other protections for unauthorized immigrants whose children were either American citizens or lawful permanent residents.
