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states were empowered with how to become a citizen and determining citizenship
The Articles of Confederation gave power to the states that allowed them to decide citizenship and naturalization -
naturalization act
natural citizenship was granted to all free white people -
Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798
Congress enacted deportation laws targeting persons deemed political threats to the United States in response to conflicts in Europe -
Ban on “importation” of “any negro, mulatto, or other person of colour” (1803) (effective 1808)
The Haitian revolution led Congress to ban immigration by free blacks to contain anti-slavery campaigners. -
Indian Removal Act
During the presidency of Andrew Jackson, this law authorized the confiscation of land from Native Americans and provided resources for their forced removal west of the Mississippi River. -
treaty of Guadalupe
gave the citizens of New Mexico political, social, and economic rights of Americans -
The People V. Hall
This California Supreme Court case ruled that the testimony of a Chinese man who witnessed a murder by a white man was inadmissible, denying Chinese alongside Native and African Americans the status to testify in courts against white -
Dred Scott V. Sanford
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 -
Act to prohibit "coolie trade"
During the Civil War, the Republican-controlled Congress sought to prevent southern plantation owners from replacing their enslaved African American workers with unfree contract or "coolie" laborers from China -
emmacipation proclimation
President Abraham Lincoln's 1863 executive order freeing the slaves held in the Confederate states -
immigration act
This law legalized labor recruitment practices similar to indentured servitude in an attempt to encourage immigration to the United States, but it was quickly repealed. -
adoption of amendment 14
The amendment stated that anyone born in the U.S. would automatically become a U.S. citizen -
naturalization act
Extended naturalization rights to African Americans, but denied them to Asian Americans -
Page Act
Prohibited immigrants considered undesirable from entering the U.S., but was effectively geared toward Chinese laborers and Chinese women who were deemed to be prostitutes -
Angell Treaty
This treaty updated the 1868 Burlingame Treaty with China, allowing the United Stated to restrict the migration of certain categories of Chinese workers. It moved U.S. immigration policy closer to outright Chinese exclusion. -
immigration act of 1882
Legislated a few months after the Chinese Exclusion Law, this immigration legislation expanded the ranks of excludable aliens to include other undesirable persons and attributes such as "convicts," "lunatics," and "those likely to become a public charge." -
Elk V. Wilkins
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. -
Scott Act of 1888
Congress extended domestic authority over immigration to improve enforcement of the Chinese exclusion laws. It abolished one of the exempt statuses, returning laborers, stranding about 20,000 Chinese holding Certificates of Return outside the United States. -
Immigration Act of 1891
This 1891 immigration law clarified and centralized the immigration enforcement authority of the federal government, extended immigration inspection to land borders, and expanded the list of excludable and deportable immigrants. -
Immigration Restriction League
Increasing immigration, mainly from southern and eastern European countries, along with a series of economic downturns fueled nativist fears and the founding of the Immigration Restriction League by three influential Harvard graduates. -
Plessy v. Ferguson
This Supreme Court case validated racial segregation by ruling that the equal protections principles mandated by the Fourteenth Amendment could be honored with facilities that were "separate but equal." -
United States v. Wong Kim Ark
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 -
Immigration Act of 1903
This law identified anarchists as targets for exclusion and made provision for their removal if detained after entry. -
Extension of the Chinese Exclusion Act
Congress extended the Chinese exclusion laws in perpetuity in response to the Chinese government's efforts to leverage better conditions for Chinese travelers to the United States by abrogating earlier treaties. Chinese communities organized an anti-American boycott in protest. -
Anti-American Boycott
An international coalition of Chinese merchants and students coordinated boycotts of U.S. goods and services in China and some cities in Southeast Asia to protest the Chinese Exclusion laws. -
Expatriation Act of 1907
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. -
Alien Land Laws in California
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
This act enacted U.S. citizenship for Puerto Ricans after the United States acquired the island as an incorporated territory in 1898. -
Immigration Act of 1917 (Barred Zone Act)
Although this law is best known for its creation of a “barred zone” extending from the Middle East to Southeast Asia from which no persons were allowed to enter the United States, its main restriction consisted of a literacy test intended to reduce European immigration -
Wartime Measure of 1918
This act gave the executive branch greater powers to enforce immigration restrictions during World War I. It particularly targeted anarchists and other potential radicals. -
Emergency Quota Law
Fears of increased immigration after the end of World War I and the spread of radicalism propelled Congress to enact this "emergency" measure imposing drastic quantitative caps on immigration. -
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. -
Labor Appropriations Act of 1924
Immigration within the American hemisphere remained uncapped until 1965; however, in 1924 Congress authorized funding for the Border Patrol to regulate crossings occurring between immigration stations. -
Immigration Act of 1924 (Johnson-Reed Act)
To further limit immigration, this law established extended "national origins" quotas, a highly restrictive and quantitatively discriminatory system. The quota system would remain the primary means of determining immigrants' admissibility to the United States until 1965 -
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 -
Indian citizenship act
Native Americans born in the U.S. were given citizenship, but the right to vote was dependent on the state where they lived -
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Mexican Repatriation
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. -
Tydings-McDuffie Act of 1934
Completing the racial exclusion of Asians, Congress imposed immigration restrictions on Filipinos by granting the Philippines eventual independence. Previously, Filipinos could immigrate freely as U.S. nationals from a colony of the United States. -
Bracero Agreement (1942-1964)
During World War II, the U.S. government negotiated with the Mexican government to recruit Mexican workers, all men and without their families, to work on short-term contracts on farms and in other war industries. After the war, the program continued in agriculture until 1964. -
Luce-Celler Act of 1946
This law further undermined Asian exclusion by extending naturalization rights and immigration quotas to Filipinos and Indians as wartime allies -
Displaced Persons Act
In contrast lawmakers' widespread indifference before World War II, after the war, under pressure from the White House and Department of State, Congress authorized admissions for refugees from Europe and permitted asylum seekers already in the U.S. to regularize their status -
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. -
Refugee Relief Act
Dissatisfaction with the 1952 McCarran-Walter Act inspired support for this legislation which provided 214,000 visas to refugees, primarily from Europe but with 5,000 designated for the Far East. -
operation wetback
Even as the bracero program continued to recruit temporary workers from Mexico, the Immigration Bureau led round ups of Mexican nationals. The Bureau claimed to have deported one million Mexicans. -
Act of September 26, 1961
This law added more exceptions to immigration restriction by national quotas by categorizing international adoption as a form of family reunification. -
Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (Hart-Celler Act)
This law set the main principles for immigration regulation still enforced today. It applied a system of preferences for family reunification (75 percent), employment (20 percent), and refugees (5 percent) and for the first time capped immigration from the within Americas. -
Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966
After Fidel Castro's revolution, anti-communist Cubans received preferential immigration conditions because they came from a historically close U.S. neighbor and ally. This law provided them with permanent status and resources to help them adjust to life in the U.S. -
Immigration and Nationality Act Amendments of 1976 and 1978
The 1976 Amendments extended to the Western Hemisphere a per country ceiling of 20,000 and a modified preference system for arrivals. In 1978, the law was further amended to establish a single worldwide annual ceiling of 290,000. -
Refugee Act of 1980
While adhering to the UN standard for defining refugees, this law made U.S. refugee policy more responsive to changing situations through the implementation of annual admissions quotas that could be adjusted annually after consultation between Congress and the White House. -
Plyler v. Doe
This Supreme Court case ruled that public school districts cannot constitutionally refuse admission to unauthorized immigrant children because the harmful effects to the public outweighed the cost savings -
immigration act of 1990
Congress revised the Immigration Act of 1965 by implementing the H-1B visa program for skilled temporary workers, with some provisions for conversion to permanent status, and the diversity visa lottery for populations unable to enter through the preference system -
Chinese Student Protection Act
Legislated in response to the brutal Chinese government crackdowns on student protests in Tiananmen in 1989, this law permitted Chinese students living in the United States to gain legal permanent status. -
Homeland Security Act
The Homeland Security Act created the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) by consolidating 22 diverse agencies and bureaus. The creation of DHS reflected mounting anxieties about immigration in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11th. -
Secure Fence Act
Secure Fence Act (2006)
Passed in October 2006, this law mandated that the Secretary of Homeland Security act quickly to achieve operational control over U.S. international land and maritime borders including an expansion of existing walls, fences, and surveillance. -
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA)
Trying to cope with the long-term residence of millions of unauthorized immigrants, this executive order provided protection from deportation and work authorization to persons who arrived as minor children and had lived in the United States since June 15, 2007. -
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. -
Muslim Travel Ban
The "Muslim Ban" refers to a series of the Trump administration's executive orders that prohibited travel and refugee resettlement from select predominately Muslim countries. After several legal challenges, the Supreme Court upheld most provisions of a third version of the ban. -
Final Rule on “Public Charge Ground of Inadmissibility”
In 2019, the Trump administration's Department of Homeland Security finalized a rule that expanded the list of received benefits and other factors to be considered in determining whether an applicant for admission or adjustment of status is likely to become a public charge