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present discussion about the differences in treatment given to migrants arriving by boat
from Cuba versus those from Haiti (and other locations in the Western Hemisphere), there
is disquiet about the failure of the executive branch to provide entry to refugees from
North Korea, despite a 2004 law requiring that it be done.3
In assessing the effect of U.S. immigration policy on the freedom enjoyed by today’s
American, it is important to consider that while the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
guarantees everyone the “right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from
persecution,”4 no international human rights law or treaty guarantees noncitizens the
absolute right to enter and remain indefinitely in a country.5 Furthermore, while the U.S.
Constitution does not give foreigners the right to enter the country, it does guarantee their
right to fair and equal treatment once they arrive, including protection from discrimination
based on race or national origin and from arbitrary decisions by the government.6 How
welcoming the United States is to new arrivals depends, as ever, on a mix of personal,
cultural, economic, and security considerations, and is the subject of everlasting discussion
in our society. The national debate, like this chapter, largely omits explicit reference to the
two portions of the population that are not of immigrant origin: the Native Americans who
resided here before Europeans arrived, and those involuntary migrants who came from
Africa as slaves. Descendants of these communities, along with successor generations of
purposeful immigrants, comprise important parts of the American social fabric that
continues to attract newcomers.
Early Immigration Policy
America’s founding fathers opposed massive, unrestricted immigration,7 but they largely
agreed that immigration would be essential to building the new nation and expanding it
westward. Early American entrepreneurs advertised overseas for immigrant laborers to
work the new country’s farms, mines, factories, and mills. Congress played a role as well,
actively helping Polish exiles to settle in Illinois and Michigan in 1834, and passing the
Homestead Act in 1862 to draw additional settlers with cheap land grants.8
As the nineteenth century advanced, however, nativists gained strength and succeeded in
tightening immigration policies. The first cohesive, politically influential nativists were the
Know-Nothings, a movement with primarily Protestant membership that opposed the mass
influx of Irish and German Catholics in the 1840s and 1850s. Its formal expression in the
American Party was short-lived; though it won 21 percent of the national vote in the
presidential election of 1856, with former president Millard Fillmore as its standard-bearer,
the party disappeared by the following election.

Race soon replaced religion as the driving force behind nativism, with attention turning
from European to Chinese immigrants. By 1870, more than 60,000 Chinese had entered
the country and—following the completion of the Union Central Pacific Railroad—
approximately 10,000 of them had entered the California labor market. This alarmed
Western laborers and contributed to a widespread fear of Chinese encroachment on
American society.9 The “Chinese issue” reached the Senate floor as a result of political
concerns that illegal or nonnaturalized Chinese immigrants might commit election fraud, to
the benefit of the Democratic Party.10 The national immigration debate in the late
nineteenth century thus revolved around the same issues that would animate U.S.
immigration policy for the next 125 years: jobs, culture, and politics.
The discussion in Congress led to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the first significant
reversal of the country’s historical openness to immigration. The new law prohibited the

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