HISTORY42 - Illegal Immigration to the United States

My previous blog article (posted July 3, 2021) was about the history of legal immigration to America, covering British Colonial America and the United States of America.  This blog article covers the history of illegal immigration to the United States.

 

Principle sources for this article include “Historical Timeline - History of Legal and Illegal Immigration to the United States,” immigration.procon.org; Pew Research Center; CATO Institute; U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection; “Illegal Immigration Statistics,” FactCheck.org; “Illegal Immigration in the United States - Statistics & Facts,” Statista.com; “U.S. Immigration Trends,” Migration Policy Institute; “Overview of INS History,” U.S. Citizen Citizenship and Immigration Services; and the Wall Street Journal - supplemented with numerous other online sources.

To set the context for this discussion, I want to review a few things from the previous article.

The Pew Research Center reported that in 2019, of a total U.S. population of 328.2 million, 44.9 million had immigrated directly from another country.

The figure below shows the yearly number of immigrants to the U.S. from 1820 to 2015.  These almost 200 years are divided into phases or periods, with the predominant immigrant origin locations for each phase:  Frontier Expansion, Industrialization, The Great Pause, and Post-1965.

 

Immigration numbers to the U.S. by year, 1820 - 2015.

 

After the American Revolution and the first United States census in 1790, there was little immigration to the U.S. from 1790 to 1820, with an estimated average of only 60,000 immigrants per decade.  From 1820 to 1880 was the age of U.S. expansion; by 1880 the U.S. had reached almost its current geographic size, with a total population of over 50 million people.  A major wave of immigration occurred during this period, with most immigrants coming from Northern and Western Europe.  The period between 1880 and 1920 was a time of rapid industrialization, and experienced the “great wave of immigration,” mostly from Southern and Eastern Europe.  The period from 1920 to 1965 is called “The Great Pause,” because immigration dramatically slowed, due to events like the World Wars, the Great Depression, and for the first time, restrictive immigration laws.  Most immigrants then came from Western Europe.  Immigration picked up considerably after 1965, with immigration policy permitting greater numbers of people from Asia and Latin America.

With this overview as background, I will discuss illegal immigration in these same time periods, in timeline format, framed by U.S. immigration policy.  I’m going to skip the “frontier expansion” period and start in 1820 with the” industrialization” period, since there was little immigration earlier.  I’ll finish with a look back at illegal immigration trends and a look ahead to the future.

In general, illegal immigrants came to the U.S. to flee from insecurity, violence, and religious or political persecution in their own countries; in search of better economic opportunities; or to join family already in the U.S.

Until the late 19^th century, there wasn’t any such thing as “illegal” immigration to the United States. That’s because before you can immigrate somewhere illegally, there has to be a law for you to break.

 

Industrialization (1880 -1920)

The Chinese were the first people to experience resistance to immigration to the United States.  From 1863 - 1869, the Central Pacific Railroad hired Chinese laborers to construct the western end of the first transcontinental railroad.  Chinese immigration to the U.S continued between 1870 and 1880; by 1880 the Chinese population totaled about 105,500 out of the U.S. population of 50 million.

 

 

20,000 Chinese laborers were brought in to help build the first transcontinental railroad, completed in 1869.

 

Californians were upset with Chinese immigrants, who were willing to work for lower wages than the rest of the population.  In response to a remarkable intensity of complaint on the West Coast, which was increasingly expressed nationwide, Congress moved rapidly toward a historic reversal of the tradition of laissez-faire in immigration matters, and by wide margins passed the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, suspending the admission of Chinese laborers for ten years.  It was the first sharp curtailment of immigration to America and was extended with minor adjustments for sixty years.  A new tradition of restricting U.S. immigration through federal policy had begun.

1882:  Chinese Exclusion Act passes and Immigration Exclusion Era began.

1886 - 1896:  Various Supreme Court rulings were made regarding the Constitutional rights of illegal immigrants, e.g., all people, regardless of "race, color, or nationality" have the right to due process and equal protection under the law.  Even an immigrant who had broken immigration law, still had the right to make his case to a judge before being “deprived of life, liberty, or property.”

1891:  Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1891 that established the Bureau of Immigration in the Treasury Department, assuming direct control of inspecting, admitting, rejecting, and processing all immigrants seeking admission to the U.S.  The Bureau was empowered to enforce immigration laws and to deport unlawful aliens.  Because most immigration laws of the time sought to protect American worker and wages, in 1903, the Bureau of Immigration was transferred to the newly created Department of Commerce and Labor.

1904:  Mounted border watchmen were employed by the U.S. Immigration Service to prevent illegal southern border crossings, largely pursuing Chinese immigrants trying to avoid the Chinese exclusion laws. Texas Rangers were also often employed in border protection. The coast of California was carefully guarded, hoping to stop illegal Chinese immigrants.

1910 - 1920:  Mexican Revolution period.  Mexican refugees and dissidents started flowing north to the U.S.

In the 1910s, tensions from the Mexican Revolution (1910 - 1920) and World War I (1914 - 1918) undermined border cooperation between the U.S. and Mexico.  Mexican rebels and federals fought each other in several engagements along the Arizona and New Mexico borders; the rebels sometimes raided border towns - resulting in military skirmishes.  U.S. troops and the National Guard reinforced border positions and patrolled along the border to protect U.S. neutrality.  The result of these conflicts was stricter control of the border and the beginning of permanent fences that bisected border towns like Nogales.

Large numbers of Mexicans began coming into the U.S. during and after the Mexican Revolution, looking to escape military and political turmoil, and tough economic conditions.  Significant Mexican migration to the U.S. continued during World War I to replace American workers who were fighting overseas. 

From its beginning with rumrunners during Prohibition, and opium smuggling during the 1910s and 1920s, the smuggling of illegal substances emerged as one of the most significant border control issues.

1911:  The Dillingham Commission, a bipartisan Congressional committee, formed to study the origins and consequences of recent immigration to the United States, defined a difference between "desirable" and "undesirable" immigrants, based upon ethnicity, race, and religion, with northern European Protestants being favored over southern or eastern European Catholics and Jews, with non-European immigrants considered highly undesirable.  

In 1920, the U.S. Bureau of Immigration estimated that 17,300 Chines entered the U.S. illegally through Canada and Mexico, since the Passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.

The Great Pause (1920 - 1965)

Through 1943, statutes and administrative actions set narrowing numerical limits for those immigrants who had not otherwise been excluded. During those years a federal bureaucracy was created to control immigration and immigrants, a bureaucracy whose initial mission was to keep out, first Chinese, and then others who were deemed inferior, particularly Mexicans. 

1920 - 1933:  Illegal entry into the United States became a particular problem during Prohibition (1920 - 1933), when bootleggers and smugglers would illegally enter the country to transport alcohol.

1924:  The Immigration Act of 1924 established visa requirements and enacted quotas for immigrants from specific countries, especially targeting Southern and Eastern Europeans, particularly Italians and Jews, and effectively prohibited virtually all Asians from immigrating to America.

1924:  Congress passed the Labor Appropriation Act of 1924, officially establishing the U.S. Border Patrol for the purpose of securing the borders between inspection stations. In 1925, its duties were expanded to patrol the seacoast.  Many of the early agents were recruited from organizations such as the Texas Rangers, local sheriffs and deputies, and appointees from the Civil Service Register of Railroad Mail Clerks.

 

Border Patrol agents, circa late 1920s.

 

                            In 1927, the U.S. Labor Secretary estimated that there were                                            over 1,000,000 people in the U.S. illegally.

1929:  Congress passed the Undesirable Aliens Act of 1929.

In the early 20^th century, it wasn’t a crime to enter the U.S. without authorization. Though authorities could deport immigrants who hadn’t gone through an official entry point, they couldn’t be detained and prosecuted for a federal crime. But that all changed in 1929 when the U.S. Congress passed a bill to restrict a group of immigrants it hadn’t really focused on before: people who crossed the U.S.-Mexican border.

The Undesirable Aliens Act of 1929 criminalized crossing the southern border outside an official port of entry, primarily designed to restrict Mexican immigration. The law made “unlawfully entering the country” a misdemeanor and returning after a deportation, a felony, punishable by up to two years imprisonment and $1,000 in fines.  

Soon after passage of the Act, the U.S. economy entered the Great Depression and the federal government coerced Mexicans in the United States into repatriating by threatening penalties and conducting immigration raids targeting those who could not prove their legal status. By the end of the 1930s, U.S. attorneys had prosecuted more than 44,000 cases of unlawful entry, almost entirely against Mexicans.

1933:  After two decades as an independent service, the Bureau of Naturalization was united with the Bureau of Immigration to form the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), under new Department of Labor.

1943:  Bracero Program began.

World War II drained enough U.S. manpower to force Washington to look abroad for recruits to support a wartime economy.  The U.S. and Mexico agreed on a special program that allowed migrant Mexican laborers to work on U.S. farms and railroads.  After having tried to dissuade Mexicans from migrating for half a century, the U.S. government now began to organize and channel huge numbers of migrant workers - braceros - across its border.  The “Bracero” program established a “binational collective labor agreement” that over its 21-year operation mobilized more than five million temporary workers, most of whom worked seasonally, returning to Mexico in the “off season,” and coming back to the U.S. the next year.

 

Mexicans signing up for the Bracero Program that allowed Mexican laborers to work on U.S. farms and railroads temporarily during World War II.

1943:  The Chines Exclusion Act of 1882 was repealed by the Magnuson Act of 1943, which allowed 105 Chinese to enter per year. Chinese immigration later increased with the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which abolished direct racial barriers, and later by the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (see below), which abolished quotas from specific countries.

1964:  Bracero Program ended.

Washington cancelled the Bracero program unilaterally.  Mexican migrant laborers continued to arrive without papers and outside of negotiated agreements. Thus began the era of undocumented migration by “irregular” migrants who worked temporarily under the threat of deportation. The Mexican side was a “no-man's land,” where criminals and human traffickers operated freely. Laissez-faire attitudes and policies reigned, though both governments would pay the costs 20 years later.

Undocumented immigrants don’t possess a valid visa or other immigration documentation, because they entered the U.S. without inspection, stayed longer than their temporary visa permitted, or otherwise violated the terms under which they were admitted.

 

1965 - 2006:  Legislative Efforts

This period saw legislative attempts to improve immigration policy.  Immigration quotas were abolished and replaced with overall annual caps on immigration numbers.  Discriminatory immigrant preferences were also abolished.  Considerable attention was paid to reducing illegal immigration, and in some cases, significant amnesty programs were approved.  Annual unauthorized immigrant entries continued to grow steadily during this period.  See the section on “Illegal Immigration Trends” below.

1965:  Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 passed.

National-origin immigration quotas were eased in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, and a year after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed discrimination based on race or national origin, the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 abolished the quota system. There was, for the first time, a limitation on Western Hemisphere (the Americas) immigration (120,000 per year), with the Eastern Hemisphere limited to 170,000.  The law changed the preference system for immigrants, no longer defined by race, sex, gender, ancestry, or national origin.  Specifically, the law provided preference to immigrants with skills needed in the U.S. workforce, refugees, and asylum seekers, as well as family members of U.S. citizens.  The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 resulted in greatly increased immigration from non-European countries, particularly Asian and Latin American countries - once again changing the character of the American population.

 

U.S. Census estimated 2-4 million immigrants in the United States illegally in 1980,                                              with about half from Mexico.

 

1986:  Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 set penalties for knowingly hiring illegal immigrants and granted legal status (amnesty) to 2.7 million immigrants in the U.S. illegally before January 1, 1982. Despite the passage of the act, the population of illegal immigrants continued to rise.

1996:  President Bill Clinton signed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996. The key components of the Act included increasing the number of border agents, increasing penalties on those who assisted illegal immigrants into the United States, creating a 10-year re-entry ban on those who had been deported after living in the U.S. illegally for over one year, and expanding the list of crimes that any immigrant (regardless of legal status) could be deported for.  The Act also allowed 300,000 Central Americans to become legal residents.

Increased border militarization in the United States had the unintended consequence of increasing illegal immigration, as temporary undocumented immigrants who entered the United States seasonally for work, opted to stay permanently and bring their families, once it became harder to move across the border regularly.

2000: The AFL-CIO Labor Union supported an amnesty program that would allow undocumented members of local communities to adjust their status to permanent residents and become eligible for naturalization.

2001:  Dream (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors) Act introduced in Congress to grant temporary, conditional residency, with the right to work, to unauthorized immigrants who entered the United States as minors - and if they satisfied further qualifications, would attain permanent residency.  The bill did not pass and has been since introduced several times without passing.

2001-2003:  Immigration numbers dropped precipitously as a direct result of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, but began rising again thereafter.

2002:  The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was founded with emphasis on border security and removing criminal aliens to protect the nation from terrorist attacks.  The United States retained its commitment to welcoming lawful immigrants and supporting their integration and participation in American civic culture. The Homeland Security Act of 2002 disbanded the Immigration and Naturalization Service.  Its constituent parts contributed to three new federal agencies: 1. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), 2. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and 3. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). CBP prevents drugs, weapons, and terrorists and other inadmissible persons from entering the country. ICE enforces criminal and civil laws governing border control, customs, trade, and immigration. USCIS oversees lawful immigration to the United States and naturalization of new American citizens.

 

President George W. Bush signing the Homeland Security Act of 2002.

 

2005:  President George W. Bush’s Secure Border Initiative was announced - a comprehensive multi-year plan to secure America's borders and reduce illegal migration.  The initiative included more agents to patrol our borders, secure our ports of entry, and enforce immigration laws, including expanded detention and removal capabilities to eliminate “catch and release” once and for all; a comprehensive and systemic upgrading of the technology used in controlling the border, including increased manned aerial assets, expanded use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, and next-generation detection technology; increased investment in infrastructure improvements at the border - providing additional physical security to sharply reduce illegal border crossings; and greatly increased interior enforcement of our immigration laws – including more robust worksite enforcement.

2005:  The Minuteman Project was founded by a group of private individuals who sought to extrajudicially monitor the United States - Mexico border's flow of illegal immigrants.  The Minuteman Project also created a political action committee which lobbied for representatives who supported proactive immigration law enforcement and focused on resolving border security issues. They strongly supported building a wall and placing additional border patrol agents or military personnel on the Mexico - United States border in order to curb free movement across it. Roughly half of the Minuteman Project's members strongly opposed amnesty as well as a guest worker program, and an overwhelming number of them opposed sending funds to Mexico in order to pay for the improvement of its infrastructure.

2005:  The REAL ID Act of 2005 changed some visa limits, tightened restrictions on asylum applications and made it easier to exclude suspected terrorists, and removed restrictions on building border fences.

2006:  The Secure Fence Act of 2006 was signed into law. The Act authorized the construction of 700 hundred miles of double-layered fencing along the nation's southern border with Mexico. It also directed the Secretary of Homeland Security to take action to stop the unlawful entry of undocumented immigrants, terrorists, and contraband into the U.S., using both personnel and surveillance technology.

 

2006 - Present:  Executive Orders - Turmoil

With illegal immigration the major issue, this period - spanning the administrations of Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump, and the start of President Joe Biden’s presidency - was unfortunately beset with polarizing political disagreements that continue today.  No Congressional agreements were reached on meaningful immigration legislation and each president resorted to executive orders to achieve his own “progress.”  In addition, there was considerable activity in some of the states of the union to instigate local immigration policy, often in direct conflict with federal policy, including setting up so-called sanctuary cities that limit cooperation with the national government’s effort to enforce immigration law.  Other significant (and unresolved) issues include migrant caravans from Central America; unaccompanied minors; detention policy at the U.S. - Mexico border, such as facilities, family separation, and time of detention; and illegal immigrant crime, especially by those previously deported and reentered illegally.  Ironically, amidst the turmoil, the unauthorized immigrant resident population peaked, started to decline, and stabilized during this period.  See the next section on “Illegal Immigration Trends.”

The table below shows immigration activities during the administrations of Presidents Obama, Trump, and Biden.

Immigration activity from 2009 to the present, during the administrations of Presidents Obama, Trump, and Biden.

Time Period	Immigration Issue	Activity
2009-2017 Obama Administration	U.S. State Initiative	Arizona passed law expanding state authority to combat illegal immigration (2010).  U.S. Supreme Court upheld key provision, but blocked parts on grounds they interfered with fed’s role in setting immigration policy (2012).
	Secure Border Initiative	Homeland Security Secretary cancelled Initiative in force since 2005 (2011).
	Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA)	Homeland Security allowed some undocumented immigrants, who came to the U.S. as children, to stay in country (2012).
	Deportation	Executive action to prevent deportation of 4.7 million undocumented immigrants in U.S. illegally (2014).
2017-2021 Trump Administration	Border Wall	Executive Order to increase Border Patrol forces and begin building border wall (2017).
	Foreign Entry/Travel	Executive Order suspending entry of terrorist-risk (mostly Muslim) countries and all refugees (2017).   Executive Order restricting travel in U.S. for selected countries based on national security considerations (2017).  Supreme Court upheld travel ban (2018).
	DACA	Ended DACA program (2017).  Supreme Court disallowed, keeping DACA in place (2020).
	U.S. State Initiatives	California became sanctuary state, vastly limiting cooperation with federal immigration authorities (2017).  California became first state to extend Medicaid to undocumented immigrants (2019).
	Detention at Border	Supreme Court ruled undocumented immigrants can be detained indefinitely (2018).
	U.S. - Mexico Agreement	Mexico agreed to increase border enforcement at sites of Central American migrant entry and to support retention in Mexico of asylum seekers awaiting decision on U.S. entry (2019).
	COVID-19	Executive Order temporarily suspending all immigration during COVID-19 pandemic (2020).
	Citizenship Requirements	Updated number and complexity of questions for U.S. citizenship (2020).
2021- Biden Administration	Deportation	Paused most deportations for 100 days (2021)
	Travel Bans	Revoked travel bans from primarily Muslim and African countries (2021).
	Border Wall	Halted border wall construction (2021).
	DACA	Extended DACA (2021).
	Border Retention	Ended Trump’s Zero Tolerance policy requiring prosecution of all adults crossing southern border illegally (2021).

 

Illegal Immigration Trends - Looking Back

The figure below summarizes illegal immigration since 1990.

 

The number of unauthorized immigrants residing in the U.S. rose steadily from 3.5 million in 1990 to a peak of 12.2 million in 2007, after which the unauthorized immigrant population started to decline as shown in the top panel of the figure.  The decrease was mainly due to a decrease in people from Mexico.

The middle panel shows that since about 2016, Mexicans are no longer the majority of unauthorized immigrants living in the U.S.  The population of Mexican-born unauthorized immigrants declined after 2007 because the number of newly arrived unauthorized immigrants from Mexico fell dramatically - and as a result, more left the U.S. than arrived.

As the bottom panel shows, most Mexican unauthorized immigrants are now long-term residents.

Total arrivals in the U.S. of undocumented people from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras remained at about the same level in 2018 as in the previous four years.

The next figure shows the numbers of unauthorized residents for 2018, breaking down the numbers from each country of origin.  Mexico had about 47% of unauthorized residents.  Central America, including El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, totaled about 16%. 

 

Immigration to the U.S. from India started with small numbers in the early 19^th century, to communities along the West Coast.  Although their presence remained small, Indian resident numbers grew tremendously from about 200,000 in 1980 to 2.5 million in 2018.  Of that number, about 540,000 were unauthorized, representing 4.7% of the undocumented population, exceeding China’s 3.6%.

Counting unauthorized arrivals each year is difficult; officials need time after the fact to evaluate local population characteristics and do detailed analysis of census records.  Border apprehension of illegal immigrants is one measure authorities use to gauge illegal entry activity.  The figure below shows apprehension data for the southwest border from 1961-2018.

 

Border apprehensions are one measure of illegal entry activity.

Illegal immigration across the U.S. - Canadian border is much less than that for the southwest border with Mexico (hundreds annually, compared to over a million in some years), but nearly tripled between 2016 and 2019.  According to federal data, a growing portion are Mexican citizens, who find it easier to cross the northern border.  The Urban Institute estimates that between 65,000 and 75,000 Canadians currently live illegally in the United States.

Overall, border apprehensions dropped considerably during the administrations of Presidents Obama and Trump, reflecting the overall decrease in unauthorized immigrants residing in the U.S.

Since 2010, about two-thirds of undocumented new arrivals have overstayed temporary visas and one-third entered illegally across the border.

Looking Ahead

Adapted from a CATO Institute 2020 white paper:  Congress has repeatedly considered and rejected comprehensive immigration reform legislation over the past few decades.  Those failed immigration reforms all included three policies: legalize illegal immigrants currently living in the United States, increase border and interior enforcement of the immigration laws, and liberalize legal permanent immigration and temporary migration through an expanded guest worker visa program for lower‐​skilled workers.  Domestic amnesty for illegal immigrants would to allow those, who have made a life here, to settle permanently; extra enforcement would reduce the potential for illegal immigrants to come in the future; liberalized immigration would boost U.S. economic prosperity and drive future would‐​be illegal immigrants into the legal market.

A 2019 Gallup poll found that 76% of Americans considered immigration a good thing for the United States. As many as 81% supported a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants if they meet certain requirements. A 2016 Gallup poll found that among Republicans, support for a path to citizenship (76%) was higher than support for a proposed border wall (62%).

With so much agreement, it’s frustrating that we as a nation have not been able to improve out immigration policy.  Congressional attempts have fallen to politics and special interests.  Executive orders and proclamations are short lasting, and as we have seen, a president of one party immediately throws out the products of the other party - leaving the country in a constant state of immigration turmoil.  We should be ashamed!

I’ll close with a quote from a Wall Street Journal article:

Modern opposition to immigration is for the most part not to immigration per se, nor to particular ethnic groups, as it was in the past, but to the perception that illegal immigration has undermined the rule of law.