American History

The practice of taking steps to move towards an alien country in order to live in such alien country is immigration.  The practice of departing from ones country to stay in another is known as emigration.  A number of people find it extremely hard to depart from their own countries and live in an alien country, nevertheless, an immeasurable number of people have done so.  The most profound and wide-reaching immigration took place from the early 1800s to the Great Depression, the fiscal complex times of the 1930s.  During such epoch, about 60 million inhabitants travelled to a new land (Bryant, 2010).  A lot of the inhabitants came from Europe and more than half immigrated to the United States whilst several others emigrated to Canada, Argentina, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa.  The chief receiving state for immigrants and refugees in the globe has long been the United States.  The country has had four key interludes of immigration (Bryant, 2010).  The first wave began in what is now the United States with the colonists of the 1600s and reached a peak just before the Revolutionary War broke out in 1775.  The second major flow of immigrants started in the 1820s and lasted until a depression in the early 1870s.  The greatest in pouring of people took place from the 1880s to the early 1920s.  The foremost motive for immigration has constantly been financial prospect, the bait of a better territory or a better employment.  For instance, during the 1800s, the moneyed prairie land of the United States fascinated many European planters (Bryant, 2010).  Now, how was the issue of immigration addressed or resolved in the year 1800s  Since the most number of immigrants during the year 1800s came from China, the United States authorities sternly restricted immigration from China to the United States from 1882 to 1943.  This ruling resulted from an alarm over the huge number of Chinese who had come to the United States in reaction to the need for low-cost labour, mainly for construction of the transcontinental railroad.  Rivalry with American labourers and a mounting nativism brought demands for restrictive action, which commenced with the Act of May 6, 1882 (22 Stat. 58).

Passed by the 47th Congress, this law suspended immigration of Chinese labourers for ten years permitted those Chinese in the United States as of November 17, 1880, to stay, travel abroad, and return prohibited the naturalization of Chinese and created the Section 6 exempt status for teachers, students, merchants, and travellers.  The excepted groups would be permitted entry to the United States only upon showing of an official document from the Chinese government (The National Archives, n.d.).  The succeeding momentous exclusionary regulation was the Act to Prohibit the Coming of Chinese Persons into the United States of May 1892 (27 Stat. 25) which is also known as the Geary Act.  This Act authorized Chinese workers to move to China and re-enter the United States but its stipulations were otherwise more restricted than earlier immigration decrees. This law obliged Chinese immigrants to register and get hold of a certificate as evidence of their right to be in the United States.  Detention or extradition was the punishment for those who did not possess the necessary entry permits or witnesses (The National Archives, n.d.).

The Immigration Predicament of the Contemporary Time
In the 21st century, a couple of difficulties are apparently front and middle on the immigration sphere and these are safety concerns ensuing from the incidents of September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and wide-ranging US immigration reform.  The latter entails fulfilling safety and protection concerns about illegal immigration, avoiding future illegal immigration to the fullest level attainable, and presenting enough legal means for needed immigrants (close family members and workers) to come into the United States.  Both challenges stand to reshape the impact of immigration on the United States in the next two decades (Jernegan, 2005).  Now, how was the issue of immigration addressed or resolved in the 21st century considering the many recent challenges that abound  To start with, it is imperative to point out that no other current incident which is connected to migration policy that has captured the interest of the American people with the same exigency as the assaults of September 11, 2001.  The risk to US national security created by terror campaign prompted, in 2002, the foundation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which combined 22 federal agencies and eliminated the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS).  In its place, the DHS division of US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) handles immigrant visa petitions, naturalization applications, and asylum and refugee applications.  The Customs and Border Protection (CBP) division is in charge with managing the admission of all persons and commodities at all ports of entry (Jernegan, 2005).  The terrorist attacks also channelled the passage of comprehensive and significant enforcement laws with consequences not only for alleged terrorists, but for immigrants already in the US and all individuals aspiring to enter the state.  The most famous among these laws has been the USA Patriot Act, which was signed in October 2001 by President George W. Bush.  The objective of the Act is to prevent terrorism in the US and worldwide through improved law enforcement and a concentrated effort on rebel money laundering (Jernegan, 2005).  The Act also expands law enforcement powers to search, monitor, detain, and deport suspected terrorists, strengthens border enforcement (especially along the Canadian border), and allows for the detention of foreign nationals for up to seven days while the government decides whether or not to file criminal or immigration charges.  The Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act of 2002 is another example of a law that aims to fight terrorism that had consequences on immigrants.  This law stiffens visa screening, border inspections, and tracking of foreigners (Jernegan, 2005).  It is comprehensible from the details just examined that the present immigration issues provided different challenges from those immigration issues in the late 1800s which is why the solutions adopted are obviously dissimilar and ground-breaking.