9.2a U.S. Immigration Policy
U.S. immigration law has narrowed and expanded, while also favoring some groups over others at different periods (see Section 9.1 Learning Objectives and Introduction). Although the share of the U.S. immigrant population had already begun to decline by the 1920s, the Immigration Act of 1924 triggered a steep decline. Until the 1960s, federal quotas restricted immigration from many parts of the world, ensuring that most people who came to the United States were from Europe (Esterline & Batalova, 2022). Then, the 1965 Immigration Act created a new system that increased the number of immigrants from outside Europe. It prioritized people holding desired skills, needing asylum, or seeking family reunification, which limited who was welcome. Finally, the Immigration Act of 1990 prioritized diversity by increasing the number of countries from which immigrants could enter the United States. Since the 1970s, most immigrants have come from Mexico, India, and China (Esterline & Batalova, 2022).
Although today’s immigration system is not a quota system, it still has quotas as an unintended consequence. The Immigration Act of 1990 capped the number of green cards at 675,000 annually, giving 7% of these green cards to each country, primarily for family members of immigrants or immigrants with employment sponsors (National Immigration Forum, 2024). Therefore, countries with a significantly larger number of people looking to immigrate legally to the United States, such as India or Mexico, are disadvantaged compared to countries with far smaller populations, like the Marshall Islands or Andorra.
Border policies also influence immigration. Border policies include agreements that can ease the flow of migrants to fill labor shortages. For example, between 1942 and 1964, the Bracero Program allowed migrant Mexican men to temporarily come to the United States to work in agriculture or on the railroads, filling labor shortages. They returned home when their work was complete. Since the 1970s, border policies became more restrictive, making it more challenging to sustain this way of life. Consequently, many would-be temporary migrants began bringing their entire families to stay permanently in the United States.
At the time of this writing, it is unknown how U.S. border policy is affecting immigration. In 2025, the U.S. Congress increased the budget for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to levels higher than the militaries of most nations to support President Donald Trump’s efforts to detain and deport immigrants who are undocumented or committed a crime (Cole & Feng, 2025). However, a sizeable number of people being detained are immigrants who are in the United States legally and follow the law (Montoya-Galvez, 2025). Further, ICE has detained and deported U.S. citizens as well (Danner, 2025). These policies are unpopular. Less than half of U.S. adults support the Trump administration’s immigration policies (Oliphant et al., 2025).
Photo 9.4
President Donald Trump Opened an Immigrant Holding Facility in the Everglades in 2025
Restrictive border policies and a challenging immigration system has not responded adequately to the reality of U.S. immigration. There is an increasing demand for immigrant labor, influx in the number of people needing asylum, and more people who want to immigrate to the United States to achieve the American dream. As a result, some people are unauthorized immigrants. Unauthorized immigrants (or undocumented immigrants) are individuals who enter a country outside of its legal points of entry, or who enter legally but then remain in the country beyond the authorized period. The number of unauthorized immigrants increased from 3.5 million in 1990 to 11 million in 2022 (Passel & Krogstad, 2024). Among U.S. immigrants, about one in four (23%) are unauthorized. They account for 3.3% of the total U.S. population.