MexicoBlog Editorial: Setting the Record Straight on "Legal" Immigration

The issue of immigration, especially Mexican and Latin American immigration into the United States, is currently extremely contentious. Frequently opponents of proposals that would enable “illegal” or undocumented immigrants to obtain legal status make assertions such as, “My ancestors came here legally – through Ellis Island - and earned their citizenship, so these 'illegal aliens' should have to go back home and then get in line to come legally.” Such claims show a lack of knowledge both of the actual history of U.S. immigration law and of the history of U.S. use and abuse of Mexican migrant laborers. We want to set the record straight.

For a century after the founding of the United States, until after the Civil War, there were no laws regulating or restricting immigration into the country. Anyone, from anywhere (African captives excepted) who could find his way to the country was able to enter and start a new life. With industrialization and shifts in immigration patterns after the Civil War, this all changed. The history of the U.S. immigration legislation which followed these changes is not pretty. It is essentially one of seeking to exclude “undesirables,” and restrict the entrance of those who were not white, Protestant Europeans. It is racist.

The first immigration laws, enacted between 1875 and 1917, were designed to exclude Chinese and other Asian immigrant laborers. Other laws, passed in 1882 and 1892, excluded "convicts, idiots, the insane and those who might become public charges." The federal immigration station on Ellis Island was constructed in 1892 to enable the evaluation of immigrants from Europe according to these public safety and health criteria. Over twelve million were admitted in a little over thirty years. About two percent were rejected. But no one from Europe was prohibited from entering the United States because of national origin, ethnicity or religion. 

This free flow came to a virtual end in the 1920's. Because of the large migrations of southern (Italian Catholic) and eastern (Jewish and Slavic Catholic) Europeans beginning in the 1890's, fear grew among Protestants that they would be overwhelmed by these aliens. Thus, in 1921, Congress passed the Emergency Quota Act and, in 1924, a permanent Immigration Act that, for the first time, set an annual limit to immigration (150,000) and established a national quota system which, after a transition period ending in 1929, limited each sending country to a percentage equal to its percentage of nationals in the U.S. population in 1920.  Persons seeking to emmigrate to the U.S. now had to obtain a coveted visa in their home country. They could no longer just show up at the door at Ellis Island and seek admission to the U.S.. At this point, Ellis Island ceased to be used as a regular immigration station.

It is this national quota system which prevented the immigration of most Jews and other refugees fleeing the Nazis during World War II. The system was modified in 1952, but not eliminated until 1965, when hemispheric quotas were established. It is only after this change that immigration from Asia and Latin America increased substantially. 

So to those who say, "My ancestors came here legally, through Ellis Island," the correct response is, "I am glad, as I am sure you are, that they were not convicts, idiots or insane."


This editorial will be followed by one on the history of Mexican migration. A fuller account of all of this is available on our page, History of U.S. Immigration Laws and Mexican Migration