Immigration policy

As one of the immigration countries, American population involves various races and ethnicities. The originals of the United States citizens come from different continents around the world. They have different skin colors, speak different languages, and own different cultures, but they came to the US to build the unique American culture through different historical period. Nowadays, still a big amount of people from other countries wants to come to American for various reasons, such as avoiding the political conflict, getting better living condition or searching economical opportunities. Since there were too many people flow to the United States, the congress began to enact policy to restrict the immigration. However, the limiting of immigration caused the inequality among races in the past, and now the immigration policy is still crucial part to the government. 

The early generation of immigrants in the colonial period was Europeans who came to the New World for searching religious freedom. Through 1776 to 1880, American was welcomed to immigrants, but after 1880 the government begin to enact the restrictions to control immigrants. During the Revolutionary War, more people from west Europe moved to the United States, and later these Europeans were considered as predominate populations of America. The first immigration law was set in 1790, and it is about a standard two year residency for naturalization and later in 1795 the congress change the requirement into five years. The first wave of immigration is from 1830 to 1860, and the majority population is catholic Irish, since Ireland was under the pressure of the increasing of the population. After the discovery gold in California, more Asians came to the country to search for the fortune. However, these Chinese immigrants were treated as non-American, because the appearance and cultures were different from the European's. These people received poor welfare in the society, and the congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, which restricted Chinese came to the United States, and it was rescinded in 1943. The great wave and the new immigration period is around 1880 to 1914, because of the War American government wanted more people to help the country, so the immigration population was increased. In addition, the boom of economy required more labors, and then many unskilled people from South Europe, Slavs and Turks came to the country as new immigrants. Also, during that period Jews were under the insecurity conditions, so they immigrated to America for protection. From 1914 to 1965, it is the exclusion period, by the influence of the great depression and the World War I, the population of new immigration decreased and the government highly restricted the immigrants. The most immigrants like Mexicans, their living condition was harsh, and the treatment to different races are various. After 1965, more immigrants came to the United States. Some of them came to the country were highly educated to help the government build programs that can conquer the Cold War. People from latin American immigrated to the US to avoid the conflicts and economics depression in their home countries, like Vietnamese or Cuban  Also many other immigrants moved to the American for the complicated political reasons. Many people among them are undocumented and do not have the legal identity.

Since the expanded of population and the mixing of the races, there were many problems emerged in the United State’s society. The immigration policy tried to control the population and the background of people came to America, but in reality it did not always work well. The number of illegal immigrants is still large, and some of them bring hidden danger to the society.  Many of the illegal immigrants were not well educated and unskilled, so they may indirectly cause the increasing of crime rates. Also, their living conditions can hardly be guaranteed. For instance, the illegal immigrants who worked in New York Chinatown lived in terrible circumstances; they were bullied by their bosses, received the income that lower than the minimum wages, and faced the sexual harassment. These people will not choose to call the police, since their identities are illegal in the country.

 http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/i/immigration-and-emigration/index.html?8qa&module=Search&mabReward=relbias%3Ar%2C%7B%222%22%3A%22RI%3A13%22%7D

Even though the United State is reopened to immigrants, the social statuses of different races are still different. Government agencies are trying to balance the proportions of races, but the majority workers and decision makers are still the whites. Many of the immigrants are more willingly to keep silence on the political issues that are not directly affect their lives. Also, the unequal distribution of resources will cause the conflict among races. Like we read from the academic profiling, most Asian students are in the IB program, and they have better test scores as well as privilege in schools. Therefore, more Asian students that Latino students can get into better college, so they can have better opportunities in their future career. Thus, the equality among races will be enlarged, and if the government cannot fix the problem, the conflict will be more intensive.

Resource:
Credo
New York Times