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Immigrants/Undocumented Aliens

Many migrants attempt to enter foreign countries illegally every year. In a separate but often interconnected system, most countries have processes to enable refugees to remain in their country through claims of political asylum. Known as “asylum seekers,” these refugees petition the government for protection from their native countries’ oppressive political system and, if granted, they are allowed to stay.

The majority of countries hosting undocumented immigration have generally dealt with the problem through detention and/or deportation. Illegal immigrants are processed in the correction and prison system either when they are detected entering the country without authorization or when they are arrested for committing some other crime. Depending on jurisdiction, apprehended immigrants are either detained to serve out an imposed criminal sentence, returned to their native country, or a combination of both.

Although most developed countries face similar problems of unauthorized immigration, the nature of occurrence and particular methods of dealing with undocumented aliens vary. This entry focuses specifically on the U.S. experience. As is common, the terms undocumented aliens, undocumented immigrants/migrants, unauthorized aliens, unauthorized immigrants/migrants, illegal aliens, illegal immigrants/migrants are used interchangeably.

Historical Treatment of Aliens in the United States

Over the course of the 20th century, the United States increasingly supervised and penalized illegal aliens, depending in part on their racial or ethnic background. At the beginning of the 21st century, laws surrounding immigration and asylum have become very restricted indeed.

Prior to the late 1800s, the United States maintained an open immigration policy. Most free people could come and claim a piece of land for settlement thereby taking citizenship. By the early 1900s, America began to codify immigration laws through the establishment of quota acts. Cycles of economic depressions in 1870, 1907, and later in 1921 fueled concerns of immigrants displacing Americans in the labor force. In response, the federal government began to restrict the number of immigrants allowed in the United States by setting limits on the number of legal entries. Fears of mass migration of the Chinese to the United States adding to labor shortages prompted the passage of the Chinese Exclusion act of 1882. This act prohibited Chinese from becoming U.S. citizens and prevented further Chinese immigration for a 10-year period. The terms of the act were extended three times before it was repealed in 1943 as a result of the U.S. and Chinese alliance during World War II.

In 1917, the first immigration act governing all migration to the United States was passed. This act required all foreigners to pass a literacy test and prohibited nonwhite immigration from most of Asia. In 1924, Congress passed and later amended the National Origins Act placing a ceiling on the number of allowable immigrants at 150,000 per year. It also established a quota for each nationality equal to 2% of that group already living in the United States according to the 1890 census. As the vast majority of the U.S. population was composed of people from Western and Northern Europe, considerable restriction was placed on entries from nations of Eastern and Southern Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

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