IMMI history

Moreover, this bill amended the Immigration and Nationality Act to conform with the 1967 United Nations Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, recognizing individuals with certain characteristics as refugees.

Immigration and Naturalization Service, Annual Report of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (Washington: GPO, 1979), tables 16, 16b.

Congress replaced this ad hoc system with a formal admission process in the Refugee Act of 1980.

Despite being delayed by political posturing, a transmuted version of the bill, called the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), passed in 1986.174

And although IRCA boosted the number of Border Patrol agents along the southwest border to roughly 3,350 agents by 1988, illegal immigration nevertheless increased.

2 (June 1989): 190–214; Campbell Gibson, “The Contribution of Immigration to the Growth and Ethnic Diversity of the American Population,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 136, no.

The 1990 act also raised the annual per country ceilings to 7 percent (25,620) of the total familial and employment‐​based allowance.

In the same vein, Congress passed the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act in 1996.

2001 JapaneseA memorial honoring Japanese-American veterans and detainees opens on the edge of the Capitol grounds in Washington, D.C.

On the nonsecurity side of immigration, Congress passed the H‑1B Visa Reform Act of 2004, which provided 20,000 additional H‑1B visas to high‐​skilled temporary workers with advanced degrees from American universities.

In 2006, the Republican‐​led Senate passed the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act, which, among other things, would have legalized illegal immigrants and expanded legal immigration, but the House of Representatives did not ratify the act.

And after peaking at an estimated 12.3 million in 2007, the unauthorized immigrant population has decreased and mostly leveled out around 11 million.

Priscilla Huang, “Anchor Babies, Over‐​Breeders, and the Population Bomb: The Reemergence of Nativism and Population Control in Anti‐​Immigration Policies,” Harvard Law and Policy Review 2 (2008): 389–90.

210. “Fact Sheet: Immigration Accountability Executive Action,” White House, November 20, 2014.

Migration Information Source, May 21, 2015.

Pew Research Center, March 1, 2016.

However, the numbers are estimates prior to March 2017 for immigrant visas and nonimmigrant visas using the seasonal variations in the known years, plus random variation added to make it look natural.

Jens Manuel Krogstad, Jeffrey S. Passel, and D’Vera Cohn, “5 Facts about Illegal Immigration in the United States,” Pew Research Center, June 12, 2019.

Pew Research Center, September 11, 2020.