Immigration: Now and Then

With the 2016 Presidential Election, the issue of immigration has surfaced as a controversial topic. However, its roots can be traced back to the very beginning, after all, the United States is a country of immigrants. Currently, there are limits on employment-based immigration. For permanent immigration, visas are limited to 140,000 per year and are given based on the skill value of the immigrant. However, the government is more accepting of family-based immigration; there are 480,000 family visas available every year.

Immigration restrictions implemented by the federal government can be traced back to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. The Chinese first began immigrating to the United States in large numbers from 1848-1855 with the California Gold Rush. The building of the First Transcontinental Railroad also caused many Chinese to migrate over to find work and to escape the disorder in China, the Taiping Rebellion. Although at first the abundance of gold lessened the tension between the Chinese workers and the other workers, when gold became more scarce, the Chinese became less and less welcome. Irish workers working on the Transcontinental Railroad also discriminated against the Chinese. This idea that immigrants would take the jobs and resources that the workers already working there had is a common theme throughout history. Even today, one of the most prominent arguments among anti-immigrant advocates is that immigrants are taking their jobs. However, an important question to ask is whether those advocates would be willing to do the hard labor themselves. The Chinese often had the jobs that involved the most heavy manual labor while the Irishmen had jobs that were more skill-oriented. Hence, it is questionable whether or not the Irishmen actually benefited much from Chinese removal.

Even today, this fear of the lack of job opportunities is present. Donald Trump, known for his anti-immigration policies has roused this fear within the American people. The idea that Mexicans are taking over the workforce and taking job opportunities away from other workers is largely part of Trump's platform. While many rally against this idea, arguing that America is founded upon immigration, some support Trump's view as well, which may be something to fear more than immigration.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Exclusion_Act
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Transcontinental_Railroad
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-35879453
Industrialization PPT