Chinese immigrant ban in 1882, European inflow, H-1B tussle—US immigration debate is 150 yrs old

To allow or not to allow: A deep dive into US research & records shows how advantages & disadvantages of immigrants have been part of American public discourse since the 19th century.

Illustration by Soham Sen | ThePrint

New Delhi: The Trump administration’s announcement of a $100,000 fee for H-1B visas is the latest flashpoint in immigration anxieties under the 47th US President, but a clutch of research papers and official records show that the debate over “aliens” has been part of the American public discourse ever since the 1850s.

The H-1B programme, which was instituted under the Immigration Act of 1990, was a major point of debate in the US Congress before the law came into effect.

But research traces earliest immigration policies to the second half of the 19th century, when American industrialisation began at a rapid pace. “Increasing mechanisation made the employment of unskilled workers both possible and highly profitable, and European immigrants provided a large source of unskilled workers who were willing to work gruelling hours at low wages without the threat of unionisation,” according to a May 2000 paper published by the The Center for Comparative Immigration Studies (CCIS).

The paper, titled Evolution of US Policy Toward Foreign-Born Workers, said that between 1820 and 1880, more than 10 million Irish, German, English, Scandinavian and other—mainly northern and western European—immigrants arrived in the US.

“A smaller stream of immigrants came from Asia, including Chinese immigrants, who came to California beginning in the 1850s to work in the gold mines, and Japanese immigrants, who came to work in agriculture in the 1890s,” it said.

And this meant that by 1870, one of every three manufacturing and mechanical workers in the US was an immigrant.

The absolute number of the foreign-born population rose rapidly from the mid-19th century through the early decades of the 20th century—popularly known as the ‘Age of Mass Migration’, another paper, written by University of Washington professor Charles Hirschman, said.

“In spite of lingering prejudice and discrimination against immigrants, most Americans are beginning to acknowledge the positive contributions of immigrants. These beliefs are partially rooted in the historical image of the United States as a ‘nation of immigrants’,” the study said.

14% of US population foreign-born

Almost 14% of the American population is foreign-born, and if the children of these people are included, more than one in four Americans can be counted as part of the recent immigrant community.

IT companies in India collect about 60% of their revenues from the US. They employ workers to work in the US for projects whose clients are based in the country, which is a big hub for the IT industry and has a dense presence of big tech firms in the Silicon Valley. And Trump’s one-time fee of $100,000 dollars for H-1B visas could impact these operations.

The CCIS study indicates that when the pace of immigration slowed during the Civil War, the US Congress responded in 1864 by passing an Act to encourage people to come in. This Act also created the first federal bureau of immigration, which had its office in New York. The bureau’s job was to help immigrants reach their final destinations within the US.

First restrictions in 1875

And then, around the 1880s, came the first of the restrictive immigration policies in the US’s legislative history. In 1875, a law identified “criminals” and “prostitutes” as the first of what would become a growing class of excludable aliens, according to CCIS. Another law, passed in 1882, established a tax on each arriving immigrant and expanded the class of excludable aliens to include “lunatics” and “idiots”.

The paper also sheds light on what caused this. In the second half of the 19th century, a sizeable population of immigrants was working on railroads and steamships. Between 1881 and 1930, 28 million immigrants came to the US. Italy, Austria-Hungary, Russia and the Baltic States were among the largest contributors to this inflow.

“In the eyes of most native-born Americans, these new immigrants were of even lower status than the unskilled Irish and Germans who preceded them and posed a greater threat to American national identity,” the CCIS paper said.

Strong prejudice against Italians, Jews and Poles contributed to anti-immigrant sentiment, it added.

The year 1882 also marked the first of the exclusion laws directed at a particular ethnic or racial group. The Chinese Exclusion Act marked the culmination of rising anti-Chinese sentiment in California where, by 1880, Chinese immigrants accounted for almost one in 10 residents.

The Act barred naturalisation and suspended the immigration of Chinese labourers to the US for a period of 10 years. It did, however, create an exemption for Chinese teachers, students, merchants and tourists.

“American objections to Chinese immigration took many forms, and generally stemmed from economic and cultural tensions, as well as ethnic discrimination. Most Chinese labourers who came to the United States did so in order to send money back to China to support their families there,” the official history record of the US State Department says.

In China, merchants responded to the humiliation of the exclusion acts by organising an anti-American boycott in 1905, according to the US Office of The Historian.

And then, the eugenics movement in the early 20th century also became a factor in the recognition of racial and ethnic differences.

In a 1904 issue of the American Journal of Sociology, British polymath and naturalist Sir Frances Galton defined eugenics as “the science which deals with all influences that improve the inborn qualities of a race; also with those that develop them to the utmost advantage”. The foundational perversion of this theory was evident in the fact that Adolf Hitler was one of its biggest fans. And when the world realised the role it played in Hitler’s campaign, the eugenics movement was buried.

‘Excludable aliens’ list expanded in 1907

The next major immigration law was passed in 1907, expanding the categories of “excludable aliens” in the US. It authorised the US President to refuse admission to any immigrant whose arrival he judged detrimental to the country’s labour conditions, according to official records.

This law targeted Japanese labourers who were coming to the US via Hawaii, Mexico and Canada to work in agricultural fields. They took this route because the Japanese government had been opposing the immigration of its nationals to the US. These Japanese immigrants were widely seen as posing a threat to native-born Americans because they were very successful economically, the CCIS study says.

And then, World War-I fed new fears about “foreign radicals”. The Immigration Act of 1917 expanded previous immigration laws and created a literacy requirement that applied to all newcomers over 16 years of age. The new law also created the so-called “barred zone”, which prohibited immigration from most of Asia, according to the study.

This was a pivotal point. For the first time, the restriction criteria became broad and sweeping. Large categories of immigrants were prohibited and, increasingly, race and ethnicity started becoming the basis for barring immigrants.

“In 1921 and 1924, the US Congress passed immigration laws that severely limited the number and ‘national origin’ of new immigrants. These laws did not change in the 1930s, as desperate Jewish refugees attempted to immigrate from Nazi Germany,” according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Allowances for relatives in 1921

Importantly, the 1921 law, for the first time, made special allowances for relatives of immigrants already in the US.

Then, during and after World War-II, there was some softening of the US stance on the issue. A programme was developed to import Mexican contract labourers to work in agriculture and railroads beginning in 1942. A 1952 law reversed the prohibition against contract labourers in the US and expanded the classes of those eligible to come in.

In this act were echoes of the current H-1B debate. The Act designated a portion of permanent visas specifically for immigrants with high levels of education, training and experience.

Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965

In 1965, US President Lyndon Johnson signed the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 that eliminated the “national origins” quotas that for 40 years had limited the ability of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, Africa, and Asia.

And by the year 1978, the annual number of immigrants in the US had crossed 6,00,000, according to official records.

While the proportion of Europeans fell from an overwhelming 90% in 1965 to just 10% in 1985, Hispanic and Asian immigrants accounted for about two thirds of all legal immigrants, according to the CCIS paper.

However, as the number of illegal immigrants rose, the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 was brought in. For the first time in US immigration history, the new law required employers to verify that their workers were in the US legally.

Origin of the H-1B visa

Then came the next major legislative change that also was the origin of the H-1B programme. This was the Immigration Act of 1990.

“The H-1B programme was created by Congress in 1990, and there’s no question it needed to be modernised to support our nation’s growing economy,” said US Citizenship and Immigration Services Director M. Jaddou last year.

The 1990 Act addressed US policy towards highly skilled temporary workers. For the first time, it set an annual cap of 65,000 non-immigrants entering the US under H-1B visas. The Act limited H-1B workers to a maximum of six-year stay and specified that H-1B workers hold at least a bachelor’s degree or its equivalent.

In 1996, a law was brought in to reduce illegal immigration, including provisions to tighten border control operations, aimed at alien smuggling and to toughen detention, deportation and asylum policies.

While the cap for H-1B visas was raised up to 1,95,000, it was brought back to 65,000. And then, in 2005, the US Congress added 20,000 extra slots for US master’s degree holders. And since then, the cap has remained at 85,000, with exemptions for universities and research institutions.

Over time, the H-1B programme has become central to US tech and research, with Indian and Chinese nationals forming the majority of visa holders.

The history of immigration policies and laws in the US shows that concerns over immigrants have been an anxiety as far back as the 19th century. But at the same time, they show the affinity in the US for the immigration of skilled workers.

The US faces recurring shortages in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), with the domestic supply of workers lagging far behind the demand. Holders of H-1B visas fill these crucial gaps.

And while H-1B remains a pipeline for global talent, it will likely remain a big flashpoint in US immigration politics at least as long as Donald Trump is President.

(Edited by Viny Mishra)