Major U.S. Immigration Laws, 1790 - Present
Highlights
U.S. immigration law has swung between openness and restriction since 1790, with each era's legislation shaped by labor needs, national security fears, and racial politics.
- The 1790 Naturalization Act limited citizenship to free White persons; the Chinese Exclusion Acts of 1882 onward marked the first laws restricting immigration by race, paving the way for the national-origins quota system established in 1921 and expanded in 1924.
- The landmark 1965 Hart-Cellar Act abolished the national-origins quota system and replaced it with a family- and employment-based preference system that fundamentally reshaped the composition of immigration.
- The 1980 Refugee Act established the modern statutory framework for processing refugees and asylum seekers, defining a refugee for the first time in U.S. law in line with international standards.
- The 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act introduced employer sanctions and legalized roughly 2.7 million unauthorized immigrants—a combination that set the template for comprehensive immigration reform debates through the early 2000s.
This fact sheet serves as a guide and timeline of all major U.S. immigration laws from 1790 through the present. Starting with the 1790 Naturalization Act, which established the country's first uniform naturalization law, the work examines the laws through 2006, when Congress enacted the Secure Fence Act after the Senate failed to adopt immigration reform legislation that had passed the House in 2005.
The fact sheet explains all of the the laws that have come to shape the United States' immigration policy, and helps paint a picture of where the debate on comprehensive immigration reform may head in the near future.
About the U.S. Immigration Policy Program
The U.S. Immigration Policy Program provides analysis of U.S. immigration pathways, the impacts of enforcement and other policies, and the characteristics of immigrant populations.
