In almost 250 years of existence, America has changed a lot— in many respects for the better, but sometimes for the worse, resulting in lost freedoms.
One of those bad changes has been immigration policy. America once opened its doors to people who wanted to build a life in freedom. Now it slams those doors shut. A country founded on liberty and enterprise has turned immigration from a welcomed act of courage and ambition into a bureaucratic impossibility.
Today, we live in an America that excludes prospective Americans, rather than welcoming them. But it didn’t use to be that way.
Before legislators began imposing severe restrictions on immigration in the late 19th century, the legal immigration process for most immigrants looked like this:
The few restrictions that did exist were mostly at the state level, aimed at screening for paupers (individuals deemed likely to become public charges) and those with certain illnesses.
Compare that to today’s pathway to legal residency (a green card), as explained by the Cato Institute:
Cato explains that immigrating to America today is nearly impossible for most people, regardless of how peaceful they are (fewer than 1% of the people who would like to move here can do so legally). Our immigration system is highly restrictive, constraining the freedom of immigrants and Americans to work and trade with each other. What legal pathways do exist are limited by quotas, visa requirements, and other regulations.
So what happened? How did we get here?
Many early Americans were welcoming of immigrants and many states worked to attract them, but xenophobia and racism against certain groups were an issue. Among the xenophobic were nativist movements, such as the “Know-Nothings” in the mid 19th century, who wanted to keep “America for Americans” and exclude newcomers. Among other things, they overemphasized and distorted the logical disruption caused by large-scale immigration to early American communities to pit the native-born against it.
In 1882 the first big federal restriction on immigration was enacted with the Chinese Exclusion Act, which barred nearly all Chinese workers from entering the US (with narrow exceptions) and denied citizenship to the Chinese immigrants already here.
The Chinese Exclusion Act passed in response to many Americans’ tribal view that the Chinese were “taking our jobs” and that they were irreparably depraved, among other racist tropes. They declared them an “invasion.”
The Chinese Exclusion Act is one of the most shameful pieces of legislation in American history (so much so that Congress issued a rare apology for it in 2011). The Chinese stopped coming, and Americans were worse off for it. Four decades later, many more immigrants would stop coming.
By the 1920s, hostility toward immigrants had widened from the Chinese to include other Asian groups and Eastern Europeans, all labeled “inferior” and dangerous to America’s “racial purity.” Nativists promoted the deterministic notion that these newcomers were inherently incapable of assimilating. Madison Grant, a notorious eugenicist, wrote The Passing of the Great Race where he called to limit immigration on eugenicist grounds. That book, which Adolf Hitler himself would later refer to as his “bible,” directly influenced America’s 1924 immigration law, the National Origins Act.
This law dramatically restricted immigration by imposing national-origins quotas, slashing immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe, and barred virtually all Asian immigrants — all based on racist grounds.
Readers may find this legislation and the reasons behind them repulsive, and rightly so — these ideas are profoundly un-American. They betray the core values of this country and the individualism it was founded on.
It wasn’t until 1965 that the Johnson-Reed Act was completely repealed with the Immigration and Nationality Act.
While this new law was an improvement from the previous one, it is the basis of our current terribly restrictive system. As scholar David Bier argues, contrary to the free, pro-America immigration system of early America, the current legislation is more similar to the Chinese Exclusion Act: It bars most people from immigrating to America legally, and only allows those who can fit very narrow exceptions that the law provides. The vast majority of people don’t fit into those exceptions and are banned from immigrating legally.
As any restriction in freedom does, this has created an environment where the law is constantly violated, black markets thrive (often dominated by cartels and other criminals), and draconian enforcement proliferates.
America should have strong borders, and it should exclude anyone seeking to violate the rights of Americans. But people seeking freedom and a better life are not threats — they are allies, like they were early on. Immigration created many challenges for American society back then. But, as we now know, it also brought with it an unprecedented era of growth and innovation. Had the nativists succeeded early on, America wouldn’t be what it is today. Good policy that respects the individual rights of immigrants and Americans will help mitigate challenges and maximize freedom and prosperity.
In building a life in freedom and trading with Americans, immigrants help make this country better and more prosperous. Early Americans, including the Founders (who objected to King George’s interference with migration to the colonies and naturalization), recognized this and kept government interventions on immigration at a minimum.
This is even truer today. We have been at this “American Experiment” for almost 250 years. One of the remarkable findings of this experiment is that America is not simply a place — it’s an idea that transcends borders and reaches people in every corner of the planet. So many people dream of moving here because they’ve heard about America, about its unparalleled opportunities and freedom, about its culture and its people, and want to be a part of it. Many people from around the world, without ever setting foot in America, feel American in their hearts and minds — they are “Americanized” by embracing the very values that America stands for. I am one such person. No other country in the history of humanity has ever accomplished this.
It’s not that every prospective immigrant reads the Declaration and weeps. That’s rarely the case. But the vast majority of people seeking to come here do so because they want to partake in the freedom and opportunity that the values in the Declaration have enabled. They want to trade with people in America— they want to create, produce, innovate, have families, make money, and often they want to become citizens as well. This exchange of values only makes this country freer, safer, and more prosperous. Rather than barring the entry of peaceful people wanting to work, the U.S. should welcome them and invite them to become Americans as it did early on, while still protecting its borders from actual threats.
Unfortunately, and especially recently, many people have been reverting to the nativist cry of “America for Americans.” This is profoundly un-American, and a massive betrayal to this nation.
But all is not lost in the fight over American immigration. People in America are realizing more and more that people who immigrate here are a value to them, so there’s prospects of a return to our Founder’s original prudence on this issue and a self-interested immigration policy for America. If we want this country to honor its core values, we should call for an “America for more Americans” — a country that welcomes peaceful strivers and allows them to become Americans as well.
P.S.: For those interested in learning more about this topic, including the philosophical premises that prompted immigration restrictions, here is a talk I gave in 2024: