ABSTRACT
This chapter examines some of the historical and contemporary debates and social forces that have informed U.S. immigration policies and thinking. What these policies illustrate is America’s complicated history with immigration. In less than 200 years, the United States has moved from no numerical limitations and very little regulation of immigration and virtually no laws to the present where national security and immigration have been conflated and codified. In the interim, race, ethnicity, class, and country of origin have been consistently used to argue against the entry of new immigrant groups who do not fit the American ideal of the day.
