ABSTRACT

This chapter presents a historical review of the most significant immigration policies enacted since 1882, guided by their overt inclusionary or exclusionary goals. The review will examine how the United States controlled the influx of transnational manpower through immigration policy. It will illustrate how the United States covertly created and facilitated a Mexican "illegal" labor force to maximize production and wealth acquisition, while overtly advocating for racial equality and border control. The review will expose the White Nativist legal statutes and logics that successfully cast the Mexican other, as an illegal, unwanted, immigration problem that threatened the welfare of the nation state. The immigration interior enforcement approach, that began in 1996, in response to the critical mass representation achieved by the Hispanic, Mexican other, has continued to influence subsequent policy development. In 1965, the Immigration and Nationality Act replaced the Immigration Act of 1924, abolishing the national origins quota system.