section_path: History/Legislation
section_name: Legislation
paragraph_text: Legislation
  
  The Naturalization Act of 1906, required immigrants to learn English in order to become citizens. The Immigration Act of 1917 defined aliens with a long list of undesirables, including most Asians. The US had otherwise nearly open borders until the early 20th century, with only 1% rejected from 1890 to 1924, usually because they failed the mental or health exam. While immigration laws during those years were loose, laws limiting naturalization to those of "white" and "African" descent meant many other immigrants had difficulty acquiring citizenship. These regulations immediately created problems of interpretation – the contentious question of who was and was not "white" vexed even the officials charged with enforcing the law and led to significant criticism. The Union of American Hebrew Congregations noted that under the standing interpretation that Turks, Syrians, Palestinians and Jews were not white, "even Jesus of Nazareth himself" would be excluded from citizenship. As a result, judges and immigration officials often admitted and naturalized technically ineligible people as a form of protest against the laws.
  
  The Immigration Act of 1924 established visa requirements and enacted quotas for immigrants from specific countries, especially with low quotas for Southern and Eastern Europeans. Especially it affected Italians and Jews. It also prohibited all Asians from immigrating. By 1940, administrative and legislative action had loosened racial restrictions on naturalization of immigrants, including a ruling that Mexicans were considered white for immigration and naturalization purposes, and a law permitting the naturalization of "descendants of races indigenous to the Western Hemisphere." The quotas were eased in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952.
  
  The decisive opening came in 1965, a year after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed discrimination based on race or national origin. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 abolished the quota system. The 1965 Act also established several new limits to which immigrants would be admissible for permanent residence in the United States. A 1990 act increased the annual immigrant limit to 675,000 per year.
  
  In 1996, Congress debated two immigration bills, one focused on limiting legal immigration and another on illegal immigration. The legal immigration reform bills failed to pass, while the illegal immigration bill was passed in the form of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996. President Bill Clinton signed the Act into law and it became effective on April 1, 1997. The key components of the Act included increasing the number of border agents, increasing penalties on those who assisted illegal immigrants into the United States, creating a 10-year re-entry ban on those who had been deported after living in the US illegally for over one year, and expanding the list of crimes that any immigrant (regardless of legal status) could be deported for.
  
  In February 2024 and again in May 2024, Republicans in the Senate blocked a border security bill Joe Biden had pushed for to reduce the number of migrants who can claim asylum at the border and provide more money for Customs and Border Protection officials, asylum officers, immigration judges and scanning technology at the border. It was negotiated in a bipartisan manner and initially looked like it had the votes to pass until Donald Trump opposed it, citing that it would boost Biden's reelection chances. Five senators on the left voted against it for not providing enough relief for migrants already in the United States.