IMMIGRANTS

Immigrants

Immigrants

Introduction

Immigrants are people who leave their country of birth to live in a different country, most often on a permanent basis (Bemak & Chung, 2003). Currently, people are immigrating to the United States by the thousands, hoping to find work and a better or safer life. The Office of Immigration Statistics (2006) reports that, in the United States, in 2005 alone, 1,122,373 people became legal permanent residents, which was a significant increase from 957,883 in 2004. Countries that are frequent contributors of immigrants are Mexico, India, and China. In light of this information, mental health professionals must be prepared to work with the increasing immigrant population of color in the United States.

Brief History of Immigration

Up until 1875, the United States did not restrict immigration. However, later the exclusionary sections of the Immigration Acts of 1875, 1882, and 1891 barred people from entering the United States who were deemed unsavory, including convicts, prostitutes, the mentally insane, those who could not provide for themselves, polygamists, and those who suffered from contagious diseases. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 singled out people from China, preventing their immigration. To enforce these acts, stations, as on Ellis Island, were set up for the purpose of checking, rejecting, or accepting immigrants and processing their papers.

There was a lag in immigration during World War I, but after the war was over (Ngai, 2004), immigration increased to the point where a national origins quota system was developed to limit the number of people from each country who were eligible to immigrate, as instituted by the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924. Passports, which were used in World War I for security reasons, became the norm and were necessary to enter the country. During this time, eugenicists, who believed that intelligence and morality are determined by race, were influential and were asked to speak at congressional hearings. Eugenicists advocated that the races should not be mixed because they felt that other races were less intelligent, inferior, and degenerate. This line of thinking in the social sciences bled into the immigration policies, and people who were considered “White” had an easier time of getting into the country.

In 1924, Mexico was exempt from the quotas, and states like California and Texas welcomed Mexican immigrants into the labor force. Another factor that increased Mexican immigration was that Mexicans were considered “White” because of their ancestry and not because of their actual skin color. In 1929, the State Department made the decision to restrict Mexican immigration, but illegal immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border was not strictly monitored, and immigrants continued to cross the border at unofficial points. To enforce the quota system, Congress implemented the U.S. Border Patrol to apprehend illegal immigrants, and the Immigration and Naturalization service was born in 1933 to deal with immigration processing demands and sanctions. (Waters, 1997)

As time went on, Congress became more lenient in its immigration policy. For example, in 1943, Congress repealed the Chinese Exclusion Act. Also, due to the Displaced Persons Act of 1948 and the Refugee Relief ...