The "Migrant Crisis" Did Not Start with Trump, It Won't End There Either

Writer: Kimani Leftridge

The perceived influx of migrants coming from México and Central America have been topics of conversation in American society for quite some time. In the past year or so the masses have been exposed to just how inhumane the United States’ government’s policies on immigration are. The public has seen small children separated from their families, hundreds of men women and children die from blatant negligence while others have been crammed into detention centers that have effectively been dubbed “concentration camps”. While the current commander in chief has played a very large role in the continued brutalization of undocumented peoples, it is important to understand why this problem does not start and end with the 45th president of the United States.

In the year 1924, the United States Border Patrol was established to crack down on migrants crossing the Mexican and Canadian borders, many of whom were Asian immigrants who had been barred from entering legally. In addition to this, the Immigration Act of 1924 limited the number of migrants allowed into the United States through nationality quotas and unsurprisingly, this law favored migrants coming from West and central Europe. As a result, 70% of the visas at this time came from Great Britain, Ireland and Germany. The mid-1960s proved to be a very productive time for immigration policies; the quota system is discontinued along with the Bracero Program . For former president Lyndon B. Johnson, the termination of such programs marked the beginning of a new system that emphasized family reunification and skilled immigrants, he even went on to call the old system “un-American” and that the new bill would correct a “cruel and enduring wrong in the conduct of the American Nation”.

Fast forward a few decades and the first iterations of the DREAM Act, a pathway in which undocumented minors can acquire legal status, are developed in 2001. This policy would take years to officially pass anywhere and former President Obama signed the DACA policy in the meantime. Despite these efforts being publicly described as an effort to ensure the rights and safety of undocumented minors, these policies have been accompanied with promises to invest billions of dollars in Border Control, an institution that has worked to do the total opposite since its conception.

Circling back to the present time, there has not been much progress in the ways that undocumented people, specifically those of a darker hue, have been treated. The Naturalization Act of 1790 states that “free white persons of good character” should be granted citizenship. This was the standard that was set at the very beginning of this country’s history. What can we do to change that?