The kick-off of the structural and demographic shifts of the global economy and society after 1965 eventually led to the reestablishment of American immigration policies based on individual socioeconomic status. Because the US had once supported, funded, or even fought for their anti-communist regimes, millions of victims under communist revolutions and insurgencies during the Cold War and Iranian Revolution fled from Cuba, Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, and Iran to the US. Refugee admissions were never popular in the US. When this is combined with the extended stay of the thousands, lawful and unlawful, after the US government welcomed them in through the Bracero Program in 1942, terms like “public charge” and cases like Plyer v. Doe and Sure Tan v. NLRB emerged. Poor migrants unable to support themselves while depleting public educational and medical resources that were meant to be provided to American citizens just weren’t what the Americans were looking for.

 

During the post-WWII period, being one of the few countries that weren’t devastated, the US had no serious competition from abroad. Its technological developments were decades ahead of the world, and it even helped to rebuild the top research universities of other countries. However, the rapid rise of the Japanese manufacturing industry in the 1970s convinced the US otherwise. Regardless of Republicans or Democrats, the Americans were worried that they one day would lose its place as the world’s leading superpower. At once, the rise of information technology industries after 1980 and the automation of production had triggered both outflows of high-paying unskilled jobs to cheap-labor countries like Mexico and Taiwan and the inflow of highly-skilled workers. For the next decades, the US had aimed its immigration policies to seizing top-notch skilled workers from around the world and to evicting poor and unskilled migrants not just to meet the high demand from the domestic market or reduce social burdens, but to secure its position in the “pantheon of excellence”.

 

The Refugee Act of 1980 was a powerful political statement from President Carter in response to the significant influx of refugees. Sponsored by Senator Edward Kennedy, this act redefined a refugee as a person with a “well-founded fear of persecution” based on his “race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group.” This means that when there is no “clear and convincing evidence” presenting that one may be a victim of persecution, one may not be resettled in the US. On top of that, though the annual cap on refugees increased from 17,400 to 50,000, this act guaranteed that thousands more than it would admit wouldn’t be when there were 2 million fleeing just from Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. 

 

“Compassion fatigue,” according to Senator Alan Simpson, where Americans had exhausted the ability to empathize with the poor migrants, was the central idea of this reform to limit the amount of poorer persons entering the US. Along with many other members of Congress, he believed that the US ought to protect American jobs and prevent “misuse” of public assistance programs from poorer migrants. The Reagan Administration, however, had used this act not to reshape the American labor market but to rationalize and justify its interference in Central America. Migrants from countries like El Salvador and Guatemala whose conditions match the definition of a “refugee” as stated in the Refugee Act of 1980 were instead, classified as “economic migrants” and thus ineligible for political asylum merely because they were in fact, fleeing away from governments aided and supported by the US fighting against communist rebels. Admitting “refugees” from these countries would imply that the US was responsible for this massive displacement. On the other hand, those escaping from communist governments such as Castro’s regime were resettled as “refugees,” as it helped the Reagan Administration to point fingers. This double standard had led to churches taking responsibilities — the “sanctuary movement” where churches in Arizona and California under Roger Mahony, the Archbishop of Los Angeles, John Fife, the Presbyterian minister of Tucson, and James Corbett, a Quaker, assisted and housed Central American migrants. City councils even passed resolutions supporting this movement, declaring San Francisco as a “City of Refuge,” despite these activities been regarded by federal authorities as illegal. One might realize the resemblance to the Underground Railroad during the Fugitive Slave Acts. Again, American was divided upon the issue of aliens.

 

The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 signed by President Reagan and sponsored by Senator Alan Simpson of Wyoming and Representative Romano Mazzoli of Kentucky further discouraged the entry of poor illegal immigrants by eliminating one of the chief reasons illegal immigrants came in the first place –– jobs –– by fining, ranging from $250 to $10,000, employers who hired undocumented workers. Senator Edward Kennedy, however, despite his work in shaping the Refugee Act of 1980, was not on the same page. He warned that these employer sanctions might lead to racial discrimination of Hispanic Americans and eventually the incentive for not hiring Latinos. This act also legalized undocumented persons who had been in the US since before 1982. Since many of Reagan supporters were agricultural growers in California and the Southwest who depended their production on these mostly illegal migratory workers, this act was an arguably self-interest based decision that many believed had demolished the fundamental purpose of this act. Originally estimated to legalize around 700,000 to 1 million persons, this act had eventually led to the legalization of 3 million, many of whom were thought to vote for the Republicans but ultimately turned some states from red to blue. Despite the presumed objective of this act to control the labor market and reserve economic opportunities for American citizens by excluding poor migrants, Reagan did not enforce to pursue mass deportations –– illegal Mexicans were “Americans by choice” but Central Americans weren’t. This is not to mention that illegal immigration did not decline, and employers were not afraid of fines or sanctions after all. Conceivably, the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 wasn’t as “revolutionary” as what Reagan had thought to be.

 

Perhaps due to the lack of success of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 to achieve its determined outcome, President George H. W. Bush signed the Immigration Act of 1990. As an extension of the “war on drugs” after the Reagan Administration targeted drug trafficking by tightening borders, this act shifted immigration policies towards enforcement. Besides hiring more border patrols who were authorized with deadly force and eliminating judicial relief of deportations based on criminal convictions, Temporary Protected Status was introduced and used on Central Americans, Chinese nationals, and Haitians after political violence during the 1990s had induced mass migrations. Furthermore, 55,000 diversity visas were introduced to encourage migrants from low-sending countries — mostly European countries — as the US government was not only worried that the demographics were soon going to be dominated by Asians and Latinos but also Asian and Latino migrants were generally poorer. 

 

However, limiting poorer migrants was simply not enough as the US encountered structural changes in the economy and society when American auto-manufacturing and steel industries were declining. American Steel Belt became Rust Belt when thousands of low-skilled workers were replaced by more efficient robots that need engineers to perfect. As a result, the aggregate demand in the labor market switched from low-skilled human labor to highly-skilled workers such as scientists and engineers to improve auto-making and computerizing operations. In light of the shifts, through holding up the enforcement provisions of the act, Senator Kennedy had won the President’s support in the employment-based revisions that would increase the lawful migration of highly-skilled and affluent migrants. Kennedy proposed the EB-5 visa for anyone investing 1 million dollars to create at least 10 jobs for Americans, the L visa for intracompany transfers, and most importantly, the H-1B visa for specialized workers who could stay for 3 years before renewing for another 3. Although critics referred to the H-1B visa workers as “high-tech braceros,” wages that were several times higher than agricultural braceros had proved that skilled migration appeared to be the new trend, as the number of employment-based visas increased from 54,000 to 140,000 per year. The Immigration Act of 1990 had reversed the immigration patterns: a smaller fraction of immigrants coming for family reunification and a larger fraction coming for skilled jobs. 

 

In the mid-1990s, the growing information technology sector provided a great number of job openings for highly skilled labor that made even the 140,000 employment-based visas insufficient. To adjust to the robust demand, President Clinton signed the American Competitiveness and Workforce Improvement Act of 1998 and the American Competitiveness in the 21st Century Act of 2000 that raised the H-1B ceiling from 65,000 to 115,000 and further pushed it up to 195,000. This was what President Bush had not done, considering the risk of foreign workers depressing wages in the US labor market, affecting the basic economic status of American citizens. The result of these acts was Asian “ethnoburbs” repopulated with skilled labor with more been built around major technology centers and top research universities, flushing in a rather uncomfortable racial overtone to the Americans.

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In 1882, Congress had restricted economic opportunities for Asians, making them impossible to come working or even becoming an American citizen. Yet, with more highly-skilled-labor-friendly immigration policies and American investments in higher education institutes in Asian countries after World War II, more and more Asians cannot overlook the richer economic opportunities in the US, where not only public infrastructure is well-developed but the politics is also relatively stable compared to many of the Asian dictatorships South Korea, Philippines, and Taiwan. As a result of these push-and-pull factors, Asians are migrating to the US in greater amounts than ever and persons of Asian ancestry in the US are better educated and paid nowadays with starting salaries higher than average Americans. We began to realize that highly educated or affluent persons already live in a borderless world where their skills or wealth are wanted by governments everywhere looking for super talents.