U.S. Immigration and Naturalization
| Author | Jeffrey Wilson |
| Pages | 973-978 |
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As a result of the terrorist attacks on the U.S. on September 11, 2001, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) ceased to be an agency of the Department of Justice, as it had been for more than six decades. Along with 21 other federal agencies, INS was reorganized and brought under the aegis of the newly-created Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 2003.
Immigration laws, both pre- and post-September 11, fall into two distinct categories. One category is enforcement. Enforcement includes border control and security, removal of illegal aliens, and investigation and enforcement of other immigration laws, such as document fraud, alien smuggling, and work authorization. The other category of immigration laws has to do with benefits, such as asylum,naturalization, and admission to the U.S.
When Ellis Island opened as an immigration processing center in New York Harbor in 1892, INS (then known as the Immigration Service) employed fewer than 200; by the beginning of the twenty-first century INS employed some 29,000. In fiscal year 2004, statistics showed:
Legal immigration of 705,827 (down from 1,063,732 in 2002)
537,151 people were sworn in as U.S. citizens
More than 1.2 million aliens were apprehended
Nearly 203,000 aliens were formally removed from the U.S.; more than 1 million others agreed to voluntarily depart the country
88,897 criminal aliens were removed
Nonimmigrant admissions amounted to nearly 31 million
32,682 applications for asylum were received; about one-third were granted
Refugee arrivals totaled 52,835 (up from 28,306 in 2003)
There was no perceived need for an immigration service in the United States in its early days. Immigra-
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tion was welcome. In fact, the first immigration law in the United States, passed in 1864, was actually intended to encourage immigration by making the process easier by assisting in transportation and settlement. Most immigration matters were handled by individual states until nearly three decades later, when the number of immigrants was growing rapidly and the state laws were competing with federal statutes.
The Immigration Act of 1891 gave control of the immigration process to the federal government. Under the law, the new Office of Immigration (then a branch of the U. S. Treasury Department) was able to consolidate the process and thus streamline it as well. Soon after the office was established, 24 inspection stations were opened at various ports of entry (both on the borders and at seaports). The most famous of these inspection stations was Ellis Island, in New York Harbor. Opened in 1892, it processed hundreds of thousands of immigrants for more than 60 years. (Today, the site is a museum dedicated to the immigrants who came to New York.) In fact, in 1893, of the 180 employees at Immigration, 119 (nearly two-thirds) worked at Ellis Island. While Ellis Island remained the best known immigrant station, others were built or expanded, and former state customs officials were hired to serve as immigration inspectors.
During these early years the basic structure of the U. S. immigration service was formulated and formalized. It was at Ellis Island that the process of choosing who would and who would not gain admission was refined. Boards of Special Inquiry were developed to hear individual exclusion cases and determine whether a decision to deport could be reversed.
In 1895 the office was restructured to reflect its growing importance and was renamed the Bureau of Immigration. Over the next several years the Bureau's duties expanded as the U. S. government worked to further consolidate national immigration policy. In 1903 the Bureau of Immigration was transferred from the Treasury Department to the newly formed Department of Commerce and Labor. The federal government also sought to consolidate the process of naturalization. Naturalization had been handled by individual state and local courts; in 1905 more than 5,000 courts across the United States conducted naturalization proceedings. In 1906 Congress passed the Basic Naturalization Act and gave responsibility for naturalization to the Bureau of Immigration, which was renamed the Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization.
Immigration and naturalization were separated in 1913 after the Bureau was transferred to the Department of Labor (which had separated from Commerce). The two bureaus were reunited in 1933 and called the Immigration and Naturalization Service. By 1940, with World War II engulfing the globe, immigration and naturalization were deemed to be issues of national security instead of economics. As a result, INS was transferred once more, this time to the Department of Justice.
After World War II, Congress consolidated all existing immigration and naturalization laws under the Immigration and...
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