Existing comment:
Regulating Immigration:
During our nation's early years, states and cities enacted most immigration regulation. After the Civil War, however, a series of Supreme Court rulings gave increased responsibility to the Federal Government to control immigration.
As millions of people from around the world poured into the United States, Congress passed laws, approved processes, and established agencies to distinguish "desirable" from "undesirable" immigrants, to control who entered the country, and to determine who could become a citizen and who would remain an alien. |