IIMMLA Research Project 2019
2004/11/01
Increased border control after the 9/11 terrorist attack with an addition of 10,000 new agents.
2001/11/23
Proposal of the first Development, Relief, and Education of Alien Minors (DREAM) Act to provide a pathway to legal status for illegal immigrants was not passed.
2012/10/03
President Barack Obama signs Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) that temporarily protects Dreamers from deportation but not citizenship.
1998/11/29
The strategy of pushing immigrants to remote areas was deemed a success due to decreased numbers of immigration but resulted in an increase in deaths.
Congress passed a legislation ordering jail time for criminal aliens and hired more Border Patrol agents in which they could be held in jail for up to 2 years.
1996/11/29
1994/11/29
The Clinton administration created a plan to increase border security, deport criminal aliens and reorganized the asylum process.
1994/11/29
El Paso Border Control's Operation Hold the Line and San Diego's Operation Gatekeeper pushed migrants into remote areas to dissuade them from crossing.
1994/10/23
The NAFTA went into effect to undercut Mexican farmers with cheap U.S. food imports to eliminate inequality between the countries but did not succeed.
1990/02/10
The 1990 Immigration Act increased legal immigrants from 500,000 to 700,000 through a visa lottery system to promote diversity from other countries.
1986/11/20
President Ronald Reagan signed into law the Simpson-Mazzoli Act, which pardoned 3 million immigrants living illegally in the U.S.
1986/09/13
Congress passed more legislation with the Immigrant Reform and Control Act aimed to control the flow of illegal immigrants due to U.S. employers.
The decline of the Mexican peso led to high unemployment prompting workers to find work in the U.S.
1982/11/10
1982/03/03
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that illegal immigrant children had the right to public school education.
1965/11/20
The new Immigration Act replaced the quota system with a seven-category preference system. The Barcero Program also comes to an end.
1954/11/29
The U.S. launched Operation Wetback, a program to deport nearly 4 million Mexican immigrants back to Mexico.
1942/02/06
The U.S. creates the Barcero Program that allowed 4.5 million Mexican agricultural workers to enter the U.S. temporarily due to labor shortages during WWII.
1924/11/13
The U.S. Border Control is created to prevent illegal immigrants from crossing the Mexican and Canadian borders.
1924/05/01
The Immigration Act of 1924 enacted a new quota system based on nationalities that determined how many legal immigrants could enter from each country.