14 year olds applying for a visa are now obligated to be registered, with civil and criminal penalty if not met. That every highschooler in the country with a visa application or with undocumented status is now under the jurisdiction of this new executive order 14159, that requires all undocumented people above the age of 14 to register and be fingerprinted by  the United States Government. 

    During American history, immigration has always been an issue. The first legislation on immigration was the 1790 Naturalization Act, which declared that the only people granted citizenship would be free white persons who had resided in the country for at least two years, and could swear on moral quality and the constitution. This first set of legislation is important for understanding the current immigration issues. That the problem with immigration historically has not been immigration itself, but bias against different groups. The fact that America first had legislation stating that it was only acceptable to be an immigrant if you were white is important to acknowledge when considering current motivations for potential legislation on immigration. 

     When considering immigration acts, legislation usually focuses on restricting a certain group instead of immigrants as a whole, such as the Immigration Quota Act of 1921 and the 1924 National Origins Quota Act, which limited how many people could immigrate based on nationality, severely discriminating against Southern and Eastern Europeans, Europeans who were typically non-Protestants.

     “Essentially, we were trying to restrict what type of American was here, and then in 1965 [there] was an immigration act that did the exact opposite,” social studies teacher Andrew Sturgill said. The 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act changed the way that immigration works so completely, that immigration had been done in such a discriminatory way, that so many people had to bear in their time.. In 1965, immigration changed from restricting individuals based on nationality, to allowing people based on their connection and relationships to US citizens, opening immigration to people based on personal information, rather than the government’s broad generalization about a group of people. 

     So what about now? New policy is arising every day, but what’s the basis of it? Why is immigration such a poignant issue in American politics today? 

     “There’s always historically been an issue with people, that it’s the in group versus out group,” psychology teacher Kyle Hall said. “We came in as immigrants, and essentially took over an entire continent, just because we felt empowered and we felt superior. Then after that, anybody else that came in, once we established a norm for what it means to be an American, it gave us the ability to judge other people who weren’t American, even though we were a bunch of immigrants that did the same thing. And so it’s just manifested, it’s changed into something that’s more aggressive and more hurtful,” Hall said. 

      “We’ve been arguing the immigration debate for literally as long as I can remember. It’s always been an issue that’s never been solved,” Hall said. “I always tell my kids, there’s no such thing as a simple answer to a complex problem. People are trying to solve immigration simply.”