Looking at the history of the United States, the country has always been a land of immense opportunities. People from different parts of the world have migrated to this land over the past 4 centuries. For many, it is only a dream to live in a country where opportunities are abundant. While many individuals achieve their dream of living in the land of the free by migrating through legal means and procedures, some of them reside in the U.S. illegally by secretly crossing the border or reside in the country after expiration of their authorized stay. Due to this, the impact is not only faced by the non-immigrants who migrate legally and assimilate into the system using the channel of permanent residency and citizenships but also by the existing citizens of the nation.
The United States is a country of unlimited prospects and possibilities, but there must be rules to ensure order and prosperity. To accomplish this, the federal government, in 1952, established the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). The act, which has been amended many times since then, still serves as the basic framework for U.S. immigration law. In general, it provides a single comprehensive statue which governs immigration and naturalization policy in the United States. There was very little opposition to the Immigration and Naturalization Act at the time of its adoption, but supporters of the act, both Democrats and Republicans favored it for different reasons. Democrats who are considered to be liberal political party, the INA act made all races eligible for naturalization, thus eliminating race as a bar to immigration. They also supported the law because it eliminated discrimination between sexes with respect to immigration, afforded greater procedural safeguards to aliens subject to deportation, broadened the grounds for exclusion and deportation of aliens, and provided equal opportunities for immigrants in America. Many Republicans, considered to be conservative political party, supported the law because it revised the quota system of the National Origins Act of 1924 and introduced a system of selected immigration by giving a quota preference to skilled aliens whose services were urgently needed in the United States, and to relatives of U.S. citizens and aliens. It also outlined procedures for adjusting the status of nonimmigrant aliens to permanent resident aliens, added significantly to the existing classes of nonimmigrant admission, and established a central index of all aliens in the United States for use by security and law enforcement agencies. Unfortunately, this act and the "amnesties" for illegal immigrants were adopted partly because of the sheer number of "unauthorized" immigrants that continue to migrate into the United States.