Lesson
The History of Immigration Law in the United States
Founding Principles
Learning objectives
- Students will learn about the debates over immigration during the Founding era, and how Founders differed on the benefits and drawbacks of unrestricted immigration.
- Students will understand the basic process of immigration into the country in the 1700s and 1800s and come to understand naturalization.
- Students will understand the contested nature of the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment, and how it applies to ongoing immigration controversies in the 2000s.
- Students will understand how strict immigration controls in the decades before and after 1900 favored certain ethnic and national groups over others.
- Students will understand the nature of anti-immigrant backlash in the first half of the 1900s, and how it manifested itself in federal policy and on the home front in both World Wars.
- Students will understand how immigration policy radically changed after World War II and learn more about the reasoning for this transformation.
Materials
- Handout A: Background Essay—The History of Immigration Law in the United States
- Handout B-1: Debating Immigration in the Founding Era
- Handout B-2: Comparing and Contrasting the Founders’ Views
- Handout C: Cartoons on Immigration in the 1800s
- Handout D: Transforming Immigration Policy in the 1900s
Lesson Components
Lesson plan
Key Terms
- Naturalization
- Naturalization Act of 1790
- Fourteenth Amendment
- Natural-born citizen
- 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act
Standards
Related materials
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