Immigration Policy in the USA

Essay from the year 2007 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Region: USA, grade: 3, University of Salzburg (Institut für Geschichts- und Politikwissenschaft), 17 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: My essay will be about the immigration policy of the United States of America. The U.S. administration has tightened measures against (illegal) immigration to the USA since the 1980s. Especially the immigration of unskilled workers should be avoided. As we will see, the U.S. administration struggles with lacking reform in immigration policy, that's why a conflict between the federal and state level exists. Especially since the terrorist attacks of 11th of September 2001, the immigration policy has dramatically been changed. Now security issues have become the most important topic. Already existing bilateral relations between the USA and countries of origin of immigrants have also been affected. The first chapter of this essay will be about the changes in immigration policy since the 1980s. I will try to describe the most important new anti-immigrant laws. Furthermore I will show the reasons for these legal changes. In the second chapter I will write about general reasons for changes in immigration policy in the United States and the meaning of the incidents of September 2001. The third chapter will be about the interest groups which are important in immigration policy. I will try to show how immigration policy is influenced and by whom. My hypothesis for this essay is that U.S. immigration has changed at the latest since the beginning of the 1990s, the level of education of the immigrants got more important because of economic reasons. Since the terror attacks in 2001 immigration is restricted because of safety reasons.