Immigration reduction refers to a government and social policy in the United States that advocates a reduction in the amount of immigration allowed into the country. Steps advocated for reducing the numbers of immigrants include advocating stronger action to prevent illegal entry and illegal migration, and reductions in non-immigrant temporary work visas (such as H-1B, L-1 and J-1). Some advocate tightening the requirements for legal immigration requirements to reduce numbers or move the proportions of legal immigrants away from those on family reunification programs to skills-based criteria.
Many immigration reformists only oppose illegal migration and support continued legal immigration methods. Some immigration reductionists want to reduce current legal immigration percentages until fewer adverse effects are created by illegal migration.Tom Tancredo's 2003 Bill As used in this Act, the term 'immigration moratorium' means the period beginning on October 1, 2003, and ending on September 30 of the first fiscal year after fiscal year 2008 during which the President submits a report to Congress, which is approved by a joint resolution of Congress, that the flow of illegal immigration has been reduced to less than 10,000 aliens per year and that any increase in legal immigration resulting from termination of the immigration moratorium would have no adverse impact on the wages and working conditions of United States citizens, the achievement or maintenance of Federal environmental quality standards, or the capacity of public schools, public hospitals, and other public facilities to serve the resident population in those localities where immigrants are likely to settle.
Nativism
There have been several discernible groups at various times within the United States, which pushed for immigration restrictions, with separate concerns, origins, and aims; thus there are several antecedents for the modern immigration reduction movement. These include the nativist United States American Party, often called the Know Nothing movement of the mid-19th century, which objected to increased Catholic immigration of predominantly Irish and German origin; the Workingman's Party which objected to immigration laborers from China to California during the late-19th century, a sentiment that ultimately led to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882; the Immigration Restriction League, which objected to greatly increased immigration from southern and eastern Europe during the late-19th and early 20th centuries, and the joint congressional Dillingham Commission, which studied this latter complaint and proposed numerical restrictions. Eventually, following World War I, these studies led to the Emergency Quota Act of 1921 and the Immigration Act of 1924.
Labor unions Organized labor generally favored restrictions, especially from Asia. The National Labor Union (1866–1874) campaigned for immigration restrictions as well as the eight-hour workday, as did the American Federation of Labor under the leadership of Samuel Gompers. The AFL–CIO did not reverse its opposition to immigration until 1999. The early United States Socialist Party was split over the issue, with some Socialist leaders including Jack London and Congressman Victor Berger supporting immigration restrictions; the party as a whole never had consensus and officially opposed only the importation of strikebreakers.
Overpopulation Concern over overpopulation was stimulated by Paul R. Ehrlich, who both founded Zero Population Growth and published The Population Bomb in 1968. The popular book foretold alarming disasters that would inevitably occur in the next decades. Though some of his predictions did not come to pass, many believe his main points are valid, and they succeeded in inspiring a movement. Environmentalists including David R. Brower and David Foreman took the threat seriously.Burke, B. Meredith. "Immigration's Dire Effect on the Environment ." Seattle Times. June 15, 2000. The Zero Population Growth organization did not involve itself, for the most part, in U.S. immigration policy, and a subset of the overpopulation movement grew which believed that immigration needed to be reduced, arguing that immigration was driving most U.S. population growth. These activists founded organizations separate from ZPG which would specifically address immigration issues. Among the important early organizations was Negative Population Growth, founded in 1972 by Donald Mann.What is NPG? . Negative Population Growth: Who We Are. Accessed January 5, 209.
FAIR The leading inspiration for the modern movement is the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). Founded in 1979, it is the largest and best funded organization in the movement. Three years later, John Tanton formed US, Inc. as an incubator and funding source to help form other organizations. According to public tax records, US, Inc, FAIR, and other Tanton organizations have received large donations from the Pioneer Fund and from the foundations controlled by Richard Mellon Scaife. Tanton created US English (an English-only advocacy group), the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), ProEnglish (another English-only advocacy group), and The Social Contract Press. US, Inc and FAIR have provided funding and logistical support to other organizations, including American Immigration Control Foundation (AICF), California Coalition for Immigration Reform (CCIR), Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS), and the recent Protect Arizona Now (PAN) initiative, Proposition 200.
The movement seemed to be triumphant in 1994 when California voters passed Proposition 187, an initiative that limited benefits to illegal aliens that had been authored and promoted by CCIR. However, one federal judge enjoined implementation of parts of the law as unconstitutional, and Democratic governor Gray Davis refused to pursue an appeal of the lower court decision, abandoning Proposition 187. Residual resentment over the racially divisive campaigns on both sides of the issue made immigration a topic that politicians largely avoided dealing with. A notable exception has been Tom Tancredo, who was elected to Congress from Littleton, Colorado in 1994. Together with Patrick Buchanan and the Tanton network, Tancredo has emerged as the most conspicuous voice advocating immigration reduction in Congress.
The Alliance for Stabilizing America's Population The immigration reduction movement was partly revived by The Alliance for Stabilizing America's Population coalition. In 1997 members from a range of immigration reduction and environmental organizations met to rededicate themselves to the effort of population stabilization. Organized by Population-Environment Balance, it included such diverse groups as:Signatories - Alliance for Stabilizing America's Population. Population-Environment Balance. June 2005. Accessed July 12, 2008. Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny (BOND) California Coalition for Immigration Reform (CCIR) California Wildlife Defenders (CWD) Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS) Carrying Capacity Network (CCN) Another effort was the coalition formed under the name U.S. Sustainable Population Policy Project (USS3P) in 1996 by Douglas La Follette and David Pimentel. The USS3P membership contained many immigration reductionists of the time. In 1999 it sought cosponsors for a major national conference on immigration. A number of major individuals and minor organizations joined as co-sponsors, but no large national groups joined and it folded in 2000 without holding the intended conference.
The Internet offered new opportunities for communication by immigration reductionists, as it has with countless other movements. Peter Brimelow founded his VDARE writers collective in 1999. The year 1999 also saw the founding by Craig Nelson of ProjectUSA in New York City, which used billboards to advertise Census Bureau and other statistics about immigration in a campaign dubbed "Billboard Democracy," and publishes an ezine in which the term "Minuteman" was first used (2002) in connection with civilian border patrols. The NumbersUSA group founded by Roy Beck set up an automated system for website visitors to send advocacy faxes to their legislators on immigration topics. Numerous websites, email lists, weblogs, and other resources furthered the effort.
The electoral success of Arizona's Proposition 200, PAN, indicates the support for immigration reductionism among voters. The PAN initiative qualified for the ballot following the expenditure by FAIR of hundreds of thousands of dollars for signature gathering, plus comparable sums for campaigning with some additional amounts raised locally. The initiative was adopted by the public by a significant margin and is likely to inspire similar efforts in other states. The success of Proposition 200 in Arizona was followed in April 2005 by the Minuteman Project, in which volunteers came to Arizona to help patrol the border, although this project did not have the support of the United States Border Patrol and generated some controversy. The organizers of the Minuteman Project have announced plans for similar projects in other states including Texas, California, and Michigan.
Candidate Donald Trump, 2016 In 2016, businessman and television personality Donald Trump ran a successful presidential campaign promising to stop the flow of illegal immigration, deport all illegal immigrants, and limit legal immigration. He called for a ban on Muslims from entering the U.S., travel to the US from what he called "terror prone" countries such as Iran, Libya, Somalia and Syria, a tripling of the number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, and construction of a wall along the US-Mexico border.
Trump also vowed to cut off all federal funding to sanctuary cities, end birthright citizenship, and immediately terminate President Obama's two executive amnesties including Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) which he said were illegal.See
Although Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and even some Republicans (such as Mitt Romney) called Trump's platform racist, xenophobic, and Islamophobic, Trump's proposals found broad support in the heartland and the south.
After his election as president, Trump enacted a number of policies aimed at reducing immigration, including signing executive orders banning entry to the United States for residents of multiple, Muslim-majority nations, separating families of immigrants, reversing the DACA program, greatly limiting the number of refugees and asylum seekers allowed into the country, and strengthening the southern border.See
Targeted immigration levels Immigration reductionists differ on the ideal level of immigration they would like to see into the United States. Some believe the numbers should be set each year at whatever level would, in conjunction with the current fertility rate and emigration from the U.S., maintain zero population growth in the country. The most prominent immigration reductionist in government today is U.S. Congressman Tom Tancredo, R-CO. Tancredo has authored a bill that calls for limiting annual immigration to between 30,000 and 300,000. The organization, Population-Environment Balance (PEB), issued an "Immigration Moratorium Action Plan" calling for a "non-piercable" cap of 100,000 persons annually, which would be a 95% cut from current levels.