When did immigrants become "illegal?"

That's cutting off healthcare benefits for illegal aliens.

“They prioritized taxpayer-funded benefits for illegal aliens.”

I'd like to see something done about the illegal alien problem that would be so sensitive. But the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country. You're listening to Civics 101. I'm Necapeteche. I'm Hannah McCarthy. And today we're exploring the logistics, politics, linguistic picadios involved with a very politically charged term illegal alien.

Now hold on, hold on everyone. I have not used that expression since 2009.

Since the day I first learned, it was not the proper term to use for someone who was not authorized to reside in the United States.

Yeah, how did you first learn that? Well, I was learning my very first tour at the Tenomit Museum in New York. And I was using that term to describe a Sicilian woman, Rosario Baldizi, who came to the US through Canada in the 1920s. And the tremendous patient kind man who was training me said, Nick, hold on a second. We prefer not to use that word.

Did he give you a specific reason? He most certainly did. And that reason is kind of this whole episode. We are going to dig into our country's history with and laws around immigration. To stick around.

All of it is super, simply integrated and connected. And the time and the money I spent on it, I can't invest in other countries. For all of it, in Vax-tung. Now, let's test out Shopify.de. All right, Nick.

“So what were like the first laws in the United States that pertain to who could immigrate to this country and who could not?”

It's interesting question. I like to tell people that we had no immigration laws at the federal level in the country till 1880. This is Muzoffer Chistry. I'm Muzoffer Chistry. I'm a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute.

Muzoffer is a lawyer who specializes in immigration. He has testified in front of Congress numerous times. And several years ago, he worked as director of the immigration project for the ILGWU, the International Ladies Garmin Workers Union. Oh, wow.

You have told me a lot about them. Look for the union angel. Where you are, buddy. Like a dress or a dress or a dress.

“So just to reiterate, no federal immigration restrictions until 1880.”

That is correct. Were there state restrictions? Sort of. Like we would, New York State would impose a tax. On shipping companies that brought people from Europe to the US.

It was literally called a head tax, which means we counted the number of heads that were brought to the shore. And then charged them for bringing people in.

And the second thing I tell people that we had naturalization laws before we had immigration laws.

Naturalization, by the way, is just the process of becoming a citizen. When was the first naturalization law passed? Almost at the very beginning of our country. It was the naturalization act of 1790, which said to become a citizen of the US. You had to be in the country for two years.

And you had to be in your state for one year. And that was it. There were no other restrictions. Well, there was one. A very big one.

And that was basically reserved for free white men. Black men, Native Americans, were clearly excluded from that.

So in the 1790, statutes for the first time, the word "alien" was used.

Because it was a naturalizing alias, who were present in the United States. And then, eight years later, the United States passed the Alien in Sedition Acts, which was the first time in federal law that the word "alien" was used. All right, now we have talked about these acts a few times on Civics 101. But can you just go over them real quick?

Absolutely. The Alien and Sedition Acts were four acts passed in the John Adams administration, on naturalization, becoming a citizen. Sedition, which is, you're not allowed to say false or malicious stuff about the government.

and the Alien Enemies Acts.

“And all of these acts are expired or were repealed.”

Save for one. Save one, the Alien Enemies Act, which allows a President to detain foreigners in times of war or invasion. This act has been invoked in three wars, and one time outside of a war scenario, and it was by Donald Trump in 2025. I will invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 18-0 of 1798, 7th, think of that.

1798, that's when we had real politicians that said we're not going to play games. We have to go back to 1798. And just to be more historical about it, the word "alien" literally comes from the Crown. We inherited everything from Britain, oddly the birthright citizens should debate that we have today. Is a relic of the Crown.

During the British Empire, you either order your allegiance to the Crown or your analia. You're an alien with someone who did not own their allegiance to the King.

“And therefore everyone who was born on the territory of the King was accepted as a citizen.”

At birth. And what illegal alien, I don't think was used in our Statue to 1986. Okay, 1986. This was the immigration reform and control act that Ronald Reagan signed. Exactly.

This act, basically, made it so any unauthorized person residing in the United States prior to 1982, was suddenly authorized. 1986 is the only time in our history where we have legalized illegal aliens.

Then there was never any provision, any chapter when we did that.

Europeans have done it number of times. Spain does it every six months. But we had never done it. And we haven't done it since. That was unique. And since that legalized aliens,

therefore you had to be an illegal alien to be legalized. Because I actually wrote one of my favorite cases. I essentially cut my teeth in that act from the coming of that act in the initial stages to it becoming law. And then I was actually head of a coalition that that implemented the law. We ran that the international ladies government work as soon as one of the largest legalization programs,

legalized 3,000 members. But to be legalized under that law, you had to be illegal.

So the first time there was a law that created a designation that there are people here legally,

and there are people here illegally, was 1986. Yeah. But that same law said that you couldn't be here legally, until it was proven that you were here illegally first. Yeah. Joseph Haller would have loved it. That's so sad, guys. What are you doing?

It's the best they're in.

“Because that was the only way you could get a green car.”

That if you are here as a student or lawful status or H1B worker or law, you were not eligible to be legalized. So we found creative ways to find that someone was here in violation of the law. That's why the word illegal alien by necessity had to find its way in the statute of 1986. As a quick aside, as we are talking about this word, quote illegal,

do you remember Frank Lunts? Oh, yeah, I do from your episode on framing. He was the guy who wrote memos to the Republican Party to tell them to use certain phrases and avoid others. Like, say climate change instead of global warming or say death tax, not a state tax.

That's the guy. In 2005, he wrote a memo to Republican candidate saying,

"Always use the term illegal immigrants and do not use the term illegals,

but Lunts was largely ignored." And those people that hire illegals ought to be penalized. In 2018, a congressman in Texas Steve McCraud defended using the term illegal immigrant because he said it was a legal term. It is in state and federal laws.

Is it in state and federal laws? Well, no, no. There is no use of the term illegal alien or illegal immigrant in Texas state law. And there's nowhere in federal law that says an unauthorized immigrant living in the United States is here, quote, illegally.

being undocumented in the United States is not a crime.

“It doesn't mean that the illegal alien was not used in popular parlance.”

It was used by journalists quite a bit, especially in the beginning of the 20th century, when the country was getting very concerned about immigration for the first time. Early 1900s, so this is like peak Ellis Island era. Absolutely.

It is when Salvatore, Capita Chay came here from Termini, Sicily, when the grand and great grand and great great grand parents of a staggering amount of people listening to this very podcast came to the United States. And this leads me to one of my favorite things to talk about in the world, who came to the United States when and why,

which we're going to get to right after a quick break.

Many years ago, never mind how many, but I wasn't high school.

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We are talking about legal and illegal immigration today. And just a reminder, we have several hundred episodes on just about any Civics topic you can imagine on our website, Civics101podcast.org. All right, Nick.

And you are about to tell me about the myriad groups coming to the United States, when and why. So let me have it. Absolutely, Hannah.

“And I think it makes sense to look at it through how we determined”

who was not allowed to come into the United States, who would have been turned away.

Which was, for the first hundred years,

nobody whatsoever. Nobody. Literally nobody. Again, it was not for Chishdi. Anyone who showed up on our shores, it wasn't been today.

Literally. You became citizen after a certain real conference under the 1790 act, but you are a legal person, the moment you entered on the shore. In 1880, for the first time we said,

we will exclude some group of people. And the exclusions we put in place were not numerical. I like to tape, they were not quantitative limits. They were actually qualitative limits. Qualitative as in there are certain qualities.

Be they medical or professional or racial qualities that we keep out of this country. Yeah, and not numerical. Like we only allowed 10,000 Germans or French or whatever each year. It was if you had this quality, you were not allowed in.

And who was coming at that time? We had folks coming from everywhere, Hannah, but a few groups in particular. By first off, Irish immigration, the famine in Ireland in the 1840.

That led to a massive influx coming from there. Around the same time, Chinese people were actively recruited in huge numbers to fill the labor force, specifically in mining and to help construct a transcontinental railroad. Then from 1870 to 1900,

over 12 million immigrants came to the United States,

mostly from Germany, Ireland and England.

“When did Ellis Island open as our immigration processing center?”

That was 1892. Where did people go before that? The biggest processing center was called Castle Garden. It's on the southern tip of Battery Park in New York City. And again, until 1880, nobody was turned away.

All right, so who was on that first list of limited people? The talk in 80 is that certain kind of people we don't like. So the candidates for that were convicts. Candidates for that were people with communicable diseases. Tuberculosis, especially of that time.

People who are poppers, people who are prostitutes. And we in 1882, we added all of Chinese. In the Chinese exclusion act. All right, now that was huge. We have a whole episode on Chinese exclusion,

which I wholeheartedly encourage everyone, listen to. Absolutely agree.

So this was America's first racial restriction,

and it would not be the last.

“But then we get to the big wave the Ellis Island here.”

These gladly face the long ocean void. Then immigration gateways like Ellis Island. And examination by immigration official. If we're going to talk about Ellis Island, do you want to start with your thing?

Anything, my soap box? Yeah, let's hear it. Something I have been known from time to time at parties and social occasions is to get all my own little soap box to tell anyone who will listen.

That nobody's name got changed at Ellis Island. And to be fair, Nick, you used to think that people's names were changed. I did, Hannah. I was also a victim of Godfather Part II. Come on, son.

What is your name? Oh, no. Needle and doorings from Corollone. Corollone. Corollone.

Nobody's name was changed at Ellis Island,

That's right. And this is a lesson in the inability to break someone's framing. I've told this little tidbit to probably a thousand people before now, and I share articles on it, and I encourage people to look it up themselves if they don't believe me.

But they usually go, I don't know, kid. But there were inspections at Ellis Island, right? Checking for tuberculosis, tracoma, et cetera. Yeah, and there was a potential that you could be sent back if you would be considered a, quote, societal burden.

“And how many people were actually sent back to their country of origin?”

Very few. About 20% of immigrants who came through were detained for one reason or another,

but they were usually let in eventually of the 12 million immigrants

who came through Ellis Island less than 2% were sent back. So the debate between the end of the 19th century and 1917 was that too many people are coming. And too many wrong kind of people were coming. And the definition of wrong was clearly some Europeans.

We don't like some Europeans, one group of Europeans, because for both they were intellectually and physically inferior to another group, that we like mostly Northern and Western Europeans. The Nordic supremacy was the governing wisdom of that time. We don't like Italians.

We don't like Slaves.

“We don't like Russians, and we certainly don't like Jews.”

And we definitely don't like Chinese, and then other Asians. That was clearly stated. So the that era, this is the authorities of eugenics, were sold as signs by distinguished academics, convincing members of Congress of these people who were not at par.

Wait, this was in the 19th teens. People were promoting eugenics back then. They were, and contrary to what I had thought, the United States was at the very forefront of it. The seminal work on eugenics.

And eugenics, by the way, is the very much not real, not scientific theory that some people from some places have superior genes and others don't. But again, the seminal work is called the passing of the Great Race by Madison Grant, a New Yorker. Adolf Hitler wrote Madison Grant a letter saying,

"This book is my Bible." And quote, "We Germans must emulate what the Americans are doing." Wow. And I bring all this up because this is what inspired

our first immigration quota system.

That became our first attempt to control immigration in quantitative limits. And guess how we decided to put the quantitative limits was by racial quotas. We started putting what we called the National Origin quota system. In 1917, became finalized in 1924, is that we're going to give quantitative limits for each country,

based on the number of people of the stock of that country in the US in 1910. So, Congress takes the 1910 census. They look at it. And they decide they're already too many Italians in the United States in 1910, so they push it back.

They look at the 1900 census.

“Well, maybe this is the America I remember.”

And still too many Italians, so they push the goal post to 1890. They use the 1890 census as a guide. So it was clearly racist, openly graced by members of Congress speaking, language on the floor of the House and Senate, which you will find unprintable to that. So when we started putting limits on immigration,

they were clearly driven on racist terms. And this hand of this is what Ms. Offer tries to explain to people who say they well trotted out line. Well, my family came here this way, the legal way. So the first thing they don't understand, that is the purpose. Why didn't they come the way my grandparents came?

The right way. As we just finished saying to 1924, there was no way of coming illegally. So everyone who came had to come legally. So therefore the notion that you would even have to wait in the line. There was no line to 1924.

So we started once we started the college-contented limits.

Therefore, they will never the line.

So if you did not fit that line, then if you came outside the line, you were illegally.

1965? Yes.

“There was no significant immigration from places like Italy, Eastern Europe,”

Hungary, Turkey, China, India, etc.

From 1924 to 1965. In 1965, at the feet of the Statue of Liberty, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Heart Seller Act reversing the 1924 National Origins Act. And this measure that we will sign today will really make us prove to ourselves both as a country and as a people.

It will strengthen us and a hundred unseen ways. We entered the National Origins Co-existence. And we opened the Dumerica to the entire world. So therefore history was a promise that had been made by President Kennedy, in his campaign for President.

John F. Kennedy gave a speech to an Italian club in Boston. And he asked everybody, "Hey, you know, what's on your mind?" And they said, "These quotas are destroying our families. I can't bring my sister, I can't bring my nephew, etc. And John F. Kennedy promised if elected, he would change the quota system."

But he didn't. He didn't. He did nothing to end the National Origins Co-existence. He made three states of union addresses, did not address immigration even in one.

It felt to President Johnson to end the National Origins Co-existence. And LBJ was not really known to be a pro-immigration kind of guy. He was a confirmed Southern Democrat anti-immigrant person.

History shows that he had never met any immigrant except for a piano tuner off his wife.

It was a checkman. He had no relationship with the immigration. And so even he became president, he calls all of Kennedy's advisers into the White House. He said, "Look, I'm an accidental president." Just tell me, "What had President Kennedy promised in his cafe?"

They listed him. He said, "That because of my calls, I have to do it." And even though, even though this lifting of the National Origins system is celebrated by those who, know, respect the words of emilasius and the new Colossus, give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free.

I still got to say, the 1965 Act was not without its own problems. The authors of the 1965 Act made sure that European immigration supremacy remained intact. They wrote the law in a way that would guarantee white European immigrants to come. Because they expanded the category of brothers and sisters of US citizens to get privileged. The relatives of US citizens get high privilege.

Guess who are the US citizens at that time? They were all white Europeans. They said, "If they were the brothers, they will keep on getting just did not work out that way." The Europeans lost interest in coming to the United States.

“I mean, why would you after the Marshall Plan, especially?”

Why would you come to the US when you could live in a Italian villa?

And the third world country's got out of the colonial yoke.

And they started sending students and then professionals. And 50 years later, the face of America had changed. Muzoffer points out here that this change has stoked a lot of heated feelings in our communities and in our politics. And that those feelings about non-European immigrants were foundational, 65 years later, to the success of one president's election in particular.

They are being released by the tens of thousands into our communities with no regard for the impact on public safety or resources. He saw how a country had radically changed in his mix in 50 years. In a history of our country, 50 years is not a long period. In 1965, immigration was 90% of Europe here.

Today is 90% of Europe here. How that could not affect something in the country.

“You know, you have to be unmindful of how people think about change.”

We have talked before about how different people with different classifications from different countries

Because we still use a quota system.

“So someone immigrating from Norway or New Zealand with family in the U.S.”

will have a very different weight time than someone coming from Mexico or India in terms of the current quota system. I just read a report from the K2 Institute in 2018 where they found that someone trying to immigrate to the U.S. from India with an advanced degree has an estimated weight time of 151 years. And to be clear here, was offered is in no way saying that the recent rise in anti-immigrant sentiment is at all justified. But he is pointing out that we have not amended our immigration policies in a long, long time.

We haven't changed our immigration level since 1990. So no wonder we are having the effect of all this paralysis in Congress to deal with immigration.

And the number so growing in from 3 million to 14 million is not a small thing to happen.

And now because these we haven't changed our laws since 1990. We haven't done a legalization program since '86. We now have a large number of people who may die in authorized. We have at least probably two generations of unauthorized people. Now that's telling.

So large number of people have deep roots now who are unauthorized. Therefore when you see people being snatch from the streets, these are a lot of people who arrived yesterday. These are people who arrived many years ago with deep roots and all those none of them are criminal backgrounds.

So therefore if you have made this bargain that I'm going to deport a million people a year, where you're going to find them.

That's the difference in the narrative and reality. Is that to find them here to go on the inside of our country and people see it. See this more as an attack on Americans and more as an attack on American deeply held values like first amendment and the second amendment. Then they see as an attack on illegal immigration.

“And that's why I think Trump is losing the people on this.”

This episode is made by me in a cap of detail with you, Hannah McCarthy. Thank you. Our staff includes producer Marina Henke and executive producer Rebecca Lavoy. Special thanks here. Special thanks go out to everybody at 97 Orchard Street, specifically Pedro and Annie, Sunday crew forever.

Music in this episode from Blue Dot Sessions, Epidemic Sound and the wondrous Chris Subriskey. Civics 101 is a production of NHPR, New Hampshire Public Radio. Sometimes it feels like red and blue states are just as divergent as post World War II East and West Germany.

“So what can the US learn from German political history in order to create a more perfect union?”

Find out on the new season of the future of our former democracy, the Signal Award winning podcast from more equitable democracy and large media. Posted by me, Colin Cole and Heather Villanova. It's time to rethink democracy. So follow the future of our former democracy wherever you get your podcasts. The Shadow Sessions invites you to do the deeper work that leads to real change.

Follow the Shadow Sessions wherever you're listening now. Julia. Hold it down, girl. It's just a little bit of a mess.