In 1990 the congress passed the Immigration and Nationality Act , which instituted the Diversity Visa Lottery Program. An obvious result from U.S’s new immigration law is how it affects the U.S. society’s structure and functions. The new immigration law has a large coverage with a total length of 279 pages. Its main feature is to increase the quota of legal immigrants in the United States, with a significant increase of quota for technical immigration candidates. In this case, scientists and engineers and other professionals can enter the US easily and furthermore, help boost the country’s competitiveness, finally winning the battle in future global economy. Another feature of the new immigration law is that a significant increase in the relevant quotas to effectively accelerate small family reunion. As a result, family related immigrants, technical professionals, those amnestied, and businesses investment immigrants are all among the biggest beneficiary of this act. As for the working class, including many scholars, baby sitters, or white-collar workers who apply H1 visas in the U.S, it may look like that their quota has increased. In fact, the new act combined the third priority and sixth priority into the same category, thus reducing a decrease of the quota of labor immigration in general. Therefore the opportunity to become permanent resident or citizen for these people is becoming even smaller. The 1990 new act has taken U.S’s legislative history of immigration and its social reality into consideration, meeting national needs and highlighting the significance of time. After centuries of development, the US formed a relatively complete legal system on immigration and naturalization. The original rigid provisions were abolished; principles and structure of the new legislation are becoming more reasonable with significantly enhanced flexibility and practicality. Although the entry requirements have been stricter, due to an increase in immigration quotas, the country has come into a new peak migration period. The technical composition of immigrants is also higher than ever before. By controlling the amount of immigrants who enter the US every year, the government can have a broad view of how many people would be living in the country, also allowing it to predict the statistics in the future. Generally speaking, the reform of immigration and naturalization is more beneficial than detrimental to the U.S society. It raised debates and political reforms in a good way and helped to improve the quality of new immigrants to the United States, introducing new technology, capital and human resources to the country. As a result, U.S has retained its economic strength to face all sorts of challenges in the coming century.
|
