Immigration and Nationality Act INA

The Immigration and Nationality Act, known as the McCarran-Walter Act, became law on June 27, 1952, when Congress overrode President Truman's veto. It gathered scattered immigration and citizenship laws into one code, now Title 8 of the U.S. Code. It kept the national origins quotas of 1924, which favored immigrants from northern and western Europe, though it ended the outright bar on Asian immigration and naturalization.

The Immigration and Nationality Act Amendments of 1965, known as Hart-Celler, signed October 3, 1965, abolished the national origins quotas and built today's system around family ties and job skills, which shifted immigration toward Latin America and Asia. Major later changes include the 1986 law that legalized about 2.7 million unauthorized immigrants and penalized employers, the Immigration Act of 1990, which set current green card limits and created the diversity lottery and temporary protected status, and a 1996 law that expanded deportation and created expedited removal.

The law gives the executive branch wide discretion, including the President's power under section 212(f) to suspend the entry of any class of foreigners found detrimental to U.S. interests, which the Supreme Court upheld broadly in Trump v. Hawaii in 2018. Congress has not passed a major overhaul since 1996, despite bipartisan attempts in 2006, 2007, and 2013, so much immigration policy is now made by executive action and court rulings. Debates center on legal immigration levels, border enforcement, and the status of the millions of people living in the country without legal status.