Home > Great American Court Cases > Immigrants' Rights

Background and Overview

From the founding of the United States to the late 1990s, some 55 million immigrants have come to the country, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Furthermore, not including Native Americans, everyone in the United States is an immigrant or the descendant of immigrants. The Statue of Liberty bears the inscribed invitation "Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" as a testament to the country's commitment to immigration and the role it has played and continues to play in the development of the country. Despite its foundation on immigration, calls for tougher immigration laws and restrictions on immigrants' rights have rung out periodically throughout the country's history, especially in times of economic and social turmoil. For example, mobs used Irish Catholic immigrants as scapegoats during the depression of the 1840s and persecuted them, burning a...