The making of American domestic policy 245their welfare programmes. The result was that state governments regained
a much higher degree of control over their actions than at any time since the
1930s. The trend towards giving states greater flexibility continued under
the presidency of George W. Bush with the passage in 2006 of the Deficit Re-
duction Act which gave the states the power to scale back Medicaid benefits.
The Act also increased charges to patients and required the states to check
the citizenship of recipients before providing medical care.
Immigration
Immigration is a delicate political issue in many countries, but the United
States is in a unique situation; it is a country of immigrants, so it is in some
ways bound to be more sympathetic to potential migrants than many other
countries, but at the same time its wealth has made it a goal for so many mil-
lions who want to enjoy its lifestyle that severe tensions are almost certain to
come to the surface. There was a vital need for immigrants throughout the
nineteenth century, in order to people the western lands that were wrested
from the native American tribes, bought from the French or ceded by Spain
and Mexico, and then to fill the factories that were multiplying in the cities
of the North and East. In the twentieth century there was an influx of people
from all over the world, nearly 47 million legally admitted immigrants, plus
many further millions who entered illegally. Legal and illegal immigration
continues in the twenty-first century with over 1 million legal immigrants
entering in each of the years 2001 and 2002.
During most of the nineteenth century entry into the United States was
virtually unrestricted. Specific restrictions were imposed; for example the
Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 forbad the entry of further Chinese immi-
grants. The flow of Chinese had begun with the California Gold Rush and
continued with those who worked on the Trans-Continental Railroad, which
was completed in 1869. The Chinese Exclusion Act was not repealed until
- Health tests for immigrants were implemented in the 1880s with
the opening of Ellis Island as an immigrant control centre. Concern for
the impact of immigration on the employment of American workers led to
the passage of legislation, the National Origins Act of 1924, which severely
restricted immigration by setting national quotas for immigrants. These
quotas favoured northern Europeans over those from southern and eastern
Europe and virtually excluded Asians. The next important piece of legisla-
tion was the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (the McCarran–Wal-
ter Act), passed over the veto of President Truman, which retained quotas
and also set preferences both for ethnic groups and for those with particular
skills and qualifications. Senator Pat McCarran, a Nevada Democrat, one of
the authors of the legislation, was chairman of the Senate Internal Security
subcommittee that took upon itself the task of rooting out ‘subversives’ in
government, and the 1952 Act gave wide powers to the Attorney General
to deport subversives. National quotas were ended in 1965, but the McCar-