(very) Briefly: Current immigrations policy is based on quotas. IE, only a certain number of immigrants from each country are allowed. The total number of immi

(very) Briefly: Current immigrations policy is based on quotas. IE, only a certain number of immigrants from each country are allowed. The total number of immigrants allowed each year is 700,000. Not every immigrants counts towards this, though. The biggest exception is family members of current US citizens/greencard holders. There are other exceptions. It is broken because the US does not allow everyone who want to immigrate to do so. There isn't a perfectly fair way to decide who gets to come and who doesn't. Since there are always more people who want to come, than can actually come, the problem keeps getting worse. However, allowing everyone would also create tons of problems (eg a country could pay to send every poor person in their country to the US). Basically, this is one of those cases where all you can do is choose the least shitty solution. The system got so broken due to racism. The original immigration policy was anyone not sick was admitted. Yes, even criminals. Prior to the early 1900's, the only people (voluntarily) immigrating to america were western europeans. Even so, racism was a problem. When the Irish and the Germans (both, predominately Catholic) came over in the 1830's and 1840's, the predominately Protestant English country threw a shit-fit (eg "help wanted, but not from paddy, inquire within"). By 1870 (ie one generation) no one cared and the Irish and germans were fully part of america. As an aside, the immigration boom in turn caused an economic boom as well. In the early 1900's, another immigration boom began, this time by eastern europeans, jews, and italians. This did not sit well with the predominately western european america, especially with the irish and the germans (yes, they really forgot about the shit they went through in just a couple generations). So a law was passed limiting immigration to 3% of the number of people from that country who were already living in the United States in 1890, [1]. By the way, 1890 just happened to be before the new wave of immigration started. This had the practical effect of allowing just about anyone from western europe who wanted to emmigrate to immigrate, while denying just about everyone else. This stayed in effect until 1965, when a new law was passed, which "replacing [the old law] with a preference system that focused on immigrants' skills and family relationships with citizens or U.S. residents. Numerical restrictions on visas were set at 170,000 per year, with a per-country-of-origin quota, not including immediate relatives of U.S. citizens, nor "special immigrants" (including those born in "independent" nations in the Western Hemisphere, former citizens, ministers, and employees of the U.S. government abroad)," [2]. Basically, the law became slightly less racist. By 1990, the number of immigrants allowed was 700,000. Here's some more links related to immigration law in the US: http://www.umass.edu/complit/aclanet/USMigrat.html http://www.umass.edu/complit/aclanet/USMigrat.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Act_of_1990 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Act_of_1990 [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Act_of_1924 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Act_of_1924, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Quota_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Quota_Act [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Act_of_1965 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Act_of_1965