Haruo wrote: One of the items celebrated was the Chinese Exclusion Act.
Signed by President Chester A. Arthur in 1882, it was the first time Congress ever passed a law banning the entry of a particular ethnic group. It had its opposition, especially from the railroad, and other business interests that exploited the cheap labor, such as mining. It was never actually ruled unconstitutional, though it was repealed but not until 1943. Most of the "immigration reform" that's come about historically in the United States has been a restriction aimed at either a non-white ethnic group, or a religion. We welcomed white, Protestant Western and Northern Europeans while restricting the Catholic Spaniards and Italians, and Orthodox Greek. There was no category for Jewish immigrants, because that was considered a religion, not a nationality so the few that got in had to apply and wait in long, long lines because of restrictive policies toward Eastern Europeans. African and Asian countries were always extremely limited.
The Hart-Celler Act of 1965 was a genuine "reform" of immigration in that it swept away pernicious and restrictive laws against racial, ethnic and religious minorities and moved US immigration policy toward something more consistent with its heritage. It had its own economic benefits in that it opened the door to immigration from countries like India, Pakistan, Japan and Korea that boosted the available numbers of people in high tech and medicine, and alleviated shortages of labor in those fields. There had been talk in Congress of doing something like that as far back as the Truman administration, especially after some of the embarrassing bungles of the state department during World War 2, but they didn't get an actual reform plan until the Kennedy-Johnson years.
I'm not in favor of the kind of "reform" that is coming from the right, in that it seems to be returning to the days of restricting people based on their race. I think we can have a policy that is balanced, fair, admits people who will benefit from being here and contribute, and doesn't discriminate racially or religiously. Of course, it needs to be enforced and in order to do that, you can't cut the taxes of the wealthy and have the money do to it, as was proven between 2000 and 2008. Refugees need to be an exception, separate from policy, considered by case and circumstance. And of course if part of enforcing the law is going after business that exploits illegals because of the cheap labor, you won't need to build a border wall. If they can't work here, they won't come.