Resource: Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Huddled Masses" - Just as Long as They Fit the Heteronormative Ideal: U.S. Immigration Law's Exclusionary & Inequitable Treatment of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered, and Queer Migrants

Despite the inclusionary call for the tired, the poor, and the "huddled masses yearning to breathe free" from other nations, U.S. immigration law is, necessarily, founded in policies of exclusion and preclusion. Indeed, at its core, U.S. immigration law aims to include some and exclude others, effectively shaping and molding a preferred populace. In other words, U.S. immigration laws have historically acted to either embrace desired persons or reject those deemed "undesirable." From the earliest onset of governmental regulation, immigration laws have carried out this objective by establishing immigration barriers for a myriad of "undesirables." Historically, such barriers were often constructed upon racial and ethnic lines, with the intent of constraining which races or ethnicities "could be distinction between "legal" immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers, or undocumented immigrants.