The Immigration Act of 1990

It was signed into law by George H. W. Bush on November 29, 1990 and was first introduced by Senator Ted Kennedy in 1989. It was a national reform of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. It increased total, overall immigration to allow 700,000 immigrants to come to the U.S. per year for the fiscal years 1992–94, and 675,000 per year after that. It provided family-based immigration visa, created five distinct employment based visas, categorized by occupation, and a diversity visa program that created a lottery to admit immigrants from "low admittance" countries or countries where their citizenry was underrepresented in the U.S.

Besides these immigrant visas there were also changes in nonimmigrant visas like the H-1B visa for highly skilled workers. There were also cutbacks in the allotment of visas available for extended relatives. Congress also created the temporary protected status (TPS visa), which the Attorney General may provide to immigrants who are temporarily unable to safely return to their home country because of ongoing armed conflict, an environmental disaster, or other extraordinary and temporary condition. It specifically benefited citizens of El Salvador.

The act also lifted the English testing process for naturalization that had been imposed in the Naturalization Act of 1906 for permanent residents who are over 55 and have been living in the United States for fifteen years as a permanent resident, and eliminated exclusion of homosexuals under the medically unsound classification of "sexual deviant" that was in the 1965 Act. George H. W. Bush is quoted in saying "I am also pleased to note that this Act facilitates immigration not just in numerical terms, but also in terms of basic entry rights of those beyond our borders."

Family reunification

Family reunification remained a priority as it had been in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. This act expanded the number of family-based immigration visas allotted per year to 480,000 but to do this it also made the definition of family more exclusive by limiting it to immediate family members.

Diversity Immigrant Visas

Diversity Immigrant Visa was a new, important facet of the amendment that had never been instituted in national immigration policy before. "Starting in 1991, every year the Attorney General, decides from information gathered over the most recent five year period the regions or country that are considered High Admission or Low Admission States" from this analysis citizens of certain nations are deemed eligible or ineligible to apply for a diversity visa. "A High Admission region or country is one that has had 50,000 immigrants or more acquire a permanent residency visa. The High Admission regions are not given visas under this act in order to promote diversity." Starting in fiscal year 1995, the cap of 55,000 visas were allotted as "diversity" visas. Today it is more around 50,000. Changes have been made to the diversity visa requirements almost every other year (if not more often) since 1990 to assess which countries qualify (see Diversity Immigrant Visa). In 1990 the qualifying countries were: Albania, Algeria, Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France (including Guadeloupe and New Caledonia), Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Monaco, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, San Marino, Sweden, Switzerland and Tunisia and the United Kingdom (including Bermuda and Gibraltar). There are a number of qualifications to obtaining this visa besides being from one of the qualifying zones.

Applicants must:

Have a high school diploma
Have two years' work experience and two years' job training

In addition, the SOS keeps track of age, occupation, education, etc. of all immigrants obtaining this visa. The selection of qualifying applicants is random. Once you are approved and granted a visa, family unification does extend to these visa holders. Children and spouses are eligible for permanent residency. This policy, notably, positively affected displaced Tibetans from 1991–1994 who were given 1,000 visas per year.