Here is a structured write-up of the U.S. Naturalization Acts and the main laws that actually governed who could become a citizen, starting in 1790.
The Constitution (Article I, Section 8, Clause 4) gives Congress power “to establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization.” The first Congress used that power in 1790.
Everything that follows is Congress amending that rule.
Naturalization Act of 1790 (March 26, 1790 — 1 Stat. 103)
First federal naturalization statute. Signed by George Washington.
Who could apply: “any alien, being a free white person” of “good character.”
That phrase excluded enslaved people, indentured servants, free Black people, Native Americans, and anyone Congress and the courts later treated as not “white” (including, in practice, most Asians).
Requirements:
- 2 years residence in the United States
- 1 year residence in the state where the petition was filed
- Proof of good character to a common-law court of record
- Oath or affirmation to support the Constitution
Children: Minor children (under 21) living in the U.S. at the time of a parent’s naturalization became citizens. Children born abroad to U.S. citizen parents were called “natural born citizens,” but citizenship did not descend if the father had never resided in the United States.
The 1790 Act was short (one paragraph) and left almost everything to local courts. It was repealed by the 1795 Act.
Naturalization Act of 1795 (January 29, 1795 — 1 Stat. 414)
Repealed 1790. Still limited to “free white persons.”
New rules:
- Residence raised from 2 years to 5 years
- Declaration of intention (“first papers”) required 3 years before the petition
- Applicant had to renounce “all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty,” by name
- “Good character” became “good moral character”
- Children born abroad to citizen parents were called “citizens,” not “natural born citizens”
The 5-year residence + 3-year declaration structure is the skeleton of the modern process.
Naturalization Act of 1798 (June 18, 1798 — 1 Stat. 566)
One of the Alien and Sedition Acts, passed under John Adams during the Quasi-War with France.
Changes:
- Residence raised to 14 years
- Declaration of intention raised to 5 years
- Court clerks had to send copies of declarations and naturalizations to the Secretary of State
- No naturalization while the applicant’s country was at war with the United States
The law was widely understood as a Federalist attempt to slow the naturalization of Irish and French immigrants who tended to vote Republican. It was almost never enforced as written and was repealed in 1802.
Naturalization Act of 1802 (April 14, 1802 — 2 Stat. 153)
Jefferson administration. Repealed 1798 and restored the 1795 rules:
- 5 years U.S. residence
- 1 year in the state/territory
- Declaration of intention 3 years before petition
- Still “free white persons”
- Children of naturalized parents residing in the U.S. were citizens
- Children born abroad to U.S. citizens were citizens
- Former British soldiers from the Revolution needed a state legislature’s consent
This 1802 framework (5 years + declaration) lasted, with tweaks, for more than a century. An 1824 act shortened the gap between declaration and petition from 3 years to 2 years; the 5-year residence stayed.
Women, marriage, and derivative citizenship (1855–1922)
Act of February 10, 1855: An alien woman who married a U.S. citizen automatically became a citizen (derivative citizenship). She did not file her own papers.
Expatriation Act of 1907: An American woman who married an alien lost her U.S. citizenship. Marriage, not her own choice, controlled her nationality.
Cable Act (Married Women’s Independent Nationality Act), September 22, 1922: Ended automatic loss of citizenship for most American women who married aliens, and ended automatic grant of citizenship to alien women who married citizens. Women generally had to naturalize on their own.
Exception that lasted into the 1930s: an American woman who married an “alien ineligible to citizenship” (mainly Asian men, because of the racial bar) still lost her citizenship.
After the Civil War: race and the 14th Amendment
Civil Rights Act of 1866 and 14th Amendment (1868):
“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens.”
That is birthright citizenship. It did not by itself open naturalization to non-whites.
Naturalization Act of 1870 (July 14, 1870):
Extended naturalization to “aliens of African nativity and to persons of African descent.”
Congress rejected Charles Sumner’s proposal to open naturalization to all races. Asians remained ineligible. That “aliens ineligible to citizenship” category later underpinned Chinese Exclusion (1882) and related laws.
Supreme Court cases later confirmed the racial line for naturalization (not birthright):
- Ozawa v. United States (1922): a Japanese immigrant was not a “free white person”
- United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind (1923): a high-caste Indian was not “white” for naturalization purposes
United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898) held that a child born in the U.S. to Chinese parents who were permanent residents was a citizen at birth under the 14th Amendment. That is birthright, not naturalization.
Native Americans were generally not covered by the 14th Amendment’s “subject to the jurisdiction” language while they remained members of tribes. Citizenship came in pieces (treaties, allotment statutes) and then by the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, which granted citizenship to Native Americans born in the United States.
Naturalization Act of 1906 (June 29, 1906 — effective Sept. 27, 1906)
The “Basic Naturalization Act.” Aimed at fraud and the chaos of 5,000+ unsupervised courts.
What it did:
- Created the Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization (federal supervision)
- Standardized forms (declaration of intention, petition, certificate)
- Required ability to speak English (with limited exceptions)
- Barred anarchists, people opposed to organized government, and polygamists
- Required verification of lawful arrival
- Authorized denaturalization for fraud or illegal procurement
- Declaration of intention still generally required 2 years before petition; 5-year residence remained
From 1906 on, naturalization records become much more uniform and useful. The 1906 Act was the governing statute until the Nationality Act of 1940.
Nationality Act of 1940
Recodified nationality and naturalization. Added clearer English and civics expectations and wartime/military naturalization paths. Racial bars were loosened in stages during and after World War II (Chinese, Filipinos, Indians got naturalization rights in the 1940s). The full racial bar did not fall until 1952.
Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (McCarran–Walter Act)
The modern code. Still the backbone of Title 8 (the INA).
On naturalization, the decisive change:
Section 311: “The right of a person to become a naturalized citizen of the United States shall not be denied or abridged because of race or sex or because such person is married.”
That ended the “free white persons” / “African nativity” formula that had run from 1790 to 1952.
The 1952 Act kept:
- Lawful permanent residence as the usual prerequisite
- 5 years continuous residence (3 years if married to a U.S. citizen)
- Physical presence rules
- Good moral character
- Attachment to the Constitution
- English and civics tests (with age/long-residence and later medical exceptions)
- Oath of allegiance (renouncing foreign allegiance, supporting the Constitution, bearing arms or alternative service when required)
It also kept national-origins quotas for immigration. Those quotas were replaced by the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (Hart–Celler), which changed who could enter, not the core naturalization tests.
Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (Hart–Celler Act)
Public Law 89-236. Signed by Lyndon B. Johnson, October 3, 1965, at Liberty Island. Effective June 30, 1968, for the Eastern Hemisphere system; Western Hemisphere numerical cap followed in 1976 (and was folded into a worldwide cap in 1978).
This is the statute that replaced the national-origins quota machine McCarran–Walter had left standing. It changed who could get a visa, not the naturalization exam.
Sponsors and floor management
House: Rep. Emanuel Celler (D-NY), chair of Judiciary, the name on the House bill.
Senate: Sen. Philip A. Hart (D-MI).
Senate floor: Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA).
White House: Johnson, carrying a Kennedy-administration draft that had stalled in 1963–64.
What it struck out
The national-origins formula (1921 emergency quota → 1924 Johnson–Reed → 1952 INA Title II). That formula had assigned most slots to Northern and Western Europe by 1920-census math. Hart–Celler dumped the country-by-country ethnic allotment.
What it put in its place
A preference grid, not an open door:
- Family-sponsored preferences (the engine later called chain migration): unmarried children of citizens; spouses and children of LPRs; married sons/daughters of citizens; siblings of citizens.
- Employment preferences: members of the professions and scientists/artists of exceptional ability; skilled and unskilled workers in short supply.
- Refugees (then a small preference; later pulled into separate refugee law in 1980).
- Per-country cap (originally 20,000 for Eastern Hemisphere countries).
- Labor certification for most job-based visas (Department of Labor must find no willing, able U.S. worker).
Immediate relatives of U.S. citizens (spouses, minor children, parents of adult citizens) were put outside the numerical cap. That is why family numbers could grow without a hard annual lid on that class.
What it did not change
Naturalization stayed the 1952 rules: LPR status first, five years (three if married to a citizen), physical presence, good moral character, attachment to the Constitution, English and civics, oath. Hart–Celler is an admissions statute. Section 311 of 1952 still governs race-and-sex on the oath.
What sponsors said it would not do
Kennedy on the Senate floor, 1965: the bill would not flood the country, would not change the ethnic mix in any meaningful way, would not let in millions, would not cause American workers to lose jobs. Celler and administration witnesses said the same. Johnson’s signing remarks framed it as ending an “un-American” quota, not as a population project.
What the numbers did after
Pew’s 2015 reconstruction is the standard census-based scoreboard: from 1965 to 2015, immigrants and their descendants accounted for 55 percent of U.S. population growth. Without post-1965 immigration the 2015 country would have been about 75 percent non-Hispanic white; with it, about 62 percent white, 18 percent Hispanic, 6 percent Asian (Black share little changed by this channel). Source regions flipped from Europe to Latin America and Asia. That is a change in who could enter and sponsor, not a change in the civics test.
Later bolts on the same frame
- 1976: Western Hemisphere brought under per-country caps.
- 1980 Refugee Act: refugees taken out of the preference pie.
- 1986 IRCA: amnesty plus employer sanctions.
- 1990 IMMACT: higher overall caps, diversity lottery.
- 1996 IIRIRA: removal and unlawful-presence bars.
The 1965 Act is still the skeleton those laws hang on. McCarran–Walter wrote the modern naturalization code and kept the old quota door. Hart–Celler left the code and rebuilt the door.
What the process looks like now (INA, as amended)
Current general naturalization (INA §§ 312, 316, 337 and related regulations) still tracks the 1795/1802/1906/1952 line:
- Be a lawful permanent resident
- Meet continuous residence and physical presence (generally 5 years as an LPR, or 3 years as the spouse of a citizen)
- Reside in the state or USCIS district for 3 months before filing
- Show good moral character for the statutory period
- Show attachment to the principles of the Constitution
- Pass English (speak, read, write ordinary usage) and civics tests, unless an exception applies
- Take the Oath of Allegiance
Special paths exist for military service, certain spouses, children deriving or acquiring citizenship, and a few other categories. Denaturalization still exists for illegal procurement or concealment of a material fact.
The through-line
- 1790–1870: naturalization limited to free white persons
- 1870–1952: white persons + persons of African nativity/descent; Asians and others generally barred
- 1952–present: race and sex bars on naturalization are gone
- Residence: 2 years (1790) → 5 years (1795) → 14 years (1798) → back to 5 years (1802), where the general rule has stayed
- Declaration of intention: invented in 1795, later shortened or waived in many cases, still part of older practice
- Federal control: weak and court-driven until 1906; centralized after that
- Women: derivative/lost-by-marriage rules from 1855 and 1907, largely unwound by the Cable Act in 1922
- Birthright vs. naturalization: the 14th Amendment governs birth on U.S. soil; naturalization is the statutory path for people born abroad who were not already citizens through their parents
That is the statutory chain from the 1790 Act to the INA still in force today.
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