Bush signs Immigration Act expanding diversity visa program

President George H. W. Bush signs the Immigration Act of 1990 on November 29, 1990. The law increases immigration ceilings and creates the diversity visa program, which aims to diversify immigration from countries with historically lower admission rates. The law does not erase racial inequities in immigration policy, but it changes a system historically shaped by national-origin quotas and racial exclusion. The diversity visa program later becomes a target of racialized and nationalist political attacks. Immigration law is one of the central ways the United States has built and revised racial and national-origin boundaries.