Immigration Act of 1990

The Immigration Act of 1990 (Pub.L. 101–649, 104 Stat. 4978, enacted November 29, 1990) was signed into law by George H. W. Bush on November 29, 1990. It 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 '92–'94, and 675,000 per year after that. It provided family based immigration visa, created five distinct employment based visas, categorized by occupation, as well as the diversity visa program which created a lottery to admit immigrants from "low admittance" countries or countries where their citizenry was underrepresented in the U.S.