In 1790, Congress passed the first naturalization act, which imposed a two-year residency requirement for legal immigrants.

Her British nationality is based on 'Sophia Naturalization Act' from 1705 .

The first naturalization Act (drafted by Thomas Jefferson) used the phrases "natural born" and "native born" interchangeably.

The Naturalization Act is considered one of the Alien and Sedition Acts passed contemporaneously in 1798.

On July 14, 1870 Grant signed into law the Naturalization Act of 1870 that allowed persons of African descent to become citizens of the United States.

Until 1952, the Naturalization Acts written by Congress still allowed only white persons to become naturalized as citizens (except for two years in the 1870s which the Supreme Court declared to be a mistake).

In 1922, Takao Ozawa filed for United States citizenship under the Naturalization Act of 1906 which allowed white persons and persons of African descent or African nativity to naturalize.

Congress also passed the Hmong Veterans Naturalization Act (HVNA) in May 2000 although prior to the vote to pass the act, almost 2000 Hmong veterans participated in a rally in Washington D.C.

The Aliens and Naturalization Act, 1868 was the first federal Act to be passed, and it provided that persons that had been previously naturalized in any part of the Dominion possessed the same status as anyone naturalized under that Act.

A third discrimination case challenges a provision of the Immigration and Naturalization Act that makes it more difficult for a foreign-born illegitimate child of an American parent to acquire United States citizenship if it is the father rather than the mother who is the American.

Racial limitations to American immigration originated with the Naturalization Act of 1790, which defined eligibility for citizenship as confined to "any alien, being a free white person who shall have resided within the limits . . . of the United States for a term of two years".