There was a time when north south migratory flows in the western hemisphere were limited to Mexico and the Caribbean. That changed in the 1980 s, when Central America s civil wars sent hundreds of thousands of migrants thru Mexico to the US, and then in the 1990 s, when people fleeing violence in Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, and Ecuador also began searching for opportunity.

The first American immigration agreement with another country was signed in 1907 the so called Gentleman s Agreement with Japan, while the US and Mexico negotiated and administered the Bracero Program for more than twenty years, from 1942 thru 1964. And, of course, the US has had a standing immigration agreement since 1965 with a country most Americans would not imagine Fidel Castro s Cuba.