In November 1990 Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1990. This act revised the visa system to increase the immigration of Europeans and specially trained workers. The law allowed the number of legal immigrants to rise from 500,000 to 700,000 a year. By 1994 the number was set at 675,000 a year, not including refugees. At least 80,000 of these openings were reserved for aliens with extraordinary abilities. These immigrants might include artists or professional athletes. The act also increased the number of visas for people with relatives already in the United States and made it harder to exclude immigrants on the basis of sexual orientation or political beliefs. It also created a category of diversity visas for people from countries outside the Western Hemisphere—countries that were adversely affected by the 1965 immigration law. Finally, it transferred the power to grant immigrants U.S. citizenship from the courts to the U.S. attorney general.
