History of Immigration in America

During the last Ice Age, some 20,000 years ago, the first Native Americans crossed a narrow land bridge connecting Asia to North America, yet the Indians—named such by Christopher Columbus, who wrongly believed he had landed in India—would soon be overrun by a flood of European immigrants by the early 1600s.

Immigration from Europe

Spanish colonies dotted Florida, while the British settled in New England and Virginia. The Dutch took up residency in modern-day New York City, while the Swedes settled in Delaware, seeking religious freedom and greater economic opportunity.

Others were brought to America against their will, including hundreds of thousands of Africans plucked from their native soil. In March of 1790, Congress passed the Naturalization Act, which allowed free white persons of “good character” to apply for citizenship after two or more years of residency, which effectively garnered them with basic constitutional protections, including the right to vote, own property or testify in court.

Following the War of 1812, ending the final conflict between the United States and Britain, by 1815, immigration from Western Europe turned from a trickle to a damn burst, opening up the first major wave of immigration until the American Civil War ended a nearly 40-year uptick in immigrant populations.

Between 1820 and 1860, Irish Catholics accounted for one-third of all immigrants to the U.S., while some 5 million Germans settled mainly in midwestern cities such as Milwaukee, St. Louis and Cincinnati.

Immigrants overwhelmed most major East Coast port cities, including New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Charleston. Ethnic conflicts over a perceived scarcity of jobs brought about rising tensions in most East Coast cities, leading to the formation of one of the first nationalistic, anti-immigrant political groups in 1849, the Know-Nothing Party.

Immigration Legislation

After many states passed their own selective immigration laws, in 1875 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that American immigration policy was the sole responsibility of the federal government, which in turn passed the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, putting an end to the steady influx of Chinese workers into the U.S., who were willing to perform backbreaking labor at extremely low wages.

Following its grand opening in January 1892, Ellis Island would welcome some 12 million immigrants from its inception to 1954, despite occasional bouts of xenophobia, including the Immigration Act of 1917, which established literacy requirements from immigrants arriving from Asia, while the Immigration Act of 1924 established nationality quotas and limits on overall U.S. immigration by country.

The Act caused an uptick in illegal immigrants crossing into the U.S. via the Mexican and Canadian borders, prompting federal authorities to establish the U.S. Border Patrol in an early attempt to stem the flow.