History of immigration to the United States

Video by Edison Studios showing immigrants disembarking from the steam ferryboat William Myers onto Ellis Island on July 9, 1903.

fuck my ass.

fuck my asssss!

Immigration 1790 to 1849

In the early years of the U.S., immigration was only about 6000 people a year on average, including French refugees from the slave revolt in Haiti. The French Revolution, starting in 1789, and the Napoleonic Wars from 1792 to 1814 severely limited immigration from Europe. The War of 1812 (1812-1814) with Britain again prevented any significant immigration. By 1808, Congress had banned the importation of slaves, slowing human traffic to a trickle. After 1820, immigration gradually increased. For the first time, federal records, including ship passenger lists, were kept for immigration. Total immigration for one year in 1820 was 8,385, gradually building to 23,322 by 1830 with 143,000 total immigrating during the intervening decade. From 1831 to 1840, immigration increased greatly, to 599,000 total, as 207,000 Irish —even before the Irish Potato Famine (1845-1849)— started to emigrate in large numbers as Britain eased travel restrictions. 152,000 Germans, 76,000 British, and 46,000 French formed the next largest immigrant groups in that decade. From 1841 to 1850, immigration exploded to 1,713,000 total immigrants as at least 781,000 Irish, with the famine of 1845-1849 driving them, fled their homeland to escape poverty and death. The British, attempting to divert some of this traffic to help settle Canada, offered bargain fares of 15 shillings, instead of the normal 5 pounds (100 shillings) for transit to Canada. Thousands of poor Irish took advantage of this offer, and headed to Canada on what came to be called the "coffin ships" because of their high death rates. Once in Canada, many Irish walked across the border or caught an intercoastal freighter to the nearest major city in the United States - usually Boston or New York. Bad potato crops and failed revolutions struck the heart of Europe in 1848, contributing to the decade's total of 435,000 Germans, 267,000 British and 77,000 French immigrants. Bad times in Europe drove people out; land, relatives, freedom, opportunity and jobs in America lured them in.

Population and Foreign Born 1790 to 1849 Census Population, Immigrants per Decade
Census	Population	Immigrants1	Foreign Born	%
1790	3,918,000	60,000
1800	5,236,000	60,000
1810	7,036,000	60,000
1820	10,086,000	60,000
1830	12,785,000	143,000	200,000 2	1.6%
1840	17,018,000	599,000	800,000 2	4.7%
1850	23,054,000	1,713,000	2,244,000	9.7%

Immigration records provide data on immigration since 1830. The census of 1850 was the first census in which place of birth was asked. The foreign-born population in the U.S. likely reached its minimum around 1815, at approximately 100,000 or 1.4% of the population. By 1815, most of the immigrants who arrived before the American Revolution had died, and there had been almost no new immigration.

1. The total number immigrating in each decade from 1790 to 1820 are estimates.
2. The number foreign born in 1830 and 1840 decades are extrapolations.

Nearly all population growth up to 1830 was by internal increase; about 98.5% of the population was native-born. By 1850, this had shifted to about 90% native-born. The first significant Catholic immigration started in the mid 1840s, shifting the population from about 95% Protestant down to about 90% by 1850.

In 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, concluding the Mexican War, extended U.S. citizenship to approximately 60,000 Mexican residents of the New Mexico Territory and 4,000 living in California. An additional approximate 2,500 U.S. and foreign born California residents also become U.S. citizens.

In 1849, the California Gold Rush spurred significant immigration from Mexico, South America, China, Australia, and Europe. The Gold Rush also caused a mass migration within the U.S., resulting in California's admittance to the union on September 9, 1850 with a population of about 90,000.

Mulberry Street, along which Manhattan's Little Italy is centered. Lower East Side, circa 1900.

Immigration 1850 to 1930

Demography

Catholicism became a leading denomination numerically during this time period, leading to a rise in anti-Catholic sentiment. St. John Cantius, one of Chicago's "Polish Cathedrals" was one of the churches these new immigrants founded.

Between 1850 and 1930, about 5 million Germans emigrated to the United States with a peak in the years between 1881 and 1885, when a million Germans left Germany and settled mostly in the Midwest. Between 1820 and 1930, 3.5 million British and 4.5 million Irish entered America. Before the 1840s most Irish immigrants were Irish or Scots-Irish Presbyterians. After 1840, Catholics arrived in large numbers, in part because of the famines of the 1840s. Mortality rates of 30% aboard the coffin ships were common.

Irish and German Catholic immigration was opposed in the 1850s by the Nativist/Know Nothing movement, originating in New York in 1843 as the American Republican Party. It was empowered by popular fears that the country was being overwhelmed by Catholic immigrants, who were often regarded as hostile to American values and controlled by the Pope in Rome. Active mainly from 1854–56, it strived to curb immigration and naturalization, though its efforts met with little success. There were few prominent leaders, and the largely middle-class and Protestant membership fragmented over the issue of slavery, most often joining the Republican Party by the time of the 1860 presidential election.

European immigrants joined the Union Army in large numbers, including 177,000 born in Germany and 144,000 born in Ireland. Many Germans could see the parallel between slavery and serfdom in the old fatherland.

Between 1840 and 1930, about 900,000 French Canadians left Quebec to immigrate to the United States and settle, mainly in New England. Considering that the population of Quebec was only 892,061 in 1851, this was a massive exodus. 13.6 million Americans claimed to have French ancestry in the 1980 census. A large proportion of them have ancestors who emigrated from French Canada, since immigration from France was low throughout the history of the United States.

The 1910s marked the high point of Italian immigration to the United States. Over two million Italians immigrated in those years, with a total of 5.3 million between 1820 and 1980. About a third returned to Italy, after working an average of five years in the U.S.

About 1.5 million Swedes and Norwegians immigrated to the United States within this period, due to opportunity in America and poverty and religious oppression in united Sweden-Norway. This accounted for around 20% of the total population of the kingdom at that time. They settled mainly in the Midwest, especially Minnesota and the Dakotas. Danes had comparably low immigration rates due to a better economy; after 1900 many Danish immigrants were Mormon converts who moved to Utah.

In this Rosh Hashana greeting card from the early 1900s, Russian Jews, packs in hand, gaze at the American relatives beckoning them to the United States. Over two million Jews fled the pogroms of the Russian Empire to the safety of the U.S. from 1881-1924.

Over two million Eastern Europeans, mainly Catholics and Jews, immigrated between 1880 and 1924. People of Polish ancestry are the largest Eastern European ancestry group in the United States. Immigration of Eastern Orthodox ethnic groups was much lower.

Lebanese and Syrian immigrants started to settle in large numbers in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The vast majority of the immigrants from Lebanon and Syria were Christians, but smaller numbers of Jews, Muslims and Druze also settled. Many lived in New York City and Boston. In the 1920s and 1930s, a large number of these immigrants set out west, with Detroit getting a large number of Middle Eastern immigrants, as well as many Midwestern areas where the Arabs worked as farmers.

In 1882 Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act. The Dillingham Commission was instituted by the United States Congress in 1907 to investigate the effects of immigration on the country. The Commission's analysis of American immigration during the previous three decades led it to conclude that the major source of immigration had shifted from northern and western Europeans to southern and eastern Europeans. It was, however, apt to generalizations about regional groups that were subjective and failed to differentiate between distinct cultural attributes.

From 1880 to 1924, around two million Jews moved to the United States, mostly seeking better opportunity in America and fleeing the pogroms of the Russian Empire. After 1933 Jews who tried to flee Nazi Germany were often denied access to the United States, highlighted by the event of the S.S. St. Louis.

New Immigration

New immigration was a term from the late 1880s that came from the influx of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe (areas that previously didn't have large numbers of immigrants) into the United States. Some Americans feared the new arrivals. This raised the issue of whether the U.S. was still a "melting pot," or if it had just become a "dumping ground," and many Americans subsequently became unhappy with this development.

Americans’ preference of old immigration rather than new immigration reflected a sudden rise in conservatism. Immigration, began, with large numbers of people arriving from eastern and southern Europe as well as Asia, Russia, and Japan. They were predominantly Jewish and Catholic, which sparked tensions.

A map detailing the concentrations of foreign-born Europeans in the United states in 1910

The unfortunate circumstances that the new immigrants arrived in made their image even worse. They came to the new urban America, where disease, overcrowding and crime festered. As a result, relations became openly hostile, with many Americans becoming anti-immigrant, fearing the customs, religion, and poverty of the new immigrants, considering them less desirable than old immigrants. In reality, this perceived difference did not exist; the new immigrants, although seeming different, brought the same sort of values as old ones did. Statistically, they did not commit any more crime or contribute to any more of the misfortunes as any previous immigrant generation.

By the 1920s, the United States had relatively large populations of many European immigrants spread out over 150 years who had joined the original British descendants majority in America. The foreign born population in the U.S. has never exceeded 15% since before 1675 and has never been a land of immigrant majorities since then. Americans of European ancestry have always been and remain in the majority.

Congress passed the Emergency Quota Act in 1921, followed by the Immigration Act of 1924, which was aimed at further restricting the Southern and Eastern Europeans who had begun to enter the country in large numbers beginning in the 1890s. Most of the European refugees (principally Jews) fleeing the Nazis and World War II were barred from coming to the United States.

In 1924, quotas were set for European immigrants so that no more than 2% of the 1890 immigrant stocks were allowed into America. In addition, Congress passed a literacy act in 1917 to curb the influx of low-skilled immigrants from entering the country.

Immigration restrictions laws passed in the 1920s tried to achieve four goals: reduce drastically the number of unskilled immigrants; favor uniting of families by giving preferences to relatives; keeping the ethnic distribution stable by allocating quotas to various ethnic groups; with no quotas initially set for Mexico and Latin America because of the ongoing Mexican Revolution. In 1900, when the U.S. population was 76 million, there were about 500,000 Hispanics.

The Mexican Revolution of 1911-1929 killed an estimated one million Mexicans [1] and drove at least a million refugees temporarily into the U.S. Many returned in the 1920s or 1930s. The recorded immigration was 219,000 from 1910-1920 and 459,000 from 1920 to 1930. Because of the porous border and the poor or non-existent records from this time period, the real numbers are undoubtedly higher. This recorded number of Mexican immigrants drops to only 23,000 from the decade of 1930 to 1940. Indeed 100,000s returned during the Great Depression either voluntarily or with some U.S. persuasion.

Issue of "Whiteness"

See also: White ethnic

The issue of “whiteness” arose after 1790 when the U.S. congress began to restrict naturalization to “white persons.” While the requirements for naturalization changed over time, they still existed in one form or another until 1952. Between 1790 and 1952 there were a reported 52 cases that were brought before various courts arguing whether one was “white.” These cases not only forced the courts to define what a “white persons” was, but also explain why someone was white.

The courts offered many different explanations as to who was “white”. Over time two methods developed to help determine a persons “whiteness”; common knowledge and scientific evidence. Common knowledge was described as popular, widely held conceptions of race and racial divisions. Scientific evidence, on the other hand, delt with the naturalistic studies of humankind. These rationales both arose out of the court case In re Ah Yup decided in 1878 by the federal district of California.

By 1909 changes in immigration demographics and scientific definitions created a schism between common and scientific knowledge. The court opted for common knowledge because “scientific manipulation” it believed had ignored racial differences by including under Caucasian “far more [people] than the unscientific mind suspects” even some persons the Court described as ranging “in color … from brown to black.” This shift from scientific knowledge to common knowledge demonstrated that race depended on social demarcations.

Immigration 1930 to 2000

Immigration patterns of the 1930s were dominated by the Great Depression, which hit the U.S. hard and lasted over ten years there. More people left the U.S. than arrived in some years in the 1930s. In the last prosperous year (1929), there were 279,678 immigrants recorded, but in the depression year 1933 only 23,068 came to the U.S.

The National Origins Formula was established in 1927. Total annual immigration was capped at 150,000.

Tydings-McDuffie Act

In 1934, the Tydings-McDuffie Act, which provided for independence of the Philippines on July 4, 1946, stripped Filipinos of their status as U.S. nationals. Until 1965, national origin quotas in the immigration law strictly limited immigration from the Philippines. In 1965, after revision of the immigration law, significant Filipino immigration began, totaling 1,728,000 by 2004.

Jewish refugees

In 1938, the immigration that never happened is one of the great tragedies of the 20th century as shown in the Evian Conference of 1938. The immigration of the oppressed from Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler's policies was limited to only a small fraction of those who wanted to leave Germany. Due in part to anti-Semitism, isolationism, the Depression and xenophobia, the immigration policy of the Roosevelt Administration made it very difficult for refugees to obtain entry visas.

See also:Kristallnacht (November 9, 1938), The Holocaust, Bermuda Conference, British Mandate of Palestine, White Paper of 1939, SS St. Louis.

Postwar immigration

In 1945, the War Brides Act allowed foreign-born wives of U.S. citizens who had served in the U.S. armed forces to immigrate to the United States. In 1946, The War Brides Act was extended to include fiancés of American soldiers who were also allowed to immigrate to the United States. In 1946, the Luce-Cellar Act extended the right to become naturalized citizens to newly freed Filipinos and Asian Indians. The immigration quota was set at 100 people a year.

At the end of World War II, "regular" immigration almost immediately increased under the official national origins quota system as refugees from war torn Europe started immigrating to the U.S. After the war, there were jobs for nearly everyone who wanted one, including immigrants, while most women employed during the war went back into the home. From 1941 to 1950, 1,035,000 people immigrated to the U.S., including 226,000 from Germany, 139,000 from the UK, 171,000 from Canada, 60,000 from Mexico and 57,000 from Italy.

The Displaced Persons (DP) Act of 1948 finally allowed displaced people of World War II to start immigrating [2]. Some 200,000 Europeans and 17,000 orphans displaced by World War II were initially allowed to immigrate to the United States outside of immigration quotas. President Harry S. Truman signed the first DP act on June 25, 1948, allowing entry for 200,000 DPs, and then followed by the more accommodating second DP act on 16 June, 1950, allowing entry for another 200,000. This quota, included acceptance of 55,000 Volksdeutschen, required sponsorship of all immigrants. The American program was the most notoriously bureaucratic of all the DP programs and much of the humanitarian effort was undertaken by charitable organizations, such as the Lutheran World Federation and other ethnic groups. Along with an additional quota of 200,000 granted in 1953 and more in succeeding years, a total of nearly 600,000 refugees were allowed into the country outside the quota system, second only to Israel’s 650,000.

1950s

In 1950, after the start of the Korean War, the Internal Security Act barred admission to any foreigner who was Communist, who might engage in activities "which would be prejudicial to the public interest, or would endanger the welfare or safety of the United States."

In 1950, the invasion of South Korea by North Korea started the Korean War and left a war ravaged Korea behind. There was little U.S. immigration because of the national origin quotas in the immigration law. In 1965, after revision of the immigration law, significant Korean immigration began, totaling 848,000 by 2004.

In 1952, the McCarran Walter Immigration Act affirmed the national-origins quota system of 1924 and limited total annual immigration to one-sixth of one percent of the population of the continental United States in 1920, or 175,455. The act exempted spouses and children of U.S. citizens and people born in the Western Hemisphere from the quota. In 1953, the Refugee Relief Act extended refugee status to non-Europeans.

In 1954, Operation Wetback forced the return of thousands of illegal immigrants to Mexico. [3]. Between 1944 and 1954, "the decade of the wetback," the number of illegal immigrants coming from Mexico increased by 6,000 percent. It is estimated that, in 1954, before Operation Wetback got under way, more than a million workers had crossed the Rio Grande illegally. Cheap labor displaced native agricultural workers, and increased violation of labor laws and discrimination encouraged criminality, disease, and illiteracy. According to a study conducted in 1950 by the President's Commission on Migratory Labor in Texas, the Rio Grande valley cotton growers were paying approximately half of the wages paid elsewhere in Texas. The United States Border Patrol aided by municipal, county, state, and federal authorities, as well as the military, began a quasi-military operation of search and seizure of all illegal immigrants. Fanning out from the lower Rio Grande valley, Operation Wetback moved northward. Illegal immigrants were repatriated initially through Presidio because the Mexican city across the border, Ojinaga, had rail connections to the interior of Mexico by which workers could be quickly moved on to Durango. The forces used by the government were actually relatively small, perhaps no more than 700 men, but were augmented by border patrol officials who hoped to scare illegal workers into fleeing back to Mexico. Ships were a preferred mode of transport because they carried the illegal workers farther away from the border than did buses, trucks, or trains. It is difficult to estimate the number of illegal immigrants that left due to the operation—most voluntarily. The INS claimed as many as 1,300,000, though the number officially apprehended did not come anywhere near this total. The program was ultimately abandoned due to questions surrounding the ethics of its implementation. Citizens of Mexican descent complained of police stopping all "Mexican looking" people and utilizing extreme “police-state” methods including deportation of American-born children who by law were citizens.

The failed 1956 Hungarian Revolution, before being crushed by the Soviets, forged a temporary hole in the Iron Curtain that allowed a burst of refugees to escape, bringing in 245,000 new Hungarian families to the U.S. by 1960. In the decade of 1950 to 1960, the U.S. had 2,515,000 new immigrants with 477,000 arriving from Germany, 185,000 from Italy, 52,000 new arrivals from Holland, 203,000 from the UK, 46,000 from Japan, 300,000 from Mexico, and 377,000 from Canada.

After the Cuban revolution of 1959, led by Fidel Castro, refugees flowed in from Cuba. An estimated 409,000 new families had emigrated to the U.S. by 1970.

Hart-Cellar Act

The Immigration and Nationality Act Amendments of 1965 (the Hart-Cellar Act), passed by a Democratic controlled Congress, abolished the system of national-origin quotas. Over 28,000,000 have legally immigrated since 1965 under its provisions. Prior to 1965, the U.S. was taking in around 178,000 legal immigrants annually.

The Immigration and Nationality Act Amendments of 1965 removed quotas on large segments of the immigration flow and legal immigration to the U.S. surged. The number of legal immigrants rose from about 2.5 million in the 1950s to 4.5 million in the 1970s to 7.3 million in the 1980s to about 10 million in the 1990s. In 2006, legal immigrants to the United States number approximately 1,000,000 legal immigrants per year of which about 600,000 are Change of Status immigrants who already are in the U.S. Legal immigrants to the United States are at their highest level ever at over 35,000,000. Net illegal immigration also soared from about 130,000 per year in the 1970s, to 300,000+ per year in the 1980s to over 500,000 per year in the 1990s to over 700,000 per year in the 2000s. Total illegal immigration may be as high as 1,500,000 per year [in 2006] with a net of at least 700,000 more illegal immigrants arriving each year to join the 12,000,000 to 20,000,000 that are already here. (Pew Hispanic Data Estimates [4])

(See: Illegal immigration to the United States)

Because of the wide use of family preferences put into immigration law, immigration from then on was mostly "Chain migration" where recent immigrants who were already here sponsored their relatives. Instead of a "national origins system", what the U.S. now has in terms of family-based immigration is an "immigrant origins system" (not as an operation of law) where ever increasing numbers of the recent immigrants sponsor ever increasing numbers of their relatives. However, in employment-based immigration, the "national origins system" still operates. Such a system disfavors countries with large populations such as China. In addition, due to historical immigration policies and laws, most of the citizens of the US are still descended from Europe. The result was that most of legal immigrants now come from Asia and Latin America, and not Europe. Total immigration for the decade totaled 3,321,000 immigrants including about 200,000 each from Germany, Italy and the UK, 400,000 from Canada and 453,000 from Mexico.

The U.S. withdrawal from South Vietnam and the subsequent armed Communist takeover of South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia in 1975 brought a new wave of refugees, many of whom spent years in Asian camps waiting to get into the U.S. By 1990, 543,000 Vietnamese family members were settled in the U.S. and 863,000 by 2000. Significant Filipino immigration started with 501,000 family members in 1980, 913,000 in 1990 and 1,222,000 by 2000. South Korean immigration started in 1980 with 290,000 family members in 1980, 568,000 in 1990 and 701,000 in 2000. In 2000, turmoil and war in Central America brought 692,000 family members from the Dominican Republic and 765,000 from El Salvador by 2000. Cuban Americans also continued to grow, with 608,000 family members in 1980, 737,000 in 1990 and 952,000 in 2000.

1980s

In 1986, the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) was passed, creating for the first time, in theory at least, penalties for employers who hired illegal immigrants. IRCA, as proposed in Congress, was projected to give amnesty to about 1,000,000 undocumented workers. In practice, amnesty for about 3,000,000 immigrants already in the United States was granted. Most were from Mexico. Legal Mexican immigrant family numbers were 2,198,000 in 1980, 4,289,000 in 1990 (includes IRCA) and 7,841,000 in 2000. Adding in another 12,000,000 illegals of which about 80% are thought to be Mexicans would bring the Mexican family total to over 16,000,000—about 16% of the Mexican population.

21st century

Two new large immigrant groups showed up in 2000: the Chinese with 1,391,000 family members; India with 1,003,000 family members. Both groups were well represented with high levels of expertise and education.

Immigration summary 1830 to 2000

The top ten countries of birth of the foreign born population in the U.S. since 1830, according to the U.S. Census, are shown below. Blank entries mean that the country did not make it into the top ten for that census, and not that there are ‘’no’’ data from that census. The 1830 numbers are from immigration statistics as listed in the 2004 Year Book of Immigration Statistics [5]. *The 1830 numbers list un-naturalized foreign citizens in 1830 and does not include naturalized foreign born. The 1850 census is the first census that asks for place of birth. The historical census data can be found online in the Virginia Library Geostat Center [6] Population numbers are in thousands.

Country/Year	1830*	1850	1880	1900	1930	1960	1970	1980	1990	2000
Austria						305	214
Bohemia			85
Canada	2	148	717	1,180	1,310	953	812	843	745	678
China			104							1,391
Cuba							439	608	737	952
Czechoslovakia					492
Dominican Republic										692
El Salvador										765
France	9	54	107
Germany	8	584	1,967	2,663	1,609	990	833	849	712
Hungary						245
India										2,000
Ireland	54	962	1,855	1,615	745	339
Italy				484	1,790	1,257	1,009	832	581
Korea								290	568	701
Mexico	11	13			641	576	760	2,199	4,298	7,841
Netherlands	1	10
Norway		13	182	336
Pakistan										724
Philippines								501	913	1,222
Poland					1,269	748	548	418
Russia/Soviet Union				424	1,154	691	463	406
Sweden			194	582	595
Switzerland	3	13	89
United Kingdom	27	379	918	1,168	1,403	833	686	669	640
Vietnam									543	863
Total Foreign Born	108*	2,244	6,679	10,341	14,204	10,347	9,619	14,079	19,763	31,100
% Foreign Born	0.8%*	9.7%	13.3%	13.6%	11.6%	5.8%	4.7%	6.2%	7.9%	11.1%
Native Born	12,677	20,947	43,476	65,653	108,571	168,978	193,591	212,466	228,946	250,321
% Native Born	99.2%	90.3%	86.7%	86.4%	88.4%	94.2%	95.3%	94%	92.1%	88.9%
Total Population	12,785	23,191	50,155	75,994	122,775	179,325	203,210	226,545	248,709	281,421
	1830*	1850	1880	1900	1930	1960	1970	1980	1990	2000

See also

• Immigration to the United States
• History of immigration to Canada
• History of immigration to Australia