Immigration Timeline

English (300,000), African (300,000), Scotch-Irish (100,000), German (100,000), Scottish (75,000)

African (85,000), Scotch-Irish (50,000), English (45,000), French (40,000), German (25,000), Irish (25,000)

Standing behind them are Christian employers of this land, who would rather import heathen willing to work for barely enough to sustain life than retain a brother Christian at a wage sufficient to live as becomes a Christian. We do not want Opium or the Chinese who grow it.

- Terence Powderly, Irish-American labor leader, 1892

German Empire (3,000,000), Ireland (2,800,000), Britain (2,000,000), Austro-Hungarian Empire (1,000,000), Canada (750,000), China (230,000), Africa (50,000)

They are coming in such numbers and we are unable adequately to take care of them…It simply amounts to unrestricted and indiscriminate dumping into this country of people of every character and description…If there were in existence a ship that could hold three million human beings, then three million Jews of Poland would board to escape to America.

-Congressional hearing, 1920

"Now, what do we find in all our large cities? Entire sections containing a population incapable of understanding our institutions, with no comprehension of our national ideals, and for the most part incapable of speaking the English language. Foreign language information service gives evidence that many southern Europeans resent as an unjust discrimination the quota laws and represent America as showing race hatred and unmindful of its mission to the world. The reverse is true. America’s first duty is to those already within her own shores."

- Representative Grant Hudson, 1924

Italy (4,600,000), Austro-Hungarian Empire (4,000,000), Russian Empire (3,300,000), German Empire (2,800,000), Britain (2,300,000), Canada (2,300,000), Ireland (1,700,000), Sweden (1,100,000)

Germany (940,000), Canada (900,000), Mexico (610,000), Britain (480,000), Italy (390,000), Caribbean/West Indies (310,000)

Mexico (4,300,000), The Philippines (1,400,000), Korea (760,000), Dominican Republic (750,000), India (740,000), Cuba (720,000), Vietnam (700,000), Canada (650,000)

U.S. Immigration Timeline: Putting in Context

What is a citizen?

2000s

1600s

1900s

1500s

1700s

1800s

1917 - Immigration Act

2001 - PATRIOT Act

Alien and Sedition Act - 1798

1802 - Naturalization Act

Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act - 1996

• Prohibited entry to aliens >16 years of age who could not read 30–40 words in their own language
• head tax on immigrants raised from $4 to 8$

• Raised the residency requirement to 14 years

• Reduced the residency requirement to 5 years

2002 - Homeland Security Act

Henderson v Mayor of New York - 1886

1921 - Emergency Quota Act

Naturalization Act - 1795

2010 - DREAM Act fails in Congress

1607 - First English colony

• Raised the residency requirement to 5 years
• Required 3 years’ notice of intent to seek naturalization

Chinese Exclusion Act - 1882

Immigration Reform and Control Act - 1986

• established ethnic quota system for selective admittance into the US.
• set the number of immigrants from each national origin group at 3% of the foreign-born population of that country in 1910

2012 - Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals

Naturalization Act - 1790

Page Act - 1875

1620 - Mayflower

2013 - Comprehensive Immigration Reform?

1924 - Johnson Reed Act

• First federal policy on immigration
• “all free white persons” after two years’ residence and provided that the children of citizens born outside the borders of the United States would be “considered as natural born citizens.”

• Prohibited immigration of convicts and prostitutes, specifically aimed at Chinese Immigration

1565: 1st permanent European colony in North America

1942 - Emergency Farm

Labor Program (“Braceros”)

1625 - Dutch found New Amsterdam

Civil War - 1861-65

Declaration of Independence - 1776

• Overall annual quota of 153,700,
• allotted according to a formula based on 2% of the population of each nation of origin according to the census of 1890.

1952 - McCarren-Walter Act

1965 -

Immigration & Nationality Act

“Few of their children in the country learn English ... The signs in our streets have inscriptions in both languages ... Unless the stream of their importation could be turned they will soon so outnumber us that all the advantages we have will not be able to preserve our language, and even our government will become precarious.”

-Benjamin Franklin, Founding Father, on German immigration to Pennsylvania, 1750s

"We should build a wall of brass around the country."

- John Jay, first chief justice of Supreme Court, regarding “Catholic alien invaders,” 1750s