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THE COLONIAL PERIOD
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Slave Trade
Landowners experienced constant shortage of labor, despite the use of indentured servants who would gain their liberty after 5 to 7 years. The cheap land meant white immigrants, no longer tied down, would then become landowners themselves. There was therefore a constant need for labor which manifested itself in the form of slavery. The Transatlantic Slave Trade brought many West Africans to the colonies, and the well-established triangular trade route assured a constant flow of slaves from Af -
The Naturalization Act
Little over a year after the inauguration of President Washington, 1790 saw the first attempt at setting up control over immigration. Naturalization was limited to immigrants who were free white persons of good moral character who had lived in the United States for two years. This meant that indigenous peoples, free African Americans, indentured servants and slaves were excluded from citizenship. -
MASS IMMIGRATION
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The Great Famine
Major repeated crop failures in Germany led to an important influx of immigrants, but it was the Irish Potato Famine from 1845 to 1850 that led many Irish immigrants to rush to the United States. Their main source of food, potato, was destroyed by a disease known as potato blight , resulting in starvation across Ireland. Many of the country's citizens were forced to emigrate to survive. -
Mexican-Americans
Following the victory of the United States in the Mexican-American War and the forced cession of some of Mexico's territory, 80,000 Mexicans who resided in Texas, California and the Southwest became American citizens. -
ANTI-IMMIGRATION MOVEMENT
In the mid 1850s, the first anti-immigration movement was born. The Know Nothing movement, where membership was restricted to Protestant men, wanted to "purify" society and politics by increasing restrictions on immigrants. It used the fear of the country being overrun by German and Irish Catholics controlled by the Pope and the loss of Republican values, to gain victories in Congress. The movement did not however have any particular impact on immigration policy. -
THIRD WAVE OF IMMIGRATION
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Chinese still excluded
From 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act prohibited Chinese immigration to the USA. The act was initially intended to last for 10 years, but was renewed in 1892 and made permanent in 1902. It was finally repealed in 1943. -
Ellis Island
In 1892, to mark the Federal government's control of immigration affairs (some States had previously taken matters into their own hands), Ellis Island in Upper New York Bay became the main entry point to the US for emigrants who had left their home countries. Over the the next 62 years, until its closure in 1954, Ellis Island processed some 12 million immigrants (according to the US Bureau of Immigration). Ellis Island has been turned into a wonderful museum of immigration. -
Politics and Immigration IV
The Red Scare. Following the Bolshevik Russian Revolution of 1917, a national anti-radical fear took hold. When labor strikes broke out, these were portrayed in the press as being the work of left-wing foreign immigrants seeking revolution to change the American "way of life". Bombings seeking to destabilise the government did actually occur though, including the deadly bombing of Wall Street in 1920. The government's response was tough and many immigrants were deported as a result. However, de -
The Great Depression
Following the crash of the US stock market on October 29, 1929, a period known as the Great Depression hit the US and the rest of the world. For a decade, a worldwide economic recession caused massive poverty, hunger, unemployment and political unrest. It was the longest recession of the 20th century. -
FOURTH WAVE OF IMMIGRATION
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Inspired by the Civil Rights Movement
Part of President Lyndon Johnson 's Great Society , the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 broke away from the past. It was no longer a quota system based on race and nationality but a visa system. Visas were set at 170,000 per year, per-country. Were excluded from this immigrants who had American relatives and those with occupations deemed critical by the U.S. Department of Labor.
