Immigration—Almost Four Hundred Years of U.S. History

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Chapter 1
Immigration—Almost Four Hundred Years of U.S. History

From its beginning the United States has been a land of immigrants. People have come from all nations seeking free choice of worship, escape from cruel governments, and relief from war, famine, or poverty. All came with dreams of a better life for themselves and their families. The United States has accommodated these people of diverse backgrounds, customs, and beliefs, although not without considerable friction along the way.

On the eastern shore of the peninsula that is now Florida, Spanish conquistadors established a settlement in 1565. The city of St. Augustine survived to become the oldest continuously occupied settlement of European origin in North America. However, the series of northern colonies gained far more attention in history. In Immigration: From the Founding of Virginia to the Closing of Ellis Island (2002), Dennis Wepman chronicles the immigrants who built the United States. Not long after English settlers established the first permanent colony on the James River in 1607, the French developed a settlement on the St. Lawrence River in what is now Canada. Dutch explorers soon built a fur trading post along the Hudson River. Swedes settled on the Delaware River. German Quakers and Mennonites joined William Penn's experimental Pennsylvania colony. Jews from Brazil, Protestant Huguenots from France, and Puritans and Catholics from England all came to escape persecution of their religious beliefs and practices.

During the colonial period many immigrants came as indentured servants—meaning that they were required to work for four to seven years to earn back the cost of their passage. To the great aggravation of the colonists, some were convicts who accepted being shipped across the ocean as an alternative to imprisonment or death. Wepman estimates that as many as fifty thousand British felons were sent to the colonies. The first Africans arrived at Jamestown in 1619 as indentured servants, but other Africans were soon brought in chains to be slaves.

A continual flow of immigrants provided settlers to develop communities along the Atlantic coast, pioneers to push the United States westward, builders for the Erie Canal and the transcontinental railways, pickers for cotton in the South and vegetables in the Southwest, laborers for U.S. industrialization, and intellectuals in all fields. Together, these immigrants have built, in the opinion of many people, the most diverse nation in the world.

The 1790 census in the United States showed a population of 3.2 million white people and 757,000 slaves, according to Campbell Gibson and Kay Jung, in Historical Census Statistics on Population Totals by Race, 1790 to 1990, and by Hispanic Origin, 1790 to 1990, for the United States, Regions, Division, and States (September 2002, http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0056.html). All were immigrants or descendants of earlier seventeenth- and eighteenth-century arrivals. The population was predominantly English but also included people of German, Irish, Scottish, Dutch, French, and Spanish descent. Native Americans were not counted.

ATTITUDES TOWARD IMMIGRANTS

Even though immigration was the way of life in the country's first century, negative attitudes began to appear among the already settled English population. Officially, however, with the major exception of the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, the United States encouraged immigration. The Articles of Confederation (drafted in 1777) made citizens of each state citizens of every other state. The U.S. Constitution (written in 1787) made only one direct reference to immigration. Article I, Section 9, Clause I provided that the "Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person." Article I also gave Congress power to establish "a uniform rule of naturalization" to grant U.S. citizenship.

Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798

Early federal legislation established basic criteria for naturalization: five years' residence in the United States, good moral character, and loyalty to the U.S. Constitution. These requirements were based on state naturalization laws. In 1798 the Federalist-controlled Congress proposed four laws, collectively called the Alien and Sedition Acts:

The Naturalization Act lengthened the residence requirement for naturalization from five to fourteen years.
The Alien Act authorized the president to arrest and/or expel allegedly dangerous aliens.
The Alien Enemies Act allowed the imprisonment or deportation of aliens who were subjects of an enemy nation during wartime.
The Sedition Act authorized fines and imprisonment for acts of treason including "any false, scandalous and malicious writing."

The Sedition Act was used by the Federalist administration to arrest and silence a number of newspaper editors who publicly opposed the new laws. The strong public outcry against the Alien and Sedition Acts was partly responsible for the election of Thomas Jefferson, the Democratic-Republican presidential candidate, in the election of 1800. Jefferson pardoned the individuals convicted under the Sedition Act. The Naturalization Act was repealed by Congress, and the other three laws were allowed to lapse.

FIRST CENTURY OF IMMIGRATION

In the early 1800s U.S. territory more than doubled in size with the addition of 828,000 square miles of land, which came to be known as the Louisiana Purchase. Reports of rich farmland and virgin forests provided by explorers such as Meriwether Lewis and William Clark drew struggling farmers and skilled craftsmen, merchants and miners, laborers, and wealthy investors to leave Europe for the land of opportunity. The Office of Immigration Statistics reports in 2005 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics (November 2006, http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/statistics/yearbook/2005/OIS_2005_Yearbook.pdf) that in 1820, the year when immigration records were first kept, only 8,385 immigrants entered the United States. During the 1820s the number began to rise slowly, an increase that generally continued for more than a century, until the Great Depression in 1929.

Wave of Irish and German Immigration

Europe suffered from a population explosion in the 1800s. As land in Europe became more and more scarce, tenant farmers were pushed off their farms into poverty. Some immigrated to the United States to start a new life. This situation was made worse in Ireland, when a fungus that caused potato crops to rot struck in 1845. Many of the Irish were poor farmers who depended on potatoes for food. They suffered greatly from famine when their crops rotted, and epidemics of cholera and typhoid spread from village to village. The Irish Potato Famine forced people to choose between starving to death and leaving their country. In the ten-year period between 1830 and 1839, 170,672 Irish people arrived in the United States. (See Table 1.1.) Driven by the potato famine, between 1840 and 1849 the number of Irish immigrants rose more than 284% to 656,145. The flow of emigrants from Ireland peaked at more than 1,029,486 in the 1850s.

Also affected by a potato famine and failed political revolutions, increasing numbers of German immigrants paralleled that of the Irish. Between 1850 and 1859 the number of German immigrants (976,072) was not far behind the Irish (1,029,486). (See Table 1.1.) The influx of Germans continued to rise to a peak of more than 1.4 million immigrants between 1880 and 1889.

Immigration, Politics, and the Civil War

This new wave of immigration led to intense anti-Irish, anti-German, and anti-Catholic sentiments among Americans, many of whom had been in the United States for only a few generations. It also triggered the creation of secret nativist societies (groups professing to protect the interests of the native-born against immigrants). Out of these groups grew a new political party, the Know Nothing movement (later known as the American Party), which claimed to support the rights of Protestant, American-born voters (and by implication, men, as women were not allowed to vote in federal elections until ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920). The American Party managed to win seventy-five seats in Congress and six governorships in 1855 before the party dissolved.

Felix S. Cohen explains in Immigration and National Welfare (1940) that in contrast to the nativists, the 1864 Republican Party platform, written in part by Abraham Lincoln, stated, "Resolved, That foreign immigration, which in the past has added so much to the wealth, development of resources, and increase of power to the nation, the asylum of the oppressed of all nations, shall be fostered and encouraged by a liberal and just policy."

In 1862 Lincoln had signed the Homestead Law, which offered 160 acres of free land to any adult citizen or prospective citizen who agreed to occupy and improve the land for five years. Wepman notes that between 1862 and 1904 more than 147 million acres of western land were claimed by adventurous citizens and eager new immigrants. In addition, efforts to complete a transcontinental railroad during the 1860s provided work for predominantly Irish and Chinese laborers.

TABLE 1.1
Immigration by region and selected country of last residence, 1820–2005
Region and country of last residence^a	1820 to 1829	1830 to 1839	1840 to 1849	1850 to 1859	1860 to 1869	1870 to 1879	1880 to 1889	1890 to 1899	1900 to 1909
Total	128,502	538,381	1,427,337	2,814,554	2,081,261	2,742,137	5,248,568	3,694,294	8,202,388
Europe	99,272	422,771	1,369,259	2,619,680	1,877,726	2,251,878	4,638,677	3,576,411	7,572,569
Austria-Hungary^{b, c, d}	—	—	—	—	3,375	60,127	314,787	534,059	2,001,376
Austria^{b, d}	—	—	—	—	2,700	54,529	204,805	268,218	532,416
Hungary^b	—	—	—	—	483	5,598	109,982	203,350	685,567
Belgium	28	20	3,996	5,765	5,785	6,991	18,738	19,642	37,429
Bulgaria^e	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	52	34,651
Czechoslovakia^f	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Denmark	173	927	671	3,227	13,553	29,278	85,342	56,671	61,227
Finland	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
France^g	7,694	39,330	75,300	81,778	35,938	71,901	48,193	35,616	67,735
Germany^{c, d}	5,753	124,726	385,434	976,072	723,734	751,769	1,445,181	579,072	328,722
Greece	17	49	17	32	51	209	1,807	12,732	145,402
Ireland^h	51,617	170,672	656,145	1,029,486	427,419	422,264	674,061	405,710	344,940
Italy	430	2,225	1,476	8,643	9,853	46,296	267,660	603,761	1,930,475
Netherlands	1,105	1,377	7,624	11,122	8,387	14,267	52,715	29,349	42,463
Norway-Swedenⁱ	91	1,149	12,389	22,202	82,937	178,823	586,441	334,058	426,981
Norwayⁱ	—	—	—	—	16,068	88,644	185,111	96,810	182,542
Swedenⁱ	—	—	—	—	24,224	90,179	401,330	237,248	244,439
Poland^c	19	366	105	1,087	1,886	11,016	42,910	107,793	—
Portugal^j	177	820	196	1,299	2,083	13,971	15,186	25,874	65,154
Romania	—	—	—	—	—	—	5,842	6,808	57,322
Russia^{c, k}	86	280	520	423	1,670	35,177	182,698	450,101	1,501,301
Spain^l	2,595	2,010	1,916	8,795	6,966	5,540	3,995	9,189	24,818
Switzerland	3,148	4,430	4,819	24,423	21,124	25,212	81,151	37,020	32,541
United Kingdom^{h, m}	26,336	74,350	218,572	445,322	532,956	578,447	810,900	328,759	469,518
Yugoslaviaⁿ	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Other Europe	3	40	79	4	9	590	1,070	145	514
Asia	34	55	121	36,080	54,408	134,128	71,151	61,285	299,836
China	3	8	32	35,933	54,028	133,139	65,797	15,268	19,884
Hong Kong	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
India	9	38	33	42	50	166	247	102	3,026
Iran	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Israel	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Japan	—	—	—	—	138	193	1,583	13,998	139,712
Jordan	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Korea	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Philippines	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Syria	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Taiwan	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Turkey	19	8	45	94	129	382	2,478	27,510	127,999
Vietnam	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Other Asia	3	1	11	11	63	248	1,046	4,407	9,215
America	9,655	31,905	50,516	84,145	130,292	345,010	524,826	37,350	277,809
Canada and Newfoundland^{o, p}	2,297	11,875	34,285	64,171	117,978	324,310	492,865	3,098	123,067
Mexico^{p, q}	3,835	7,187	3,069	3,446	1,957	5,133	2,405	734	31,188
Caribbean	3,061	11,792	11,803	12,447	8,751	14,285	27,323	31,480	100,960
Cuba	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Dominican Republic	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Haiti	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Jamaica^r	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Other Caribbean^r	3,061	11,792	11,803	12,447	8,751	14,285	27,323	31,480	100,960
Central America	57	94	297	512	70	173	279	649	7,341
Belize	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	77
Costa Rica	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
El Salvador	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Guatemala	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Honduras	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Nicaragua	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Panama^s	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Other Central America	57	94	297	512	70	173	279	649	7,264

The Civil War (1861–65) seemed to have little impact on immigration. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, in 2005 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics (2006, http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/statistics/yearbook/2005/OIS_2005_Yearbook.pdf), notes that even though the number of immigrants dropped from 153,640 in 1860 to just under 92,000 in both 1861 and 1862, there were 176,282 new arrivals in 1863, and the numbers continued to grow.

TABLE 1.1
Immigration by region and selected country of last residence, 1820–2005 [continued]
Region and country of last residence^a	1820 to 1829	1830 to 1839	1840 to 1849	1850 to 1859	1860 to 1869	1870 to 1879	1880 to 1889	1890 to 1899	1900 to 1909
South America	405	957	1,062	3,569	1,536	1,109	1,954	1,389	15,253
Argentina	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Bolivia	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Brazil	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Chile	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Colombia	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Ecuador	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Guyana	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Paraguay	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Peru	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Suriname	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Uruguay	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Venezuela	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Other South America	405	957	1,062	3,569	1,536	1,109	1,954	1,389	15,253
Other America^t	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Africa	15	50	61	84	407	371	763	432	6,326
Egypt	—	—	—	—	4	29	145	51	—
Ethiopia	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Liberia	1	8	5	7	43	52	21	9	—
Morocco	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
South Africa	—	—	—	—	35	48	23	9	—
Other Africa	14	42	56	77	325	242	574	363	6,326
Oceania	3	7	14	166	187	9,996	12,361	4,704	12,355
Australia	2	1	2	15	—	8,930	7,250	3,098	11,191
New Zealand	—	—	—	—	—	39	21	12	—
Other Oceania	1	6	12	151	187	1,027	5,090	1,594	1,164
Not specified^{t, u}	19,523	83,593	7,366	74,399	18,241	754	790	14,112	33,493
Region and country of last residence^a	1910 to 1919	1920 to 1929	1930 to 1939	1940 to 1949	1950 to 1959	1960 to 1969	1970 to 1979	1980 to 1989	1890 to 1999
Total	6,347,380	4,295,510	699,375	856,608	2,499,268	3,213,749	4,248,203	6,244,379	9,775,398
Europe	4,985,411	2,560,340	444,399	472,524	1,404,973	1,133,443	825,590	668,866	1,348,612
Austria-Hungary^{b, c, d}	1,154,727	60,891	12,531	13,574	113,015	27,590	20,387	20,437	27,529
Austria^{b, d}	589,174	31,392	5,307	8,393	81,354	17,571	14,239	15,374	18,234
Hungary^b	565,553	29,499	7,224	5,181	31,661	10,019	6,148	5,063	9,295
Belgium	32,574	21,511	4,013	12,473	18,885	9,647	5,413	7,028	7,077
Bulgaria^e	27,180	2,824	1,062	449	97	598	1,011	1,124	16,948
Czechoslovakia^f	—	101,182	17,757	8,475	1,624	2,758	5,654	5,678	8,970
Denmark	45,830	34,406	3,470	4,549	10,918	9,797	4,405	4,847	6,189
Finland	—	16,922	2,438	2,230	4,923	4,310	2,829	2,569	3,970
France^g	60,335	54,842	13,761	36,954	50,113	46,975	26,281	32,066	35,945
Germany^{c, d}	174,227	386,634	119,107	119,506	576,905	209,616	77,142	85,752	92,207
Greece	198,108	60,774	10,599	8,605	45,153	74,173	102,370	37,729	25,403
Ireland^h	166,445	202,854	28,195	15,701	47,189	37,788	11,461	22,210	65,384
Italy	1,229,916	528,133	85,053	50,509	184,576	200,111	150,031	55,562	75,992
Netherlands	46,065	29,397	7,791	13,877	46,703	37,918	10,373	11,234	13,345
Norway-Swedenⁱ	192,445	170,329	13,452	17,326	44,224	36,150	10,298	13,941	17,825
Norwayⁱ	79,488	70,327	6,901	8,326	22,806	17,371	3,927	3,835	5,211
Swedenⁱ	112,957	100,002	6,551	9,000	21,418	18,779	6,371	10,106	12,614
Poland^c	—	223,316	25,555	7,577	6,465	55,742	33,696	63,483	172,249
Portugal^j	82,489	44,829	3,518	6,765	13,928	70,568	104,754	42,685	25,497
Romania	13,566	67,810	5,264	1,254	914	2,339	10,774	24,753	48,136
Russia^{c, k}	1,106,998	61,604	2,463	605	453	2,329	28,132	33,311	433,427
Spain^l	53,262	47,109	3,669	2,774	6,880	40,793	41,718	22,783	18,443
Switzerland	22,839	31,772	5,990	9,904	17,577	19,193	8,536	8,316	11,768
United Kingdom^{h, m}	371,878	341,552	61,813	131,794	195,709	220,213	133,218	153,644	156,182
Yugoslaviaⁿ	—	49,215	6,920	2,039	6,966	17,990	31,862	16,267	57,039
Other Europe	6,527	22,434	9,978	5,584	11,756	6,845	5,245	3,447	29,087
Asia	269,736	126,740	19,231	34,532	135,844	358,605	1,406,544	2,391,356	2,859,899
China	20,916	30,648	5,874	16,072	8,836	14,060	17,627	170,897	342,058
Hong Kong	—	—	—	—	13,781	67,047	117,350	112,132	116,894

Post-Civil War Growth in Immigration

Post-Civil War America was characterized by the rapid growth of the Industrial Revolution, which fueled the need for workers in the nation's flourishing factories. The number of arriving immigrants continued to grow in the 1870s, dominated by people from Germany, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Sweden, and Norway. (See Table 1.1.) Opposition to immigration continued among some factions of established citizens. Secret societies of white supremacists, such as the Ku Klux Klan, formed throughout the South to oppose not only African-American suffrage but also the influence of the Roman Catholic Church and rapid naturalization of foreign immigrants.

TABLE 1.1
Immigration by region and selected country of last residence, 1820–2005 [continued]
Region and country of last residence^a	1910 to 1919	1920 to 1929	1930 to 1939	1940 to 1949	1950 to 1959	1960 to 1969	1970 to 1979	1980 to 1989	1990 to 1999
India	3,478	2,076	554	1,692	1,850	18,638	147,997	231,649	352,528
Iran	—	208	198	1,144	3,195	9,059	33,763	98,141	76,899
Israel	—	—	—	98	21,376	30,911	36,306	43,669	41,340
Japan	77,125	42,057	2,683	1,557	40,651	40,956	49,392	44,150	66,582
Jordan	—	—	—	—	4,899	9,230	25,541	28,928	42,755
Korea	—	—	—	83	4,845	27,048	241,192	322,708	179,770
Philippines	—	—	391	4,099	17,245	70,660	337,726	502,056	534,338
Syria	—	5,307	2,188	1,179	1,091	2,432	8,086	14,534	22,906
Taiwan	—	—	—	—	721	15,657	83,155	119,051	132,647
Turkey	160,717	40,450	1,327	754	2,980	9,464	12,209	19,208	38,687
Vietnam	—	—	—	—	290	2,949	121,716	200,632	275,379
Other Asia	7,500	5,994	6,016	7,854	14,084	40,494	174,484	483,601	637,116
America	1,070,539	1,591,278	230,319	328,435	921,610	1,674,172	1,904,355	2,695,329	5,137,743
Canada and Newfoundland^{o, p}	708,715	949,286	162,703	160,911	353,169	433,128	179,267	156,313	194,788
Mexico^{p, q}	185,334	498,945	32,709	56,158	273,847	441,824	621,218	1,009,586	2,757,418
Caribbean	120,860	83,482	18,052	46,194	115,661	427,235	708,850	790,109	1,004,687
Cuba	—	12,769	10,641	25,976	73,221	202,030	256,497	132,552	159,037
Dominican Republic	—	—	1,026	4,802	10,219	83,552	139,249	221,552	359,818
Haiti	—	—	156	823	3,787	28,992	55,166	121,406	177,446
Jamaica^r	—	—	—	—	7,397	62,218	130,226	193,874	177,143
Other Caribbean^r	120,860	70,713	6,229	14,593	21,037	50,443	127,712	120,725	131,243
Central America	15,692	16,511	6,840	20,135	40,201	98,560	120,374	339,376	610,189
Belize	40	285	193	433	1,133	4,185	6,747	14,964	12,600
Costa Rica	—	—	431	1,965	4,044	17,975	12,405	25,017	17,054
El Salvador	—	—	597	4,885	5,094	14,405	29,428	137,418	273,017
Guatemala	—	—	423	1,303	4,197	14,357	23,837	58,847	126,043
Honduras	—	—	679	1,874	5,320	15,078	15,651	39,071	72,880
Nicaragua	—	—	405	4,393	7,812	10,383	10,911	31,102	80,446
Panama^s	—	—	1,452	5,282	12,601	22,177	21,395	32,957	28,149
Other Central America	15,652	16,226	2,660	—	—	—	—	—	—
South America	39,938	43,025	9,990	19,662	78,418	250,754	273,608	399,862	570,624
Argentina	—	—	1,067	3,108	16,346	49,384	30,303	23,442	30,065
Bolivia	—	—	50	893	2,759	6,205	5,635	9,798	18,111
Brazil	—	4,627	1,468	3,653	11,547	29,238	18,600	22,944	50,744
Chile	—	—	347	1,320	4,669	12,384	15,032	19,749	18,200
Colombia	—	—	1,027	3,454	15,567	68,371	71,265	105,494	137,985
Ecuador	—	—	244	2,207	8,574	34,107	47,464	48,015	81,358
Guyana	—	—	131	596	1,131	4,546	38,278	85,886	74,407
Paraguay	—	—	33	85	576	1,249	1,486	3,518	6,082
Peru	—	—	321	1,273	5,980	19,783	25,311	49,958	110,117
Suriname	—	—	25	130	299	612	714	1,357	2,285
Uruguay	—	—	112	754	1,026	4,089	8,416	7,235	6,062
Venezuela	—	—	1,155	2,182	9,927	20,758	11,007	22,405	35,180
Other South America	39,938	38,398	4,010	7	17	28	97	61	28
Other America^t	—	29	25	25,375	60,314	22,671	1,038	83	37
Africa	8,867	6,362	2,120	6,720	13,016	23,780	71,408	141,990	346,416
Egypt	—	1,063	781	1,613	1,996	5,581	23,543	26,744	44,604
Ethiopia	—	—	10	28	302	804	2,588	12,927	40,097
Liberia	—	—	35	37	289	841	2,391	6,420	13,587
Morocco	—	—	73	879	2,703	2,880	1,967	3,471	15,768
South Africa	—	—	312	1,022	2,278	4,360	10,002	15,505	21,964
Other Africa	8,867	5,299	909	3,141	5,448	9,314	30,917	76,923	210,396
Oceania	12,339	9,860	3,306	14,262	11,353	23,630	39,980	41,432	56,800
Australia	11,280	8,404	2,260	11,201	8,275	14,986	18,708	16,901	24,288
New Zealand	—	935	790	2,351	1,799	3,775	5,018	6,129	8,600
Other Oceania	1,059	521	256	710	1,279	4,869	16,254	18,402	23,912
Not specified^{t, u}	488	930	—	135	12,472	119	326	305,406	25,928

Eastern European Influx during the 1880s

The decade from 1880 to 1889 marked a new era in immigration to the United States. The volume of immigrants nearly doubled from 2,742,137 in the 1870s to 5,248,568 in the 1880s. (See Table 1.1.) German arrivals peaked at over 1.4 million, and emigration from Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom also reached their

TABLE 1.1
Immigration by region and selected country of last residence, 1820–2005 [continued]
Region and country of last residence^a	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005
Total	841,002	1,058,902	1,059,356	703,542	957,883	1,122,373
Europe	131,920	176,892	177,059	102,546	135,663	180,449
Austria-Hungary^{b, c, d}	2,009	2,303	4,004	2,176	3,689	4,569
Austria^{b, d}	986	996	2,650	1,160	2,442	3,002
Hungary^b	1,023	1,307	1,354	1,016	1,247	1,567
Belgium	817	997	834	515	746	1,031
Bulgaria^e	4,779	4,273	3,476	3,706	4,042	5,451
Czechoslovakia^f	1,407	1,911	1,854	1,472	1,871	2,182
Denmark	549	732	651	435	568	714
Finland	377	497	365	230	346	549
France^g	4,063	5,379	4,567	2,926	4,209	5,035
Germany^{c, d}	12,230	21,992	20,977	8,061	10,270	12,864
Greece	5,113	1,941	1,486	900	1,213	1,473
Ireland^h	1,264	1,531	1,400	1,002	1,518	2,083
Italy	2,652	3,332	2,812	1,890	2,495	3,179
Netherlands	1,455	1,888	2,296	1,321	1,713	2,150
Norway-Swedenⁱ	1,967	2,544	2,082	1,516	2,011	2,264
Norwayⁱ	508	582	460	385	457	472
Swedenⁱ	1,459	1,962	1,622	1,131	1,554	1,792
Poland^c	9,750	12,308	13,274	11,004	14,048	14,837
Portugal^j	1,373	1,611	1,301	808	1,062	1,084
Romania	6,506	6,206	4,515	3,305	4,078	6,431
Russia^{c, k}	43,156	54,838	55,370	33,513	41,959	60,395
Spain^l	1,390	1,875	1,588	1,102	1,453	2,002
Switzerland	1,339	1,786	1,493	862	1,193	1,465
United Kingdom^{h, m}	14,427	20,118	17,940	11,155	16,680	21,956
Yugoslaviaⁿ	11,960	21,854	28,051	8,270	13,213	19,249
Other Europe	3,337	6,976	6,723	6,377	7,286	9,486
Asia	254,932	336,112	325,749	235,339	319,025	382,744
China	41,804	50,677	55,901	37,342	50,280	64,921
Hong Kong	7,181	10,282	7,938	5,015	5,421	5,004
India	38,938	65,673	66,644	47,032	65,507	79,140
Iran	6,481	8,003	7,684	4,696	5,898	7,306
Israel	3,871	4,892	4,907	3,686	5,206	6,963
Japan	7,688	10,424	9,106	6,702	8,655	9,929
Jordan	4,476	5,106	4,774	4,008	5,186	5,430
Korea	15,107	19,728	19,917	12,076	19,441	26,002
Philippines	40,465	50,644	48,493	43,133	54,651	57,656
Syria	2,255	3,542	3,350	2,046	2,549	3,350
Taiwan	9,457	12,457	9,932	7,168	9,314	9,389
Turkey	2,702	3,463	3,914	3,318	4,491	6,449
Vietnam	25,159	34,537	32,372	21,227	30,074	30,832
Other Asia	49,348	56,684	50,817	37,890	52,352	70,373
America	392,461	470,794	477,363	305,936	408,972	432,748
Canada and Newfoundland^{o, p}	21,289	29,991	27,142	16,447	22,439	29,930
Mexico^{p, q}	171,445	204,032	216,924	114,758	173,711	157,992
Caribbean	84,250	96,384	93,914	67,498	82,116	91,378
Cuba	17,897	25,832	27,435	8,685	15,385	20,651
Dominican Republic	17,373	21,139	22,386	26,112	30,063	27,366
Haiti	21,977	22,470	19,151	11,924	13,695	13,496
Jamaica^r	15,603	15,031	14,507	13,045	13,581	17,775
Other Caribbean^r	11,400	11,912	10,435	7,732	9,392	12,090
Central America	60,331	72,504	66,298	53,283	61,253	52,636
Belize	774	982	983	616	888	901
Costa Rica	1,390	1,863	1,686	1,322	1,811	2,479
El Salvador	22,301	30,876	30,472	27,854	29,297	20,891
Guatemala	9,861	13,399	15,870	14,195	18,655	16,475
Honduras	5,851	6,546	6,355	4,582	5,339	6,825
Nicaragua	18,258	16,908	9,171	3,503	3,842	3,196
Panama^s	1,896	1,930	1,761	1,211	1,421	1,869
Other Central America	—	—	—	—	—	—
South America	55,143	67,880	73,082	53,946	69,452	100,811
Argentina	2,472	3,426	3,791	3,193	4,672	6,945
Bolivia	1,744	1,804	1,660	1,365	1,719	2,164
Brazil	6,767	9,391	9,034	6,108	10,247	16,331
Chile	1,660	1,881	1,766	1,255	1,719	2,354
Colombia	14,125	16,234	18,409	14,400	18,055	24,710

TABLE 1.1
Immigration by region and selected country of last residence, 1820–2005 [continued]
Region and country of last residence^a	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005
—Represents zero or not available.
^aData for years prior to 1906 refer to country of origin; data from 1906 to 2005 refer to country of last residence.
^bData for Austria and Hungary not reported separately for all years during 1860 to 1869, 1890 to 1899, 1900 to 1909.
^cFrom 1899 to 1919, data for Poland included in Austria-Hungary, Germany, and the Soviet Union.
^dFrom 1938 to 1945, data for Austria included in Germany.
^eFrom 1899 to 1910, included Serbia and Montenegro.
^fCurrently includes the Czech Republic and Slovak Republic.
^gFrom 1820 to 1910, included Corsica.
^hPrior to 1926, data for Northern Ireland included in Ireland.
ⁱData for Norway and Sweden not reported separately until 1869.
^jFrom 1820 to 1910, included Cape Verde and Azores Islands.
^kFrom 1820 to 1920, data refer to the Russian Empire. Between 1920 and 1990 data refer to the Soviet Union. From 1991 to present, the data refer to the Russian Federation, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan.
^lFrom 1820 to 1910, included the Canary Islands and Balearic Islands.
^mSince 1925, data for United Kingdom refer to England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
ⁿCurrently includes Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Slovenia, Serbia, and Montenegro.
^oPrior to 1911, data refer to British North America. From 1911, data includes Newfoundland.
^pLand arrivals not completely enumerated until 1908.
^qNo data available for Mexico from 1886 to 1893.
^rData for Jamaica not reported separately until 1953. Prior to 1953, Jamaica was included in British West Indies.
^sFrom 1932 to 1972, data for the Panama Canal zone included in Panama.
^tIncluded in 'Not specified' until 1925.
^uIncludes 32,897 persons returning in 1906 to their homes in the United States.
Note: From 1820 to 1867, figures represent alien passenger arrivals at sea ports; from 1868 to 1891 and 1895 to 1897, immigrant alien arrivals; from 1892 to 1894 and 1898 to 2005, immigrant aliens admitted for permanent residence; from 1892 to 1903, aliens entering by cabin class were not counted as immigrants. Land arrivals were not completely enumerated until 1908. For this table, fiscal year 1843 covers 9 months ending September, 1843; fiscal years 1832 and 1850 cover 15 months ending December 31 of the respective years; and fiscal year 1868 covers 6 months ending June 30, 1868.
Source: "Table 2. Persons Obtaining Legal Permanent Resident Status by Region and Selected Country of Last Residence: Fiscal Years 1820 to 2005," in 2005 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Office of Immigration Statistics, November 2006, http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/statistics/yearbook/2005/OIS_2005_Yearbook.pdf (accessed December 7, 2006)
Ecuador	7,624	9,654	10,524	7,022	8,366	11,528
Guyana	5,255	7,835	9,492	6,373	5,721	8,772
Paraguay	394	464	413	222	324	523
Peru	9,361	10,838	11,737	9,169	11,369	15,205
Suriname	281	254	223	175	170	287
Uruguay	396	516	499	470	750	1,110
Venezuela	5,052	5,576	5,529	4,190	6,335	10,870
Other South America	12	7	5	4	5	12
Other America^t	3	3	3	4	1	1
Africa	40,790	50,009	56,002	45,559	62,623	79,701
Egypt	4,323	5,333	6,215	3,928	6,590	10,296
Ethiopia	3,645	4,620	6,308	5,969	7,180	8,380
Liberia	1,225	1,477	1,467	1,081	1,540	1,846
Morocco	3,423	4,752	3,188	2,969	3,910	4,165
South Africa	2,814	4,046	3,685	2,088	3,335	4,425
Other Africa	25,360	29,781	35,139	29,524	40,068	50,589
Oceania	5,928	7,201	6,495	5,076	6,954	7,432
Australia	2,694	3,714	3,420	2,488	3,397	4,090
New Zealand	1,080	1,347	1,364	1,030	1,420	1,457
Other Oceania	2,154	2,140	1,711	1,558	2,137	1,885
Not specified^{t, u}	14,971	17,894	16,688	9,086	24,646	39,299

highest levels. A new wave of emigrants began to arrive from Russia (including a significant number of Jews fleeing massacres called pogroms), Poland, Austria-Hungary, and Italy. The mass exodus from eastern Europe foretold events that would result in World War I (1914–18). These newcomers were different: they came from countries with limited public education and no sense of social equality; they were often unskilled and illiterate; and they tended to form tight ethnic communities within the large cities, where they clung to their own language and customs, which further limited their ability to assimilate into U.S. culture.

A Developing Federal Role in Immigration

The increasing numbers of immigrants prompted a belief that there should be some type of administrative order to the ever-growing influx. In 1864 Congress created the Commission of Immigration under the U.S. Department of State. A one-person office was set up in New York City to oversee immigration.

The 1870s witnessed a national debate over the importation of contract labor and limiting immigration for such purposes. In 1875, after considerable debate, Congress passed the Page Law. This first major piece of restrictive immigration legislation prohibited alien convicts and prostitutes from entering the country.

With the creation of the Commission of Immigration, the federal government began to play a central role in immigration, which had previously been handled by the individual states. Court decisions beginning in 1849 strengthened the federal government's role and limited the states' role in regulating immigration. In 1875 the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately ruled in Henderson v. Mayor of the City of New York (92 U.S. 259) that the immigration laws of New York, California, and Louisiana were unconstitutional. This ended the states' right to regulate immigration and exclude undesirable aliens. From then on Congress and the federal government had complete responsibility for immigration.

In 1882 Congress passed the first general immigration law. The Immigration Act of 1882 established a centralized immigration administration under the secretary of the treasury. The law also allowed the exclusion of "undesirables," such as paupers, criminals, and the insane. A head tax was added at $0.50 per arriving immigrant to defray the expenses of immigration regulation and caring for the immigrants after their arrival in the United States.

Influx of Emigrants from Asia

Before the discovery of gold in California in 1848, few Asians (only 121 between 1840 and 1849) came to the United States. (See Table 1.1.) Between 1849 and 1852 large numbers of Asian immigrants began arriving in the United States. These early arrivals came mostly from southern China, spurred on by economic depression, famine, war, and flooding. Thousands of Chinese immigrants were recruited to build railroads and work in mines, construction, or manufacturing. Many became domestic servants. Former mining camp cooks who had saved some of their income opened restaurants. Others invested small amounts in equipment to operate laundries, performing a service few other people wanted to tackle. Between 1850 and 1879 about a quarter of a million emigrants arrived from China, whereas only a few thousand arrived from other Asian countries.

Some people became alarmed by this increase in Chinese immigration. Their fears were fueled by a combination of racism and concerns among American-born workers that employers were bringing over foreign workers to replace them and keep unskilled wages low. The public began to call for restrictions on Chinese immigration.

Chinese Exclusion Act

In 1882 Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which prohibited further immigration of Chinese laborers to the United States for ten years. Exceptions included teachers, diplomats, students, merchants, and tourists. The Chinese Exclusion Act marked the first time the United States barred immigration of a national group. The law also prohibited Chinese immigrants in the United States from becoming naturalized U.S. citizens. Fewer than sixteen thousand Chinese arrived during the last decade of the nineteenth century. (See Table 1.1.)

Four other laws that prohibited the immigration of Chinese laborers followed the Chinese Exclusion Act. The Geary Act of 1892 extended the Chinese Exclusion Act for ten more years. In cases brought before the Supreme Court, the Court upheld the constitutionality of these two laws. The Immigration Act of 1904 made the Chinese exclusion laws permanent. Under the Immigration Act of 1917 the United States suspended the immigration of laborers from almost all Asian countries.

During World War II (1939–45) the United States and China became allies against the Japanese in Asia. As a gesture of goodwill, on December 17, 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Act to Repeal the Chinese Exclusion Acts, to Establish Quotas, and for Other Purposes. The new law lifted the ban on naturalization of Chinese nationals but established a quota or limit of 105 Chinese immigrants to be admitted per year.

Beginning of Japanese Immigration

Until the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act, Japanese immigration was hardly noticeable, with the total flow at 331 between 1860 and 1879. (See Table 1.1.) Because Japanese immigrants were not covered by the Chinese Exclusion Act, Japanese laborers were brought in to replace Chinese workers. Consequently, Japanese immigration increased from 1,583 in the 1880s to over 139,000 during the first decade of the twentieth century. According to Marianne K. G. Tanabe, in Health and Health Care of Japanese-American Elders (2001, http://www.stanford.edu/group/ethnoger/japanese.html), the booming Hawaiian sugar industry offered so many jobs that by 1910 Hawaii had four times as many Japanese as the U.S. mainland.

The same anti-Asian attitudes that had led to the Chinese Exclusion Act culminated in President Theodore Roosevelt's Gentleman's Agreement of 1907, an informal arrangement between the United States and Japan that cut the flow of Japanese immigration to a trickle. This anti-Asian attitude resurfaced a generation later in the National Origins Act of 1924. The immigration quota for any nationality group had been based on the number of people of that nationality that were residents in the United States during the 1910 census. The new law reduced quotas from 3% to 2% and shifted the base for quota calculations from 1910 back to 1890. Because few Asians lived in the United States in 1890, the 1924 reduction in Asian immigration was particularly dramatic. Asian immigration was not permitted to increase until after World War II.

Greater Government Control

In "Overview of INS History" (January 20, 2006, http://149.101.23.2/graphics/aboutus/history/articles/oview.htm), Marion L. Smith describes the development of the federal role in control of immigration. Except for Asian immigration, the federal government had done little to restrict immigration. In 1891 the federal government assumed total control over immigration issues. The Immigration Act of 1891 authorized the establishment of the U.S. Office of Immigration under the U.S. Department of the Treasury. This first comprehensive immigration law added to the list of inadmissible people those suffering from certain contagious diseases, polygamists (married people who had more than one spouse at the same time), and aliens convicted of minor crimes. The law also prohibited using advertisements to encourage immigration.

On January 1, 1892, a new federal immigration station began operating on Ellis Island in New York. During its years of operation (1892–1954) over twelve million immigrants were processed through Ellis Island. That figure represents about half of the more than twenty-three million total immigrants tallied by Table 1.1 during that period.

In 1895 the Office of Immigration became the Bureau of Immigration under the commissioner-general of immigration. In 1903 the Bureau of Immigration was transferred to the U.S. Department of Commerce and Labor. The Basic Naturalization Act of 1906 consolidated the immigration and naturalization functions of the federal government under the Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization. When the Department of Commerce and Labor was separated into two cabinet departments in 1913, two bureaus were formed: the Bureau of Immigration and the Bureau of Naturalization. In 1933 the two bureaus were reunited as the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS).

Emigrants from Eastern Europe Continued to Come

By the 1890s the origins of those arriving in the United States had changed. Fewer emigrants came from northern Europe, whereas emigrants from southern, central, and eastern European countries grew in numbers every year. Of the 7.5 million European immigrants who arrived between 1900 and 1909, 5.4 million (72%) came from Italy, Russia, and Austria-Hungary. (See Table 1.1.) The 1923 report The Immigration Problem in the United States (http://pds.harvard.edu:8080/pdx/servlet/pds?id=2581652) prepared by the National Industrial Conference Board (NICB) noted that immigration from northern and western Europe was referred to as "old" immigration, whereas immigration from southern and eastern European countries was commonly called "new" immigration. The same report noted racial problems between "old" and "new" immigrants; the term race generally included nationalities or ethnic groups. The NICB report displayed graphs of emigrant groups by race, including Hebrew, German, English, Irish, Scotch, Scandinavian, Slovak, and Armenian.

The exodus of Jews (called Hebrews in the NICB report) from eastern Europe was particularly significant. The NICB stated that an average of greater than fifty-seven thousand Hebrews per year arrived between 1908 and 1922. This was double the average arrivals of any other group. The American Immigration Law Foundation notes that many of these Jewish immigrants were merchants, shopkeepers, craftsmen, and professionals, contrary to the stereotype of poor, uneducated immigrants coming out of eastern Europe.

IMMIGRATION AT THE TURN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

A Million Immigrants a Year

The DHS, in 2005 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, reports that the nation's already high immigration rate at the turn of the twentieth century nearly doubled between 1902 and 1907. Immigration reached a million per year in 1905, 1906, 1907, 1910, 1913, and 1914, but declined to less than 325,000 per year from 1915 through 1919 because of World War I. Many Americans worried about the growing influx of immigrants, whose customs were unfamiliar to most of the native population. Anti-Catholic, anti-political radicalism (usually expressed as antisocialism), and racist movements became more prevalent along with a resurgence of nativism.

The Immigration Act of 1907 barred the immigration of "feeble-minded" people, those with physical or mental defects that might prevent them from earning a living, and people with tuberculosis. Increasing the head tax on each arriving immigrant to $5, the 1907 law also officially classified the arriving aliens as immigrants (people planning to take up residence in the United States) and nonimmigrants (people visiting for a short period to attend school, conduct business, or travel as tourists). All arrivals were required to declare their intentions for permanent or temporary stays in the United States. The law further authorized the president to refuse admission to people he considered harmful to the labor conditions in the nation.

Reflecting national concerns about conflicts between old and new immigrant groups, Bureau of Immigration annual reports proposed that the immigrants should be more widely dispersed throughout the rest of the country, instead of being concentrated mostly in the northeastern urban areas. Not only would such a distribution of aliens help relieve the nation's urban problems but also the bureau thought it might promote greater racial and cultural assimilation.

TABLE 1.2
Aliens excluded, by administrative reason for exclusion, 1892–1990
Year	Total	Subversive or anarchist	Criminal or narcotics violations	Immoral	Mental or physical defect	Likely to become public charge	Stowaway	Attemped entry without inspection or without proper documents	Contract laborer	Unable to read (over 16 years of age)	Other
Note: From 1941–53, statistics represent all exclusions at sea and air ports and exclusions of aliens seeking entry for 30 days or longer at land ports. After 1953, includes aliens excluded after formal hearings.
—Represents zero.
NA Not available.
Source: Adapted from "Table 44. Aliens Excluded by Administrative Reason for Exclusion: Fiscal Years 1892–1990," in Enforcement Supplemental Tables for 2003 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Office of Immigration Statistics, September 2004, http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/statistics/yearbook/2003/2003ENF.pdf (accessed February 8, 2007)
1892–1990	650,252	1,369	17,465	8,209	82,590	219,399	16,240	204,943	41,941	13,679	44,417
1892–1900	22,515	—	65	89	1,309	15,070	—	—	5,792	—	190
1901–10	108,211	10	1,681	1,277	24,425	63,311	—	—	12,991	—	4,516
1911–20	178,109	27	4,353	4,824	42,129	90,045	1,904	—	15,417	5,083	14,327
1921–30	189,307	9	2,082	1,281	11,044	37,175	8,447	94,084	6,274	8,202	20,709
1931–40	68,217	5	1,261	253	1,530	12,519	2,126	47,858	1,235	258	1,172
1941–50	30,263	60	1,134	80	1,021	1,072	3,182	22,441	219	108	946
1951–60	20,585	1,098	2,017	361	956	149	376	14,657	13	26	932
1961–70	4,831	128	383	24	145	27	175	3,706	—	2	241
1971–80	8,455	32	814	20	31	31	30	7,237	—	—	260
1981–90	19,759	NA	3,675	NA	NA	NA	NA	14,960	—	—	1,124

Immigration Act of 1917

The mounting negative feelings toward immigrants resulted in the Immigration Act of 1917, which was passed despite President Woodrow Wilson's veto. Besides codifying previous immigration legislation, the 1917 act required that immigrants be able to read and write in their native language and pass a literacy test, which proved to be a controversial clause. The new act also added the following groups to the inadmissible classes of immigrants: "illiterates, persons of constitutional psychopathic inferiority, men and women entering for immoral reasons, chronic alcoholics, stowaways, vagrants, persons who had suffered a previous attack of insanity," and those coming from the designated Asiatic "barred zone," comprising mostly Asia and the Pacific Islands. This provision was a continuation of the Chinese Exclusion Act and the Gentleman's Agreement of 1907, in which the Japanese government had agreed to stop the flow of workers to the United States. In 1918 passports were required by presidential proclamation for all entries into the United States.

Denied Entry

Despite the restrictive immigration legislation, only a small percentage of those attempting to immigrate to the United States were turned away. Between 1892 and 1990, 650,252 people were denied entry for a variety of reasons. (See Table 1.2.) Aside from those attempting to enter without proper papers, the largest group excluded was 219,399 people considered "likely to become public charges." The thirty-year period from 1901 to 1930 was the peak era for exclusion of immigrants deemed likely to become public charges, mentally or physically defective, or immoral. The 1917 ban on illiterate immigrants excluded 13,679 aliens over the next fifty years.

RESTRICTIONS ON IMMIGRATION TIGHTEN

World War I temporarily stopped the influx of immigrants. In 2005 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, the DHS reports that in 1914, 1.2 million immigrants arrived; a year later the number dropped to 326,700. By 1918, the final year of the war, just over 110,000 immigrants ventured to the United States. However, the heavy flow of immigration started again after the war as people fled the war-ravaged European continent. Over 805,000 immigrants arrived in 1921.

The new wave of immigrants flocked to major cities where they hoped to find relatives or other emigrants from their native country as well as jobs. According to the Census Bureau's Census Monograph I, 1922–1931 (2007, http://www2.census.gov/prod2/decennial/documents/00476515n1ch1.pdf), the 1920 census reported that for the first time in U.S. history the population living in cities exceeded that living in rural areas.

First Quota Law

Concern over whether the United States could continue to absorb such huge numbers of immigrants led Congress to introduce a major change in U.S. immigration policy. Other factors influencing Congress included racial fears about the new immigrants and apprehension over many of the immigrants' politically radical ideas.

The Quota Law of 1921 was the first quantitative immigration law. Congress limited the number of aliens of any nationality who could enter the United States to 3% of the number of foreign-born people of that nationality who lived in the United States in 1910 (based on the U.S. census). By 1910, however, many southern and eastern Europeans had already entered the country, a fact many legislators had overlooked. Consequently, to restructure the makeup of the immigrant population, Congress approved the National Origins Act of 1924. This act set the first permanent limitation on immigration, called the national origins quota system. The law immediately limited the number of people of each nationality to 2% of the population of that nationality who lived in the United States in 1890.

The 1924 law provided that after July 1, 1927, an overall cap would allow a total of 150,000 immigrants per year. Quotas for each national origin group were to be developed based on the 1920 census. Exempted from the quota limitation were spouses or dependents of U.S. citizens, returning alien residents, or natives of Western Hemisphere countries not subject to quotas (natives of Mexico, Canada, or other independent countries of Central or South America). The 1924 law further required that all arriving nonimmigrants present visas (government authorizations permitting entry into a country) obtained from a U.S. consulate abroad. U.S. immigration law consisted of the 1917 and 1924 acts until 1952.

Impact of Quotas

The new laws also barred all Asian immigration, which soon led to a shortage of farm and sugar plantation workers. Filipinos filled the gap; because the Philippines was a U.S. territory, it did not come under the immigration quota laws. In addition, large numbers of emigrants arrived from the Caribbean, peaking during the 1910 to 1919 period, when nearly 121,000 Caribbean immigrants entered the United States. (See Table 1.1.)

Before World War I Caribbean workers had moved among the islands and to parts of South and Central America. Following the war many went north in search of work. Similarly, after World War II, when agricultural changes in the Caribbean forced many people off the farms and into the cities, many traveled on to the United States or the United Kingdom in search of jobs.

With the new quota laws the problem of illegal aliens arose for the first time. Previously, only a few of the small number of immigrants who had failed the immigration standards tried to sneak in, usually across the U.S.-Mexican border. With the new laws, the number of illegal aliens began to increase. Subsequently, Congress created the Border Patrol in 1924 (under the Labor Appropriation Act) to oversee the nation's borders and prevent illegal aliens from coming into the United States. This in turn resulted in a system of appeals and deportation actions.

DEPRESSION AND WAR

Changes at the INS

Immigration dropped well below one hundred thousand arrivals per year during the Great Depression (1929–41), because the United States offered no escape from the unemployment that was rampant throughout most of the world. However, in the latter half of the 1930s Nazi persecution caused a new round of emigrants to flee Europe. In 1940 the INS was transferred from the U.S. Department of Labor to the U.S. Department of Justice. This move reflected the growing fear of war, making surveillance of aliens a question of national security rather than of how many to admit. The job of the INS shifted from the exclusion of aliens to combating alien criminal and subversive elements. This required closer cooperation with the U.S. attorney general's office and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Alien Registration

World War II began with the German invasion of Poland in September 1939. Growing concern about an increase in refugees that might result from the war in Europe led Congress to pass the Alien Registration Act of 1940 (also known as the Smith Act). Among other provisions, this act required all aliens to register and those over fourteen years old to be fingerprinted. All registration and fingerprinting took place at local post offices between August 27 and December 26, 1940. In "This Month in Immigration History: June 1940" (January 20, 2006, http://149.101.23.2/graphics/aboutus/history/6june40.htm), the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) notes that during this four-month period, five million aliens registered, nearly 4% of the total U.S. population of 132 million people. Each alien was identified by an alien registration number, known as an A-number. For the first time the government had a means of identifying an individual immigrant. (The A-number system is still in use today.) Following registration each alien received by mail an Alien Registration Receipt Card, which he or she was required to keep to prove registration. Each alien was required to report any change of address within five days. Managing such a vast number of registrants and documents in a short time created a monumental challenge for the federal government. The ranks of employees in the Alien Registration Division of the INS swelled from 55 in August 1940 to a peak of 985 in July 1941.

The United States officially entered World War II on December 8, 1941, the day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. President Roosevelt immediately proclaimed all "nationals and subjects" of nations with which the country was at war to be enemy aliens. The INS states that on January 14, 1942, the president issued a proclamation requiring further registration of aliens from enemy nations (primarily Germany, Italy, and Japan). All such aliens aged fourteen and over were directed to apply for a Certificate of Identification during the month of February 1942.

Alien registrations were used by a variety of government agencies and private industry to locate possible enemy subversives, such as aliens working for defense contractors, aliens with radio operator licenses, and aliens trained to pilot aircraft. According to the INS, one out of every twenty-three workers in U.S. industry at that time was a noncitizen.

Japanese Internment

Following the recommendation of military advisers the president issued Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942, which authorized the forcible internment of people of Japanese ancestry. Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt was placed in charge of removal of the Japanese to internment camps, located in remote areas in western states, including Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Wyoming, and Utah. Two camps were established in Arkansas. In the Final Report: Japanese Evacuation from the West Coast 1942 (1943), DeWitt revealed that during a period of less than ninety days, 110,442 people of Japanese ancestry were evacuated from the West Coast. More than two-thirds were U.S. citizens. Relocation began in April 1942 and the last camp was vacated in March 1946.

Executive Order 9066 was never formally terminated after the war ended. Over the years many Japanese-Americans expressed concern that it could be implemented again. On February 19, 1976, President Gerald Ford issued a proclamation officially terminating the provisions of Executive Order 9066 retroactive to December 31, 1946. In 1988 President Ronald Reagan signed a bill into law providing restitution ($20,000) to each of the surviving internees.

POSTWAR IMMIGRATION LAW

A growing fear of communist infiltration arose during the post-World War II period. One result was the passage of the Internal Security Act of 1950, which made membership in communist or totalitarian organizations cause for exclusion (denial of an alien's entry into the United States), deportation, or denial of naturalization. The law also required resident aliens to report their addresses annually and made reading, writing, and speaking English prerequisites for naturalization.

The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 added preferences for relatives and skilled aliens, gave immigrants and aliens certain legal protections, made all races eligible for immigration and naturalization, and absorbed most of the Internal Security Act of 1950. The act changed the national origin quotas to only one-sixth of 1% of the number of people in the United States in 1920 whose ancestry or national origin was attributable to a specific area of the world. It also excluded aliens on ideological grounds, homosexuality, health restrictions, criminal records, narcotics addiction, and involvement in terrorism.

Once again, countries within the Western Hemisphere were not included in the quota system. President Harry Truman vetoed the legislation, but Congress overrode his veto. Although there were major amendments, the Immigration and Nationality Act remained the basic statute governing who could gain entry into the United States until the passage of new laws following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

During the 1950s a half dozen special laws allowed the entrance of additional refugees. Many of the laws resulted from World War II, but some stemmed from new developments. An example was the law affecting refugees fleeing the failed 1956 Hungarian revolution.

A TWO-HEMISPHERE SYSTEM

In 1963 President John F. Kennedy submitted a plan to change the quota system. Two years later Congress passed the Immigration and Nationality Act Amendments of 1965. Since 1924 sources of emigration had changed. In the 1950s emigration from Asia to the United States nearly quadrupled from 34,532 (between 1940 and 1949) to 135,844 (between 1950 and 1959). (See Table 1.1.) In the same period emigration from North, Central, and South America increased dramatically.

The 1965 legislation canceled the national origins quota system and made visas available on a first-come, first-served basis. A seven-category preference system was implemented for families of U.S. citizens and permanent resident aliens for the purpose of family reunification. In addition, the law set visa allocations for people with special occupational skills, abilities, or training needed in the United States. It also established an annual ceiling of 170,000 Eastern Hemisphere emigrants with a 20,000 per-country limit, and an annual limit of 120,000 for the Western Hemisphere without a per-country limit or preference system.

The Immigration and Nationality Act Amendments of 1976 extended the twenty thousand per-country limit to Western Hemisphere countries. Some legislators were concerned that the twenty-thousand-person limit for Mexico was inadequate, but their objections were overruled. The Immigration and Nationality Act Amendments of 1978 combined the separate ceilings for the Eastern and Western Hemispheres into a single worldwide ceiling of 290,000.

WAR CREATED REFUGEES

Official U.S. refugee programs began in response to the devastation of World War II, which created millions of refugees and displaced persons (DPs). (A displaced person was a person living in a foreign country as a result of having been driven from his or her home country because of war or political unrest.) This was the first time the United States formulated policy to admit people fleeing persecution. The Presidential Directive of December 22, 1945, gave priority in issuing visas to about forty thousand DPs. The directive was followed by the Displaced Persons Act of 1948, which authorized admission of 202,000 people from Eastern Europe, and the Refugee Relief Act of 1953, which approved entry of another 209,000 defectors from communist countries over a three-year period. The Displaced Persons Act counted the refugees in the existing immigration quotas, whereas the Refugee Relief Act admitted them outside the quota system.

Parole Authority—A Temporary Admission Policy

In 1956 the U.S. attorney general used the parole authority (temporary admission) under section 212(d) (15) of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 for the first time on a large scale. This section authorized the attorney general to temporarily admit any alien to the United States. Even though parole was not admission for permanent residence, it could lead to permanent resident or immigrant status. Aliens already in the United States on a temporary basis could apply for asylum (to stay in the United States) on the grounds they were likely to suffer persecution if returned to their native lands. The attorney general was authorized to withhold deportation on the same grounds.

According to the INS, in An Immigrant Nation: United States Regulation of Immigration, 1798–1991 (1991), this parole authority was used to admit approximately thirty-two thousand of the thirty-eight thousand Hungarians who fled the failed Hungarian revolution in 1956. The other six thousand entered under the Refugee Relief Act of 1953 and were automatically admitted as permanent residents. This parole provision was also used in 1962 to admit fifteen thousand refugees from Hong Kong to the United States.

Refugees as Conditional Entrants

In 1965, under the Immigration and Nationality Act Amendments, Congress added section 203(a) (7) to the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, creating a group of conditional entrant refugees from communist or Middle Eastern countries, with status similar to the refugee parolees. Sections 203(a) (7) and 212(d) (15) were used to admit thousands of refugees, including Czechoslovakians escaping their failed revolution in 1968, Ugandans fleeing their dictatorship in the 1970s, and Lebanese avoiding the civil war in their country in the 1980s.

Not until the Refugee Act of 1980 did the United States have a general policy governing the admission of refugees. The Refugee Act of 1980 eliminated refugees as a category in the preference system and set a worldwide ceiling on immigration of 270,000, not counting refugees. It also removed the requirement that refugees had to originate from a communist or Middle Eastern nation.

IMMIGRATION INTENSIFIES AS A POLITICAL ISSUE

In "This Month in Immigration History: May 1987" (January 20, 2006, http://149.101.23.2/graphics/aboutus/history/may1987.htm), the USCIS highlights issues of the 1960s and 1970s that elevated immigration's position on the political agenda into the twenty-first century. In 1964 the United States ended the twenty-two-year-old Bracero Program, an agreement with Mexico that allowed migrant workers to enter the United States to supply seasonal agricultural labor. However, ending the program did not stop migrants from crossing the border for work they had come to rely on. Those who could get visas often overstayed their time limits. Others simply crossed the border illegally and found jobs. A population of illegal immigrants began to develop.

During the 1970s the Vietnam War (1954–75) divided the nation, oil prices skyrocketed, and gasoline shortages caused long waiting lines at the pumps. Price controls were implemented and removed to control rampant inflation. In this period of political, social, and economic uncertainty many people saw immigrants as straining the already limited welfare and educational systems. States with growing immigrant populations, such as California, Florida, Illinois, New York, and Texas, pushed Congress for immigration reform.

A surge of refugees from Vietnam and Cambodia as well as Cubans escaping the Castro regime in the mid-1970s added to Americans' concerns. The major source of emigrants had changed from Europe to Latin America and Asia. Many people were uncomfortable with the faces and cultures of these new arrivals.

President Ford established a cabinet-level Domestic Council Committee on Illegal Aliens. Its December 1976 report recommended sanctions against employers who knowingly hired undocumented workers, increased border enforcement, and called for legalization for certain illegal aliens who arrived in the United States before July 1, 1968. In 1979 Congress established the Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy (SCIRP). The commission spent the next two years evaluating the problem. The 1981 SCIRP Final Report fostered ideas that would become part of major new immigration reform legislation in 1986. Over twenty-five years later, however, Congress and the nation would still be debating issues of employers hiring undocumented workers, border enforcement, and legalization of long-term illegals.

Immigration and Illegal Aliens: Burden or Blessing?