Beginning in the 1850s, a steady flow of Chinese workers had immigrated to America. cities and work in factories.ġ882: The Chinese Exclusion Act passes, which bars Chinese immigrants from entering the United States. The majority are from Southern, Eastern and Central Europe, including 4 million Italians and 2 million Jews. Between 18, more than 20 million immigrants arrive. Chinese Exclusion Actġ880: As America begins a rapid period of industrialization and urbanization, a second immigration boom begins.
In 1875 the Supreme Court declares that it’s the responsibility of the federal government to make and enforce immigration laws. Still others, including hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans, arrived in America against their will.ġ849: America’s first anti-immigrant political party, the Know-Nothing Party forms, as a backlash to the increasing number of German and Irish immigrants settling in the United States.ġ875: Following the Civil War, some states passed their own immigration laws. Many sought greater economic opportunities. Some, including the Pilgrims and Puritans, came for religious freedom. They were Native American ancestors who crossed a narrow spit of land connecting Asia to North America at least 20,000 years ago, during the last Ice Age.īy the early 1600s, communities of European immigrants dotted the Eastern seaboard, including the Spanish in Florida, the British in New England and Virginia, the Dutch in New York, and the Swedes in Delaware.
Thousands of years before Europeans began crossing the vast Atlantic by ship and settling en masse, the first immigrants arrived in North America from Asia. The United States has long been considered a nation of immigrants, but attitudes toward new immigrants by those who came before have vacillated over the years between welcoming and exclusionary. Mexicans Fill Labor Shortages During WWII.White People of 'Good Character' Granted Citizenship.