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home > resources > Session Two: Immigration

Resources

Waves of U.S. Immigration

1. 1815-1860: 5 million immigrants settled permanently in the United States, mainly English, Irish, Germanic, Scandinavian and others from northwestern Europe.
• 1825: Great Britain decrees that England is overpopulated and repeals laws prohibiting emigration. The first group of Norwegian immigrants arrives.
• 1846-7: Crop failures in Europe. Irish of all classes immigrate to the United States as a result of the potato famine. Mortgage foreclosures send tens of thousands of the dispossessed to United States.
• 1848: German political refugees emigrate following the failure of a revolution.
• 1862: The Homestead Act encourages naturalization by granting citizens title to 160 acres.
2. 1865-1890: 10 million immigrants settled permanently in America, again mainly from northwestern Europe.
• 1875: First limitations on immigration. Residency permits required of Asians
• 1880: The U.S. population is 50,155,785. More than 5.2 million immigrants enter the country between 1880 and 1890.
• 1882: Chinese exclusion law is established. Russian anti-Semitism prompts a sharp rise in Jewish emigration.
3. 1890-1914: 15 million immigrants journeyed to the United States, many of whom were Austro-Hungarian, Turkish, Lithuanian, Russian, Jewish, Greek, Italian, Romanian.
• 1891: The Immigration Act established an Office of the Superintendent of Immigration with in the Treasury Department. This office was responsible for admitting, rejecting, and processing all immigrants seeking admission to the United States and for implementing national immigration policy. Congress added health qualifications to immigration restrictions.
• 1892: Ellis Island replaces Castle Garden, New York State's immigration station from 1855-1890, and becomes the nation's largest immigration station.
• 1894-6: To escape Moslem massacres, Armenian Christians emigrate.
• 1897: Ellis Island immigration station burns down. No lives were lost, but many Federal and State immigration records were destroyed.
• 1900: Ellis Island is reopened, processing 2,251 immigrants on its first day.
• 1910: The Mexican Revolution sends thousands to the United States seeking employment.
• 1914-8: World War I halts a period of mass migration to the United States.
4. 1915-Present. Immigrants to the U.S. are primarily from Asia, Central and South America.
• 1918-1919: Numerous suspected enemy aliens were brought to Ellis Island under custody, the transferred and detained at other locations while the United States Navy and Army Medical Department took over the island. At the end of the war as the "Red Scare" spread across the country, thousands of suspected alien radicals were interred at Ellis Island.
• 1920: Ellis Island reopened as an immigrant receiving station.
• 1924: The National Origins Act establishes a discriminatory quota system based upon a percentage system according to the number of ethnic groups already living in the United States as per the 1890 and 1910 Census. The Border Patrol is established. Ellis Island becomes primarily a detention center.
• 1946: By this year approximately the largest groups detained at Ellis Island were German, Italian, and Japanese people (aliens and citizens) numbering 7,000.
• 1950: Internal Security Act replaced Alien Registration Receipt Cards with the "green card"
• 1952: The Immigration and Naturalization Act brings into one comprehensive statue the multiple laws, such as the quota and preference systems, that govern immigration and naturalization to date.
• 1954: Ellis Island closes, marking an end to mass immigration.
• 1968: Immigration Act eliminated U.S. immigration discrimination based on race, place of birth, sex, and residence.
• 1986: Immigration act, known as Immigration Amnesty, legalized hundred of thousands of illegal immigrants. It also introduced the employer sanctions program that fines employers for hiring illegal workers, and passed laws to prevent marriage fraud.
• 1990: Immigration Act created the Immigrant Investor Program and established an annual limit for certain categories of immigrants. It expanded the business class categories to favor persons who can make educational, professional or financial contributions in order to help U.S. business attract skilled foreign workers.
• 2003: The Immigration and Naturalization Service was re-structured and its functions separated into 3 bureaus as part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The bureaus are: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S Customs and Border Protection.