I understand we had open borders until 1924; such a policy would certainly stop people from crossing illegally. I don’t advocated it though.
(Wait: that cite isn’t correct… The Chinese Exclusion Act (1882), later extended, regulated immigration.)
Ok, immigration restrictions started in 1875:
How U.S. immigration laws and rules have changed through history | Pew Research Center.
The first immigration laws were earlier than that. They only restricted immigration from nations we were at war with, but that still left it theoretically possible for someone to violate them.
The Alien and Sedition Act (1798) permitted noncitizens to be rounded up and deported, but I don’t think it banned them from setting foot in the country. Granted, such policies would very much discourage immigration from countries that we are at war with.
Atamasama’s underlying point is correct of course. The idea that failure to prevent smuggling means a government has lost control of its border is absurd and hysterical: there’s not a sizable country in the history of the world that has prevented smuggling.
ETA: Cato offers a deeper dive into colonial and early US immigration debates than Pew:
https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/brief-history-us-immigration-policy-colonial-period-present-day#post-ratification-period
I didn’t know about this for example:
By 1819, economic depression and the worry that Britain might ship their poor to the United States tempered Congress’ pro-immigration position. While Congress lacked an enumerated power under the Constitution to control immigration, in 1819 it indirectly regulated immigration under the guise of safety by limiting the number of passengers that a ship could carry based on its tonnage.38 This legislation lowered the carrying capacity of passenger ships and increased the price of travel, consequently reducing the number of poor immigrants who could afford passage.