At what date in history did the US, or for that matter any other nation, first have official rules of immigration and specific points of entry?
Phrased differently, when could you no longer simply step ashore or cross some river or range wherever you wanted and consider yourself an American (or whatever), but instead had to be ‘lawfully admitted’ and begin the steps of naturalization?
Thanks.
The US Constitution explicitly gives Congress the power to establish “an uniform Rule of Naturalization” in Article I § 8. Congress did so with the Naturalization Act of 1790, which largely restricted citizenship to white people who had been present in the US for at least two years, and who took an oath renouncing all foreign allegiances.
But worthing pointing out that immigration and naturalisation are two completely different things. It was long after 1790 before there was any federal legislation attempting a systematic regulation of who could enter or settle in the US; it was only the acquisition of citizenship that was regulated.
The first federal law prohibiting immigration was the Chinese Exclusion Act, enacted in 1882. It prohibited Chinese people from immigrating to the United States. It originally was only set to last for ten years but it was extended for another ten years in 1892 and extended indefinitely in 1902.
That’s true. Passports and visas and such only became common towards the latter half of the 19th century with the advent of industrialization and modern notions of national borders.
There was certainly at least a health inspection at Ellis Island and presumably other ports of entry. The grandfather of a friend of mine from Toronto was refused on those grounds and then came to Canada.
FWIW, I will mention that I read somewhere (sorry, no cite–was a long time ago) that passports were essentially VIP documents until WW I and even after, you still didn’t need a passport to travel anywhere in the Americas until WW II. And travel between the US and Canada didn’t require a passport until after 9/11. My wife saw (50 years ago) a woman crossing into the US by train being admitted when the only ID she had was an Eaton’s department store credit card.
I’ve been reading a PG Wodehouse biography in which he says (following his more complicated immigration process after WWII), that when he first came to the US in 1914, he did so without having a passport. He lived for the most part in the New York area during the first World War.
So, after Chinese immigrants built the railroads, a dangerous job that paid low wages, the US cut off Chinese immigration?
Ya, can ya believe it?
The history of immigration law in the United States is basically the history of racism and white supremacy. Heck, why history? Today, anyone who is all het up over “uncontrolled” immigration is acting based on explicit or implicit racism.
It’s hard to believe America would do something so ridiculous, right? That’s as ridiculous as the idea that they’d arrest anyone who was Japanese. Or force black people to sit at the back of the bus and stay away from their lunch counters and drinking fountains… Or force the original owners of the land to pack up and move to reservations where they could starve.
Not only that, Chinese were denied citizenship, and any citizen marrying a Chinese immigrant would lose their citizenship.
Actually, the Page Act of 1875 (which purported to “end the danger of cheap Chinese labor and immoral Chinese women,” in the words of U.S. Representative Horace Page) was the first federal regulation on immigration. The alleged goal was to end trafficking of Chinese and other East Asian women into prostitution in the US, but it effectively stopped most female immigration: in 1882, for example, before the Chinese Exclusion Act, the US admitted 39,579 Chinese nationals, of whom just 136 were adult females.
The U.S. made many different regulations and restrictions for different groups at different times. This very snarky site has a good run-down of the gradations through history.
Moderator Note
Let’s avoid political commentary in GQ.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
There were times in England when Jews were simply not allowed to enter (from sometime around 1270, I believe, until 1655), and when Catholic priests, if found, were treated as spies. But formal paper requirements and inspection procedures came very recently - registration of “aliens” in 1905, and passports in 1914.
While not executing border controls that we think of as part of modern systems, Rome had a system with multiple legal citizenship statuses besides full Roman citizen. Citizenship wasn’t a simple binary status.
As UDS noted, citizenship and immigration are two separate issues.
You’re right. I missed that one.
I was surprised to hear that, so I did a quick google around. And I discovered that it wasn’t “any citizen”, it was “any female citizen”. Which of course was a result of the deplorable attitude that a woman was her husband’s property.
The Naturalization Act of 1790 regulated your ability “consider yourself an American” at least in terms of citizenship.
As far as I know, the Naturalization Act of 1802 was the first to require an alien to register his arrival in the United States (along with various biographical data) with the clerk of the court where he arrived. Although, I’m not sure there was any penalty for not doing so (other than you may not be able to become a naturalized US citizen).
I would agree that the Page Act of 1875 was the first US law to exclude aliens from admission.