Tried to find this on Wiki, even though I didn’t get my answer, read fascinating stuff about immigration history. Didn’t bother w/Google because Google sucks for stufff like this.
How’d you find that, Duckster? Googling “first green card in history” has it as the 6th result (for me at least).
Interesting question. Are you looking for the first person who was issued one of the documents that have been colloquially called “green cards”, or are you looking for the first person who was formally issued some sort of non-citizen permanent resident document, even if the term “green card” had not yet come about?
Iirc, in the early history of the US, there wasn’t a legal concept of non-citizens needing documents to settle in the US. If you were white, you could more or less just buy a ticket to NYC or Boston and just walk off the boat. If you wanted to vote, serve on a jury, run for public office, etc., you had to apply for citizenship. Otherwise you were fine. Nobody really cared if Sven Jansen of Norway or Hans Schmidt of Germany came to NYC with intent to sell a cargo load of barley and go home with the profit but changed his mind and became a fisherman on the Jersey Shore.
According to the official figures, one person legally immigrated from Japan in 1943. I wonder who that was.
It’s all in the wrist, and fingers.
Seriously, your search criteria is too broad and convoluted for Google. I tried “green card history.” If you don’t like Google (or find Google is already manipulating your search results) try https://duckduckgo.com/ . DDG is anonymous and doesn’t build a search history from your IP address (and distorting search results) as Google apparently does.
robert-Looking for the 1st person to receive “papers”. Even if it wasn’t necessarily a “green card”.