We're All Immigrants

 The recent discussions of current immigration policies and difficulties often prompted some people to trot out the now familiar phrase that titles this blog. This statement sometimes prompts the counter claim that we need to exclude indigenous Americans, who occupied the land when the first European settlers began arriving on our shores, dating all the way back to the Vikings.

But if you go far enough back in human history, the likelihood is that none of the indigenous peoples of America, including those in the separated states of Alaska and Hawaii and those in American territories are actually from here. They just occupied the land for a lot longer than Europeans. 

My paternal grandmother, Amalie, came here from Germany in 1912 and is the only one of my immediate ancestors with the documentation to show that. 

What were the immigration laws of the time? What hoops did she have to jump through?

Immigration in America is more of a journey than an event, though we can point to a couple of seminal pieces of legislation. Much of what follows is adapted from information on the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services website.

Until 1875, states passed their own immigration policies. A Supreme Court decision that year declared that immigration was the province of the U.S. Government. Among the first pieces of legislation was the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. The Chinese may have been valuable for building the Transcontinental Railroad, their expanding numbers on the West Coast brought complaints that they were taking American jobs and polluting the gene pool. Sound familiar? So, new arrivals were banned. And those already in country essentially had no rights. 

A more general immigration act passed the same year levied a tax on each immigrant of 50 cents and prohibited "idiots, lunatics, convicts, and persons likely to become a public charge." 

In 1891, a new immigration act expanded the list of undesirables to "polygamists, persons convicted of crimes of moral turpitude, and those suffering loathsome or contagious diseases." 

I remember an exhibit at the Fort Worth Science and History Museum some years back that noted that the interpretation these laws was often loosely applied in a bigoted way to prevent entry of other unpopular groups, including a favorite of mine, the Irish. I guess no one judged Amalie to be any of those things.

The 1891 act also established the first Immigration Service. What are laws without a bureaucracy to enforce them? A year later, Ellis Island was established. Other points of entry were established over the years.

One last point for this post. In the first 20 years of the 20th Century, some 14.5 million people came to America seeking a new home.

Next week we'll look at the process for becoming a naturalized citizen in those early days.