Immigration

Nederlanders and Germans fleeing religious persecution began settling in the colony of Pennsylvania at the invitation of William Penn, in 1683. German Quaker, and Mennonite immigrant families founded Germantown on October 6, 1683, marking the first major immigration of German people to America.

U.S. President Chester A. Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act into law in 1882, implementing a ban on Chinese immigration to the United States that eventually lasted for over 60 years until the 1943 Magnuson Act.

The picture below is a political cartoon from 1882, showing a Chinese man being barred entry to the "Golden Gate of Liberty". The caption reads, "We must draw the line somewhere, you know."

The immigration station on Ellis Island in New York Harbor opened on January 1, 1892. 14-year-old Irish girl Annie Moore was the first passenger registered. It shut 61 years later on November 12, 1954, after processing more than 12 million immigrants.

The Ellis Island immigration center processed 11,747 people on April 17, 1907, more than on any other day.

After 1954, with changes in immigration laws and procedures, Ellis Island's role as an immigration processing center diminished. The island was later abandoned but eventually underwent restoration and became part of the Statue of Liberty National Monument. Today, Ellis Island is a museum that preserves and commemorates the immigrant experience in the United States.

East side of the main building. By Ingfbruno; Wikipedia Commons

The Congress of the United States passed the Immigration Act on February 5, 1917 over President Woodrow Wilson's veto. Also known as the Asiatic Barred Zone Act, it forbade immigration from nearly all of south and southeast Asia. The act also added to the number of undesirables banned from entering the country, including but not limited to “homosexuals”, “idiots”, “feeble-minded persons”, "criminals", “epileptics”, “insane persons”, alcoholics, “professional beggars”, all persons “mentally or physically defective”, polygamists, and anarchists.

The Immigration Act of 1917 was one of many immigration acts during this time period which arose from nativist and xenophobic sentiment. These immigration laws were intentional efforts to control the composition of immigrant flow into the United States.

A political cartoon warning of the danger of foreigners, July 1919.

During the build-up to World War II, a German ocean liner, the M.S. St. Louis,  captained by a German humanist carried more than 963 Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany across the Atlantic intending to escape anti-Semitic persecution. On June 4, 1939 the ship was denied permission to land in Florida. Forced to return to Europe, many of its passengers later died in Nazi concentration camps.

On June 22, 1948, the British troopship HMT Empire Windrush arrived at Tilbury Docks in England  carrying over 800 passengers from the Caribbean. These passengers, mainly from Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, and other West Indian islands, became known as the "Windrush generation."

The arrival of the Empire Windrush and the subsequent immigrants on board marked the beginning of a significant wave of Caribbean migration to the United Kingdom. These individuals were invited to Britain to help with post-war reconstruction and labor shortages. Many of them sought opportunities for better education, employment, and a new life in the UK.

The term "Windrush generation" is used to describe not only the people who arrived on the Empire Windrush but also the subsequent Caribbean immigrants who settled in the UK between 1948 and 1971. They made valuable contributions to British society in various fields, including healthcare, transportation, education, politics, and the arts.

However, it's important to note that despite their significant contributions, some members of the Windrush generation faced challenges and discrimination, including issues with documentation and citizenship status in later years. The Windrush scandal, which came to light in 2018, highlighted the mistreatment and wrongful deportation of some individuals who had lived in the UK for decades.

Efforts have since been made to address these injustices and provide support to those affected.

British Conservative MP Enoch Powell gave a speech on April 20, 1968, in which he criticized immigration and anti-discrimination legislation. The speech, which became known as the "Rivers of Blood" speech due to Powell's reference to a line from Virgil's Aeneid, caused a great deal of controversy and was widely condemned for its perceived racism and xenophobia. As a result of the speech, Powell was removed from his position in the shadow cabinet by Conservative Party leader Edward Heath, and his political career never fully recovered. The speech remains a highly controversial and divisive moment in British political history, and its legacy continues to be debated to this day.

Roughly 20% of the world's tech founders are immigrants, even though immigrants only make up about 4 percent of the world's population.

The United States accepts more legal immigrants than every other nation on Earth combined.

Australia is the only country in the world where more Americans immigrate to it than its own citizens immigrate to the U.S.

Here is a list of songs that deal with immigration.