Did My Family Really Come “Legally”? - Today’s Immigration Laws Created a New Reality

Until the late 19th century, there was very little federal regulation of immigration—there were virtually no laws to break.

Today’s laws require that potential immigrants be closely related to qualified U.S. citizens or permanent residents, have employment offers from U.S. employers, or qualify as refugees.

Today’s laws would have effectively restricted many of our families that immigrated before the passage of those laws from coming legally to the United States.

Until the late 19th century, there was very little federal regulation of immigration—there were virtually no laws to break. The U.S. was a growing, increasingly industrialized nation that needed workers, and immigration was “encouraged and virtually unfettered."

When many families arrived in the United States, there were no numerical limitations on immigration, no requirements to have an existing family or employment relationship with someone in the country, and no requirement to obtain a visa prior to arriving.

Before the 20th century, there was virtually no bureaucracy responsible for enforcing immigration laws. The first numerical caps on immigration and limitations on Europeans were not established until the 1920s—after the great wave of immigration to the United States.

Acknowledging the large numbers of Europeans in the United States without proper authorization, the 1929 Registry Act allowed “honest law-abiding alien[s] who may be in the country under some merely technical irregularity” to register as permanent residents for a fee of $20 if they could prove they had lived in the country since 1921 and were of “good moral character.” 

The full article is available here