During the 18th and most of the 19th centuries, the United States had limited regulation of immigration and naturalization at a national level. Under a mostly prevailing "open border" policy, immigration was generally welcomed, although citizenship was limited to "white persons" as of 1790, and naturalization was subject to five-year residency requirement as of 1802. Passports and visas were not required for entry into America; rules and procedures for arriving immigrants were determined by local ports of entry or state laws. Processes for naturalization were determined by local county courts.The racial limitation on citizenship was lifted in 1952; the five year residency for naturalization has continued.
In the course of the late 1800s and early 1900s, many policies regarding immigration and naturalization were shifted in stages to a national level through court rulings giving primacy to federal authority over immigration policy, and the Immigration Act of 1891. The Immigration Act of 1891 led to the establishment of the U.S. Bureau of Immigration and the opening of the Ellis Island inspection station in 1892. Constitutional authority (Article 1 §8) was later relied upon to enact the Naturalization Act of 1906 which standardized procedures for naturalization nationwide, and created the Bureau of Naturalization (initially joined with the Bureau of Immigration; later from 1933 to 2003, both functions were part of the Immigration and Naturalization Service).Cannato, Vincent J. (2009) American Passage: The History of Ellis Island, Harper Collins, 42-62
After 2003, the Immigration and Naturalization Service split into separate agencies under the then newly created Department of Homeland Security: naturalization services and functions have been handled by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), while immigration services and regulations have been divided between administrative (in USCIS), enforcement (in Immigration and Customs Enforcement), and border inspections (under U.S. Customs and Border Protection).
18th century The United States Constitution was adopted on September 17, 1787. Article I, section 8, clause 4 of the Constitution expressly gives the United States Congress the power to establish a uniform rule of naturalization.The relevant enumerated power reads: "To establish a uniform Rule of Naturalization..."
Pursuant to this power, Congress in 1790 passed the first naturalization law for the United States, the Naturalization Act of 1790. The law enabled those who had resided in the country for two years and had kept their current state of residence for a year to apply for citizenship. However, it restricted naturalization to "free white persons" of "good character". Oddly, the law authorized any "court of record" to perform naturalization. In other words, for over 110 years, any federal or state court of record could naturalize a qualified applicant.
The Naturalization Act of 1795 increased the residency requirement to five years residence and added a requirement to give a three years notice of intention to apply for citizenship and the Naturalization Act of 1798 further increased the residency requirement to 14 years and required five years notice of intent to apply for citizenship.
The Alien and Sedition Acts were passed by the 5th U.S. Congress and signed into law by President John Adams in June and July 1798. They developed within the context of overlaps between America's first major political party rivalry, the early international convulsions of what soon became the Napoleonic wars, and challenges of reconciling press freedom with domestic tranquility. Three of the four acts were temporary, rarely used and/or soon repealed. By 1802 only one of the four, the Alien Enemies Act remained. It was most extensively used after Japan and Germany declared war on the United States in December 1941, and never since then, until 2025.
19th century The Naturalization Law of 1802 repealed and replaced the Naturalization Act of 1798. The residency requirement changed back to five years.
The Steerage Act of 1819 was the first law in the United States regulating the conditions of transportation used by people arriving and departing by sea. It set a limit of two passengers for every five tons of ship burden and required ship captains or masters to report a list of all passengers disembarking in America. This law was a regulatory cornerstone of what became the most extensive, long-lasting, and linguistically diverse mass transoceanic migration, represented a small early stepping stone towards local coordination with national immigration policy, and laid the basis for historical statistical documentation of how America has for centuries imported new Americans.
The Supreme Court's Dred Scott v. Sandford 1857 decision "ruled that people of African descent 'are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word 'citizens' in the Constitution.' " This decision complicated the issue of citizenship, reinforced racial divisions, and deepened the north–south schism which led to the U.S. Civil War, but was eventually effectively nullified by the passage of the 13th and 14th Amendments.
The Fourteenth Amendment, based on the Civil Rights Act of 1866, was ratified in 1868 to provide citizenship for former slaves. The 1866 Act read, "That all persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States; and such citizens, of every race and color, without regard to any previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude" shall have the same rights "as is enjoyed by white and other black citizens." The phrase in the Fourteenth Amendment reversed the conditional clause to read: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." This was applied by the Supreme Court in the 1898 case United States v. Wong Kim Ark to deal with the child of Chinese citizens who were legally resident in the U.S. at the time of his birth, with exceptions such as for the children of diplomats and American Indians. See the articles jus soli (birthplace) and jus sanguinis (bloodline) for further discussion.
In 1870, the law was broadened to allow African Americans to be naturalized. Asian immigrants were excluded from naturalization but not from living in the United States. There were also significant restrictions on some Asians at the state level; in California, for example, non-citizen Asians were not allowed to own land.
The first federal statute restricting immigration was the Page Act, passed in 1875. It barred immigrants considered "undesirable," defining this as a person from East Asia who was coming to the United States to be a forced laborer, any East Asian woman who would engage in prostitution, and all people considered to be convicts in their own country. In practice, it resulted mainly in barring entry to Chinese women.
After the immigration of 123,000 Chinese in the 1870s, who joined the 105,000 who had immigrated between 1850 and 1870, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 which limited further Chinese immigration. Chinese had immigrated to the Western United States as a result of unsettled conditions in China, the availability of jobs working on railroads, and the Gold Rush that was going on at that time in California. The expression "Yellow Peril" became popular at this time.
The act excluded Chinese laborers from immigrating to the United States for ten years. Laborers in the United States and laborers with work visas received a certificate of residency and were allowed to travel in and out of the United States. Amendments made in 1884 tightened the provisions that allowed previous immigrants to leave and return, and clarified that the law applied to ethnic Chinese regardless of their country of origin. The act was renewed in 1892 by the Geary Act for another ten years, and in 1902 with no terminal date. It was repealed in 1943, although large scale Chinese immigration did not occur until 1965.
From August 1882, a federal "head tax" of 50¢ was collected from shipping companies landing non-US citizens. The tax was raised to $1 in October 1894, to $2 in March 1903, to $4 effective June, 1907, and to $8 in 1917.U.S. Immigration Commission (Dillingham Commission) report (1911), volume 39, pp. 32, 45, 51-60, 97-121, E. P. Hutchinson (1981), Legislative History of American Immigration Policy, pp. 462-65
In 1882, and again 1908, the steerage legislation of 1847 and 1885 was revised and updated.Dillingham, pp. 100-120, 368, 404
In 1885, the Alien Contract Labor Law was passed by the U.S. Congress.Hutchinson, pp. 88-89
In 1891, assuming federal control of immigration regulation from states, the Federal Bureau of Immigration was established. In 1892, the federal immigration inspection station at Ellis Island was opened. It burned down in 1897 and reopened in December 1900. Also in 1891, immigrants with contagious disease disbarred from entry, were to be returned at shipping company expense. (In addition, as of 1903, companies landing immigrants with detectable diseases were to be fined $100 for each such exclusion), and passengers lists were to include a column for "race" (essentially defined as native language); the Bureau of Immigration actually started the race classification already in 1899.Dillingham, pp. 102-10
20th century
By the turn of the century, it had become clear that allowing state courts to perform naturalization had resulted in wildly diverse and non-uniform naturalization procedures across the United States. Every court imposed its own specific procedures and fees, and issued its own unique certificates. The Naturalization Act of 1906 created the Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization to maintain centralized records of naturalization and to impose uniform nationwide procedures, forms, and certificates. After 1906, compliance with the bureau's procedures was necessary before a court could naturalize a person. Although the statutory language authorizing any "court of record" to naturalize still remained in effect, the new federal bureau moved away from state-level naturalization and certified eligibility for naturalization only to the federal courts.
The Empire of Japan's State Department negotiated the so-called Gentlemen's Agreement in 1907, a protocol where Japan agreed to stop issuing passports to its citizens who wanted to emigrate to the United States. In practice, the Japanese government compromised with its prospective emigrants and continued to give passports to the Territory of Hawaii where many Japanese resided. Once in Hawaii, it was easy for the Japanese to continue on to Japanese settlements on the west coast if they so desired. In the decade of 1901 to 1910, 129,000 Japanese immigrated to the continental United States or Hawaii; nearly all were males and on five-year work contracts and 117,000 more came in the decades from 1911 to 1930. How many of them stayed and how many returned at the end of their contracts is unknown but it is estimated that about one-half returned. Again this immigrant flow was at least 80% male and the demand for female Japanese immigrants almost immediately arose. This need was met in part by what are called "postcard wives" who immigrated to new husbands who had chosen them on the basis of their pictures (similar marriages also occurred in nearly all cultures throughout the female-scarce west). The Japanese government finally quit issuing passports to the Territory of Hawaii for single women in the 1920s.