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The new world is discovered by Columbus
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In James Town Virginia
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Mostly British Puritans came to North America to escape religious persecution. Many British settlers settled in the southern colonies because of the highly profitable cash crop of tobacco
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Most of the US population is born in the US
Only about 100,000 indigenous native Americans left because of disease and the westward expansion -
Around the 1830's tens of thousands of immigrants, mainly form Britan, Germany, and Ireland, began arriving to the US. They were attracted by the cheap farmland that was made available by the westward expansion or the manufacturing boom sparked by the industrial revolution. The Irish were mainly unskilled laborers, Germans mainly became farmers, and Asians became laborers
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Things in the US began to be a bit crowded because of immigration around the 1850's
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During the 50-year immigration wave from 1870 - 1920 mass immigration begins to be considered a danger to the health and security of the nation by wealthy white native-born Americans
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The Asian Exclusion Act banned Asians and people considered convicts in their own countries.
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Large steamships took to the seas after 1880 and made immigration more accessible to people around the word.
They pass through immigration processing stations like Ellis Island in New York -
Immigrants come to come to work in factories in the US because they are being replaced by machines in Europe
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from 1860 - 1910 the urban population grew from 6 million to over 44 million
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The US enters WW1
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Turning-point in American immigration was the law called The Emergency Quota Act that set strict limits on the amount of immigrants who would be allowed into the country each year. It was very effective.
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Border patrol is established and quota is tightened and undocumented immigrants who enter the country are subject to deportation
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the illegal alien is born to stigmatize the next group in the anit-immigration community's crosshairs: Latin American migrants
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The number of immigrants coming from Mexico increased by 6000% as they were offered low wage agricultural jobs in the American Southwest as part of the bracero program
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President Eisenhower is pressured to do something about the thousands of immigrants crossing the southern border and turns to Gen. Joseph Swing, who launches "Operation Wetback"
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Hart-celler Act replaces the unfair quota system with a policy that gives preference to immigrants who have relatives already in the US, or people with job skills that are highly sought after. All past restrictions that target specific groups were thrown out
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President Ronald Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act. Gives green cards to about 2.7 million immigrants. It is the largest single moment of legalization in American history
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Sen. Ted Kennedy introduces, and congress passes The Immigration Act of 1990, which increases the number of legal immigrants to 700,000 - an increase of 40%
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14,3% of the total American population is foreign born melting pot