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Immigrants of the U.S.

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Submitted By tipsyrools
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Immigrants of the U.S. As defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the definition of an immigrant is “a person who comes to a country to take up permanent residence”. Therefore, immigration in Unites States’ history dates all the way back to 1565 and the first European settlement in America or what they deemed as the ‘New World’ at the time. People choose to immigrate to other countries for various reasons, whether it is for safety, a chance at a new life, to experience another culture, or even just for the desire to explore the world. This essay focuses on the broad history of immigration in the United States, the various stakeholders’ in the issue and their stances and arguments, as well as organizing these arguments into different categories. The first wave of migration to hit America was The Great Migration that lasted between 1630 and 1640, a decade in which over twenty thousand Puritans escaped from Britain to America due to the disputes between the Puritans and King Charles I and Parliament. Between the 17th and 18th centuries, hundreds of thousands of immigrants arrived in America in order to colonize, with over half of the immigrants coming as indentured servants to the wealthier colonizers. These immigrants came from all across Europe and were all focused on establishing themselves as early as possible in America and to hopefully become rich and famous. The first stakeholder in the issue of immigration in the United States was the government and in particular, nativists. This is seen when the first law established that limited or restricted immigration to the United States was the Naturalization Act of 1790, which stated that only free white persons of good moral character were allowed to migrate to the United States. Five years later, the Naturalization Act of 1795 was established which replaced the Naturalization Act of 1790 and added that the time

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