Immigration—Almost Four Hundred Years of American History - Coming To America

America, from its very beginning, has been a land of immigrants. People have come from all nations seeking free choice of worship, escape from cruel governments, and relief from war, famine, or poverty. All came with dreams of a better life for themselves and their families. America has accommodated these people of diverse backgrounds, customs, and beliefs, although not without considerable friction along the way.

On the eastern shore of the peninsula that is now Florida, Spanish conquistadors established a settlement in 1565. The city of St. Augustine survived to become the oldest continuously occupied settlement of European origin in North America. However, the series of northern colonies gained far more attention in history. In his book Immigration: From the Founding of Virginia to the Closing of Ellis Island (New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2002), Dennis Wepman chronicles the immigrants who built America. Not long after English settlers established the first permanent colony on the James River in 1607, the French developed a settlement on the St. Lawrence River in what is now Canada. Dutch explorers soon built a fur-trading post along the Hudson River. Swedes settled on the Delaware River. German Quakers and Mennonites joined William Penn's experimental Pennsylvania colony. Jews from Brazil, Protestant Huguenots from France, Puritans and Catholics from England all came to escape persecution for their religious beliefs and practices.

During the colonial period, many immigrants came as indentured servants, required to work for four to seven years to earn back the cost of their passage. To the great aggravation of the colonists, some were convicts who accepted being shipped across the ocean as an alternative to imprisonment or death. In his book, Wepman estimated that as many as fifty thousand British felons were sent to the colonies. The first Africans arrived at Jamestown in 1619 as indentured servants but other Africans were soon brought in chains to be slaves.

The continual ebb and flow of immigrants provided settlers to develop communities along the Atlantic coast, pioneers to push the United States westward, builders for the Erie Canal and the transcontinental railways, pickers for cotton in the South and vegetables in the Southwest, laborers for American industrialization, and intellectuals in all fields. Together, these immigrants have built, in the opinion of many people, the most diverse and exciting nation in the world.

According to the 1790 census, the United States had a population of 3.2 million white persons and 757,206 slaves (Campbell Gibson and Kay Jung, Historical Census Statistics on Population Totals by Race, 1790 to 1990, and by Hispanic Origin, 1790 to 1990, For the United States, Regions, Division, and States, Washington, DC: Population Bureau, U.S. Census Bureau, September 2002). All were immigrants or descendants of earlier seventeenth- and eighteenth-century arrivals. The population was predominantly English seasoned with people of German, Irish, Scottish, Dutch, French, and Spanish descent. Native Americans were not counted.