Immigration

The busiest day at Ellis Island was April 17, 1907, when 11,747 immigrants passed through the processing center to enter the United States. Nearly 1.3 million immigrants came to the U.S. that year—a record for highest volume of immigrants that held until 1990. Like immigrants ...read more

How “Roman” was the Roman Empire? Well, by some measures: not very. As the Roman emperors sought to expand and strengthen their empire, they recognized that immigration was a means for both. Although the Roman elites sneered at immigrants, the emperors welcomed them into the ...read more

Near the westernmost point of the border between the United States and Canada, the Peace Arch straddles the world’s longest undefended international boundary. The inscription atop the monument honors the friendship between two “children of a common mother,” but this was not ...read more

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, large numbers of people from northern and western Europe traveled in overcrowded ships to immigrate to the United States. They arrived to escape famine and religious discrimination, to buy farmland and cash in on the ...read more

It’s one of the United States’ best-known rights: automatic citizenship to all born within its borders. But birthright citizenship hasn’t always been the rule of the land in the U.S., and the legal concept has faced plenty of challenges over the century. Here’s the story of ...read more

Before Texas was a U.S. state, it was its own independent nation where both Mexicans and white immigrants were citizens. But during the nine years that the Republic of Texas existed, Mexicans became outsiders as white settlers made it more difficult for them to vote and hold ...read more

On October 7, 1885, Friedrich Trump, a 16-year-old German barber, bought a one-way ticket for America, escaping three years of compulsory German military service. He had been a sickly child, unsuited to hard labor, and feared the effects of the draft. It might have been illegal, ...read more

Desperate to escape Nazi persecution during World War II, Anne Frank’s family tried repeatedly to flee to the United States before going into hiding in 1942, according to new researchpublished this week. However, the combination of Nazi rule, World War II bombing and American ...read more

The founding fathers set a high standard of ideals for the new nation to live up to back in 1776. But from the very beginning, debate about the best way to do that has been an inherent part of the American experiment. Since its founding, the United States has had both high and ...read more

More than 12 million immigrants passed through Ellis Island between 1892 and 1954—with a whopping 1,004,756 entering the United States in 1907 alone. And yet, even during these days of peak immigration, for most passengers hoping to establish new lives in the United States, the ...read more

Tweets and accusations of “fake news” may be issued from the White House today, but in April 1917, the U.S. government created a whole committee to influence media and shape popular opinion. When the United States declared war on Germany in April 1917, President Woodrow Wilson ...read more

In a recent interview, White House chief of staff John Kelly told NPR that undocumented immigrants are “not people that would easily assimilate into the United States, into our modern society.” And he listed a few reasons why: “They’re overwhelmingly rural people,” he said. “In ...read more

The border between the United States and Mexico stretches for nearly 2,000 miles from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean and touches the states of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. The Rio Grande runs along 1,254 miles of the border, but west of El Paso, Texas, the ...read more

Donald Trump’s decision to send National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexican border is only the latest in a long history of U.S. militarization of its national boundaries.   In fact, America’s southern border—which has shifted multiple times with U.S. expansion—was arguably formed ...read more

In March 2018, the Commerce Department controversially announced that it would include a question on citizenship in the 2020 census—the first such question to be asked of all U.S. households since 1950, and one that at least 12 states say they would sue over. The census, a ...read more

July is scorching in Mexicali. The Mexican city just across the border from Calexico, California, averages 108 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer, but temperatures often swell into the 120s. In 1955, thousands of disoriented people roamed the city’s streets as the sun bore down on ...read more

Debates over immigration policy have assumed center stage in Washington and have even contributed to a government shutdown. President Donald Trump and his conservative allies want to put an end to “chain migration” that he says allows “truly evil” people into the United States. ...read more

The Past in Colorfeatures the work of colorist Marina Amaral, bringing to life black and white photos with color applied digitally. The German barber, restaurant-owner and property speculator Friedrich Trump and his young wife Elisabeth did not intend to spend their married life ...read more