American Immigration History

Ellis Island is recognized throughout the world as a symbol of American Immigration, but passengers were arriving through the Port of New York for more than a century before Ellis Island opened in 1892. Use the template below to search for possible matching records indexed and scanned as part of the Ancestry.com Immigration Collection.

— Passenger Lists and Immigration Records Online —
	First Name (Optional)	Last Name	Ship Name (Optional)
Approximate Year of Arrival  from to

Timeline of American Immigration History (1915-1954)

• 1815 — The first great wave of immigration begins, bringing 5 million immigrants through 1860
• 1818 — Liverpool becomes the most-used port of departure for Irish and British immigrants
• 1819 — First federal legislation on immigration requires notation of passenger lists
• 1820 — US population is 9.6 million, about 151,000 new immigrants arrive in 1820 alone
• 1825 — Great Britain decrees that England is overpopulated and repeals laws prohibiting
              emigration, the first group of Norwegian immigrants arrive
• 1846 — Crop failures in Europe, mortgage foreclosures send tens of thousands of dispossessed
              to the United States
• 1846 — Irish of all classes emigrate to the United States as a result of the potato famine
• 1848 — German political refugees emigrate following the failure of a revolution
• 1862 — The Homestead Act encourages naturalization by granting citizens title to 160 acres
• 1875 — First limitations on immigration. Residency permits required of Asians
• 1880 — The U.S. population is 50,155,783 in 1880, more than 5.2 million immigrants
              enter the country between 1880 and 1890
• 1882 — Chinese exclusion law is established, Russian anti-Semitism prompts a sharp
              rise in Jewish emigration
• 1890 — New York is home to as many Germans as Hamburg, Germany
• 1891 — The Bureau of Immigration is established. Congress adds health qualifications
              to immigration restrictions
• 1892 — Ellis Island replaces Castle Garden
• 1894 — To escape Moslem massacres, Armenian Christians emigrate through 1896
• 1897 — Pine-frame buildings on Ellis Island are burned to the ground in a disastrous fire
• 1900 — The U.S. population is 75,994,575, more than 3,687,000 immigrants were admitted
              in the previous ten years. Ellis Island reopens with brick and ironwork structures
• 1906 — Bureau of Immigration is established
• 1910 — The Mexican Revolution sends thousands to the United States seeking employment
• 1914 — Through 1918, World War I halts a period of mass migration to the United States
• 1921 — The first quantitave immigration law sets temporary annual quotas
              according to nationality, Immigration drops off
• 1924 — The National Origins Act establishes a discriminatory quota system.
              The Border Patrol is established
• 1940 — The Alien Registration Act calls for registration and fingerprinting of all aliens.
              Approximately 5 million aliens register
• 1946 — The War Brides Act facilitates the immigration of foreign-born wives,
              fiances, husbands, and children of U.S. Armed Forces personnel
• 1952 — The Immigration and Naturalization Act brings into one comprehensive statute
              the multiple laws that govern immigration and naturalization to date
• 1954 — Ellis Island closes, marking an end to mass immigration