US Migration Timeline

This period is often ignored, but shapes much our modern immigration policy. Covered in this period:

• 1850: Know Nothing Party Founded

• 1861 – 1865: US Civil War

• 1863 – 1877: Reconstruction Era

  • 1870, 1871 Enforcement Acts of 1870, 1871 (Klan Acts) 

• 1894: Immigration Restriction League founded

• 1898: Spanish-American War

  • 1898 Treaty of Paris-- Spain ceded ownership of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines to the United States and granted the United States temporary control of Cuba. The cession of the Philippines involved payment of $20 million ($700 million today) to Spain by the U.S. to cover infrastructure owned by Spain.

  • The Large Policy: How the Spanish-American War laid the groundwork for American empire.

• 1901 - 1905 Insular Cases

  • dpla -- American Empire

• 1910 – 1930: Great Migration of African Americans from the South

• 1914 – 1918: WWI (US enters in 1917)

• 1920 -- Passport System Instituted 

  • The Contentious History of the Passport

  • A Brief History of the Passport

  • Viyas Mongia, R. (2003). Race, Nationality, Mobility: A History of the Passport. In A. Burton (Ed.), After the Imperial Turn: Thinking with and through the Nation (pp. 196-214). New York, USA: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822384397-014 

  • https://youtu.be/oZiIaOXh7J0 

  • A Short history and origins of Passport

• 1924: Immigration Act of 1924

Closed-Door Period

• 1929 - 1939: Great Depression

• 1939 – 1945: WWII (US enters in Dec 1941)

• 1941 – 1970: Second Great Migration African Americans (5 million+ to North, Midwest, and West)

• 1942 - 1964: Bracero Program

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• 1943: Repeal of Chinese Exclusion Act (aka Magnusson Act)

• 1948: Operation Bootstrap begun in Puerto Rico

  • • Puerto Rico’s Operation Bootstrap

    • Operation Bootstrap -- Lehman College

• 1954: “Operation Wetback” (Deportation of 1,075,168 Mexicans)

• 1955 – 1968: American Civil Rights Movement

• 1959: Cuban Revolution (Batista is ousted)