First, it is important to look back at U.S. immigration law. In the beginning, the United States did not have limits on immigration. The earliest law, passed in 1790, was a naturalization law declaring that only free Whites of “good moral character” could be naturalized and that a person born in the United States was a citizen only if his or her father was a U.S. citizen. So, any free White person could apply to be naturalized after two years. There was no quota placed on the number of immigrants. This is important, since many people want to claim their ancestors arrived here “legally,” implying some legal limit existed that they obeyed.
