alt Hacker News> for centuries until very recently most Americans readily recognized the value and necessity of recruiting foreign people into various posts.
You forgot to mention that, for those centuries, US immigration was effectively whites-only, until the 1965 Hart-Celler act (that politicians promised wouldn't change this!): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hart-Celler_Act
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walrus01 • today at 2:08 PM
And in the same era in Canada: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Immigration_Act,_1923
jeffbee • today at 2:21 PM
Lol no. For almost the entire 20th century, until 1992, Filipinos could just join the Navy or Coast Guard at foreign recruiting posts, without even being American residents, then get fast-tracked for citizenship.
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parineum • today at 4:06 PM
You forgot to mention that those people weren't considered "white" at the time.
I think you're conflating naturalization/citizenship with immigration.
The Naturalization Act of 1790 (and subsequent) acts said you had to be white and have lived in the US for X years already to become a citizen. [1]
However, per your cited article a law was passed in 1882 to decrease Chinese immigration (who famously immigrated and helped build our railroads). [2] The Chinese immigrants couldn't become citizens but there was nothing (at the time) stopping them from moving and living and working in the US. [3]
Anecdotally and more recently: my Mexican grandmother, who married my World War 2 veteran grandfather in Mexico, legally immigrated just fine in the 1950s.
But, yes, most immigration was Europeans and African slaves but probably that was because it was expensive unless you effectively sold yourself. [4]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalization_Act_of_1790
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Exclusion_Act
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/19th-century_Chinese_immigrati...
[4] https://www.history.com/articles/u-s-immigration-before-1965...