So Many Things I Haven't Thought About Before

This morning I found information in Familysearch.org about other immigrant ships coming into Baltimore, and reading, found the following paragraph:

     "The passenger arrival list was used by legal inspectors to cross-examine each immigrant during a legal inspection prior to the person being allowed to live in America. Only two percent of the prospective immigrants were denied entry. The information was supplied by the immigrant or a traveling companion (usually a family member). Incorrect information was occasionally given, or mistakes may have been made when the clerk guessed at the spelling of foreign names."

This explains how Anders Anderson became Andrew Lundwall, and how Anders Ekekvist became Andrew Ekquist. If you are looking for other ancestors, don't forget to use as many different spellings of names as you can imagine.

Have you ever wondered what our ancestors needed to come to America? Did they need a green card? What did they need to come to America?

I looked for the history of immigration and found this at:
        http://news.yahoo.com/immigration-green-cards-citizenship-121159749.html

                                          HISTORY: DOING THE WAVE

The U.S. is in its fourth and largest immigration wave.

First came the Colonial era, then an 1820-1870 influx of newcomers mostly from Northern and Western Europe. Most were Germans and Irish, but the gold rush and jobs on the transcontinental railroad also attracted Chinese immigrants.

In the 1870s, immigration declined due to economic problems and restrictive legislation.

The third wave, between 1881 and 1920, brought more than 23 million people to the U.S., mostly from Southern and Eastern Europe, aided by cheaper trans-Atlantic travel and lured by employers seeking workers.

Then came the Great Depression and more restrictive immigration laws, and immigration went into decline for decades.

The fourth wave, still underway, began in 1965 with the end of immigration limits based on nationality. Foreign-born people made up 1 in 20 residents of the U.S. in 1960; today, the figure is about 1 in 8.

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HISTORY: HERE A LAW, THERE A LAW

Until the late 1800s, immigration was largely a free-for-all. Then came country-by-country limits. Since then, big changes in U.S. immigration law have helped produce big shifts in migration patterns.

Among the more notable laws:

—1965 Immigration and Nationality Act: Abolished country-by-country limits, established a new system that determined immigration preference based on family relationships and needed skills, and expanded the categories of family members who could enter without numerical limits.

—1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act: Legalized about 2.7 million immigrants living in the U.S. illegally, 84 percent of them from Mexico and Central America.

—1990 Immigration Act: Increased worldwide immigration limit to a "flexible cap" of 675,000 a year. The number can go higher in some years if there are unused visas available from the previous year.

—1996 Immigrant Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act. Expanded possible reasons for deporting people or ruling them ineligible to enter the U.S., expedited removal procedures, gave state and local police power to enforce immigration laws.

—Post-2001: In 2001, talk percolated about a new immigration plan to deal with unauthorized immigrants, guest workers and violence along the Mexican border. But the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks of 2001 put an end to that, amid growing unease over illegal immigration."

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All our ancestors needed to legally immigrate was the decision to come, save enough money for the boat, and the courage to board the boat to find a new life in "Amerika."