American immigration history can be viewed in four epochs: the colonial period, the mid-19th century, the start of the 20th century, and post-1965. Each period brought distinct national groups, races and ethnicities to the United States. During the 17th century, approximately 400,000 English people migrated to Colonial America.Over half of all European immigrants to Colonial America during the 17th and 18th centuries arrived as indentured servants. The mid-19th century saw mainly an influx from northern Europe; the early 20th-century mainly from Southern and Eastern Europe; post-1965 mostly from Latin America and Asia.
Immigrants arriving at Ellis Island, 1902
Historians estimate that fewer than 1 million immigrants came to the United States from Europe between 1600 and 1799.[15] The 1790 Act limited naturalization to "free white persons"; it was expanded to include blacks in the 1860s and Asians in the 1950s.[16] In the early years of the United States, immigration was fewer than 8,000 people a year,[17] including French refugees from the slave revolt in Haiti. After 1820, immigration gradually increased. From 1836 to 1914, over 30 million Europeans migrated to the United States.[18] The death rate on these transatlantic voyages was high, during which one in seven travelers died.[19] In 1875, the nation passed its first immigration law, the Page Act of 1875.[20]