[muawiyah]

The system started in the immediate post WWI era, barely a century. You have to recall that for most of our history most of the people coming here didn't want to be here!

Obviously they were stupid ~ but we had to GIVE stuff to wheat farmers in Europe to move here!

Most of my own lineages are made up of people who were here as early as the mid 1500s ~ and that's just rare as all get out ~ seriously. Big time immigration didn't show up until the early 1800s when two decisions were made ~ (1) to allow Catholics to move here, and (2) to give away land.

Mind you not all the Catholics in the world came here ~ and not all the landless poor did either, but there was plenty of hard work for everyone who did and a chance to become an important person, or maybe even wealthy.

For the greater part of our history you couldn't pay a Mexican enough to come here ~

[Verginius Rufus]

I don't know where you got your information about Catholics not being allowed to move here until the early 1800s. Maryland was started as a refuge for Catholics by Lord Baltimore in the 1600s. William Penn allowed Catholics to settle in colonial Pennsylvania. Charles Carroll of Carrolton, one of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence, was a Catholic and one of the richest men in America--a Maryland plantation owner. His relative Daniel Carroll was a signer of the US Constitution and also a Catholic.

The Homestead Act did not get passed until the Civil War--but there were plenty of immigrants before then, and some of them bought farmland.