Carlos Bulosan, a Filipino migrant worker, emerged as one of America’s most respected writers and labor activists during the 1940s.
Read the full storyThe Burlingame Treaty between the United States and China (1868) granted “free migration and immigration” to the Chinese.
Read the full storyGiovanni Caboto, one of the ablest seamen of his day, spent the last years of his life searching for a northwestern route to the Indies.
Read the full storyThe discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill in the Sacramento Valley of California in January 1848 enticed thousands of immigrants from around the world.
Read the full storyThere was virtually no Cambodian immigration to North America prior to 1975. As a result of the Vietnam War (1964–1975) and subsequent regional fighting, large numbers of Cambodians were granted refugee status by both the United States and Canada.
Read the full storyCanada has frequently been referred to as “a nation of immigrants,” though the percentage of immigrants has always been less than the term would suggest.
Read the full storyFrom the earliest period of European settlement in North America in the 17th century, France and England both found it difficult to attract settlers to the cold northern colonies that eventually became Canada.
Read the full storyAlthough Cape Verdeans have never constituted a large immigrant group in North America, they formed an important cog in the 19th-century Atlantic whaling industry before finally settling in New England.
Read the full storyThe Carolina colony, later divided, was the gift of Charles II (r. 1660–85) to eight loyal courtiers who had followed him into exile during the English Civil War.
Read the full storyThe rapid influx of Irish, German, and Chinese immigrants into the United States after 1845 was accompanied by a series of steamship disasters and the prevalence of cholera, typhus, and smallpox among arriving immigrants.
Read the full storyThe French king Francis I’s (r. 1515–47) search for a seasoned mariner to lead his country’s challenge to Spain and Portugal in the recently discovered Americas brought to the forefront Jacques Cartier.
Read the full storyCastle Garden was the first formal immigrant depot of the United States, operating from 1855 until 1892 at the southern tip of New York’s Manhattan Island.
Read the full storyThe United States and Canada each conduct a national census every 10 years for the purpose of gaining reliable statistics on their evolving populations.
Read the full storySamuel de Champlain was the principal founder of New France and the first European explorer of much of modern Quebec and Ontario.
Read the full storyCesar Chavez became the most visible public spokesman for the rights of migrant farmworkers in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s and the first national symbol of the Mexican-American labor community.
Read the full story