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Christopher Columbus landed in the Bahamas in 1492. He quickly took over the area and started a legacy of Europeans brutalizing native people with warfare and disease.
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Jamestown Virginia was the first successful colony in the New World
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Millions of Africans were stolen from their lands and forced across the Atlantic to work for free on plantations in the Southern US, the Caribbean, and Brazil.
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Tens of Thousands of Europeans, mostly British Puritans but also Dutch and German immigrants, came to the US, mainly to escape religious persecution
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Throughout the 18th century, many Scottish and Irish immigrants settled inland in PA and deep into the south along the appalachians
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Throughout the 18th century, Spaniards and Native Mexicans crossed into what is now the American Southwest. Also, French people settled along the Mississippi from New Orleans to the Great Lakes region.
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Irish were mainly unskilled laborers in the industrial revolution in urban areas. Germans were mainly farmers in the midwest or craftsmen in cities. Chinese began to cross pacific to work as laborers, mainly on the Trans Continental Railroad.
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Outlawed Asian contract laborers from immigrating to US
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Large, Steam powered ships replaced sailboats, which made it much faster and cheaper to come to the US
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Italians, Poles, Swedes, Norwegians, Greeks, Hungarians, Jews
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Set limits on the number of immigrants allowed into the country each year
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Also, undocumented immigrants were made subject to deportation
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Mexicans were allowed in to fill jobs left open by white soldiers in WW2
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Police officers stopped any 'mexican looking people' and if they didn't have their documents they were arrested and deported
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replaced the old quota system with a policy that gives preference to immigrants with relatives in the US or sought after job skills
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Gave green cards to 2.7 million immigrants
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Increased the number of legal immigrants allowed into the country