Speech #680070832

Mr. President. it is not possible to understand the immigration problem without having some understanding of the immigration that has come to this country since the discovery of America. Most of us have the impression that the flow of immigrants into the United States was very considerable prior to the American Revolution. but that impression is clearly wrong. There were only 80.000 immigrants into the present area of the United States within the first two centuries and a half after America was known. Yet that was a very sturdy stock. Those 80.000 immigrants grew by natural processes to 1.000.000 persons in 1740. There was not much immigration from then on until 1790. although we did receive a considerable number of socalled ScotchIrish. who were mostly border Scotchmen and Englishmen who had temporarily settled in Ireland. and then came to the United States. Prior to the Revolution there was a considerable immigration of those people. When the first census was taken in 1790 there were then In the United States 8.929.214 persons. Most of them were the descendants of those original 80.000 immigrants. and the remainder of them were immigrants who had come in. almost entirely from Great Britain. in the two or three decades before the War of the Revolution. So that the 3.900.000 persons living in the United States in 1790 were almost entirely of British or Irish origin. There were a few from the Rhenish provinces of Germany. there were a few French and a very few Spanish. but. practically speaking. our population In 1790 was British and Irish.