March 2, 1819
Congress passed the Steerage Act of 1819, the first US immigration law, which reformed the chaotic passenger trade to America. After the Peace Treaty of Vienna in 1809 ended the Napoleonic Wars in Europe, immigration to the New World, interrupted by the war, boomed. Ship-owners crammed their vessels to the limit with human cargo; this overcrowding, coupled with shortages of food and water, caused the outbreak of disease and death. The new law specified that any vessel which arrived at an American port could not carry more “than two persons for every five tons of such ship or vessel, according to customhouse measurement.”
March 2, 1907
The Expatriation Act, which became law on this day, contained a provision that stripped the citizenship from U.S. women who married foreign nationals. This provision was repealed by the Cable Act on September 22, 1922.
