Congress passed its first naturalization law 228 years ago on March 26, 1790. The Naturalization Act of 1790 was the most open naturalization law in the world at the time, allowing free white persons of good character to naturalize after two years of residence in the country and one year of residence in a particular state. Denying citizenship to American Indians, free blacks, indentured servants, and others who did not count as free white persons was a great injustice, but the 1790 Act was an improvement over other countries at the time that also limited naturalization based on gender, skill, or religion in addition to race. Although the Naturalization Act of 1790 did place some restrictions on who could become a citizen, it placed no restrictions on who could enter the United States. The Supreme Court largely corrected Congress’ error in 1898 in its United States v. Wong Kim Ark decision when it ruled that children of immigrants, including non-whites, were also citizens if they were born in the United States.
The Western world had a long legal, social, and ethical tradition of openness to immigrants and naturalization that culminated in some of the best portions of the American immigration system. Hillsdale College history professor Bradley J. Birzer wrote a wonderful essay for The American Conservative in January that showed that our civilizational heritage is replete with relatively open borders and the unencumbered movement of people across them with few practical restrictions, with the United States as a recent inheritor of such thought. Although Greeks and Romans both had liberal migration systems, there were important distinctions between Roman and Greek practices of naturalization and citizenship. The American Founding Fathers decidedly favored a model close to that of the Romans over that of the more restrictive Greeks.