The United States experienced major waves of immigration during the colonial era, the first part of the 19th century and from the 1880s to 1920. Many immigrants came to America seeking greater economic opportunity, while some, such as the Pilgrims in the early 1600s, arrived in search of religious freedom. From the 17th to 19th centuries, hundreds of thousands of African slaves came to America against their will. The first significant federal legislation restricting immigration was the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act. Individual states regulated immigration prior to the 1892 opening of Ellis Island, the country’s first federal immigration station. New laws in 1965 ended the quota system that favored European immigrants, and today, the majority of the country’s immigrants hail from Asia and Latin America.
The British were taxing the tea and being violent towards the colonists so the colonist got mad and dressed as Indians and threw all the tea in the harbor
Due to geopolitical reasons, most of emigration out of Africa and Middle East have been to the Western Hemisphere; instead of the East. Adding the original native Americans in the Americas, the Western Hemisphere is currently much more diverse than the East.
