Comment by hash872

I'm a little confused. It's possible to be very pedantic and say that the current immigration law only dates back to the 60s, but the population of the United States is 97.9% not from this continent. There was a wave of British, Spanish, and French immigration in the 17th & 18th centuries, followed by Germans, Italians, and Irish in the 19th & 20th. In the 19th century the legal regime about immigration was literally 'open borders', there were hardly any legal controls at all. The vast vast majority of us are the descendants of immigrants (my apologies if you personally are 100% Native American, didn't mean to lump you in)