Throughout history, there were lots of immigration waves to the US. Everything dates back to 1607, but since it was mainly undocumented, we don't know a lot about that period. In the second wave (the 1830s-1880s) most of the immigrants came from Germany, Ireland and the UK. For example, the German immigrants travelled to the USA to buy farms and all of this resulted in anti-immigrant sentiment. The next wave came in 1892 and this wave is separated by the fact of opening the Ellis island. This was the place where 12 million immigrants passed through in the period of 62 years. Near the Ellis island, there was a statue built to symbolize freedom and democracy, the Statue of Liberty. Currently, on Ellis Island, there is a museum running that was opened in 1990. You can visit their website on https://www.libertyellisfoundation.org/immigration-museum. If you look at the graphs of immigration waves, then you can see a large decline after 1924. This was because of the Reed-Johnson Immigration Act, which limited the number of immigrants allowed entry into the US through a national origins quota. In the present day, the US has more immigrants than any other country. About half of the current immigrants are Mexican and this has come to the attention recently due to Donald Trump addressing this situation. The suggestion of building a wall near the American-Mexican border didn't work out since the wall should have cut through homes and mountains and that is why the plan has failed.
