Answer:
individuals arrived in the British colonies via two very different paths. Some were forced to immigrate, either through transportation or slavery, while others came voluntarily. “Transportation,” a criminal term for forced emigration, allowed Britain to expel its social undesirables, criminals, and others to populate its North American colonies. In practice, criminals sentenced to death could either choose transportation or hanging, and so forced emigration was a common choice since death was the only punishment for a felony conviction under English common law. In North America, transported persons began landing in British colonies as early as 1615.
Step-by-step explanation:
more than 86 million people have legally immigrated to the United States between 1783 and 2019. The legal regime under which they immigrated has changed radically over that time; the politics surrounding those changes have remained contentious, and past immigration policies inform the current political debate. Conflicting visions and piecemeal legislation have left the United States with an archaic and barely coherent immigration system with outdated policy objectives that is primarily controlled by the executive branch of government. We review the history of U.S. immigration policy, including the legal controversies that empowered Congress with its immigration plenary power and the historical policy decisions that still guide the U.S. immigration system, in order to contextualize the current political debate over immigration at the beginning of the Biden administration.