Abstract
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>Constitutional arrangements of governmental power can become entrenched, determining who enjoys fundamental liberties. Americans hold as an article of faith that in past immigration history, hardy risk takers were admitted and could live where they wanted, until the federal government started enforcing borders in the late nineteenth century. This was not the historical reality. Colonies and states legally denied free mobility and settlement in their territory to unwanted populations for over a century. The borders were certainly “open” to the forced importation of enslaved people. However, states restricted the native-born, free African Americans from interstate travel and settlement until the passage of the Reconstruction Amendments clarified US citizenship’s coverage. Native Americans, the original occupants and owners of the land who are not migrants, lost their bid to remain on their ancestral lands as the US expanded, fueled by the migrations of Europeans and enslaved people. Migration and the Origins of American Citizenship examines why a specific division of labor between the national and state governments endured for over a century, why it changed in the late nineteenth century, and what it meant for people subject to those regimes of control. Drawing together into one study the migration policy histories of groups of people that are usually studied separately and combining the methodologies of political science (American Political Development), history, and law reveal the unmistakable effects of slavery and Native American dispossession on the operations of federalism in US immigration policy.</jats:p>