What the Declaration of Independence Said About Migration and Citizenship

The Declaration of Independence is essentially a list of colonial grievances against King George III and enumerated reasons why the colonists were breaking away from Britain. I’ve described it to my student as a political “Dear John” letter. On America’s birthday, I thought I’d revisit how the colonists were big mad about citizenship and migration issues since I just published Migration and the Origins of American Citizenship.

Among the many things that angered the colonists enough to declare independence were citizenship and migration concerns. These appear as distinct line items. A section in the Declaration reads:

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

It may surprise you that instead of open borders, there were large bodies of colonial laws sifting people. There were recruitment laws providing incentives for voluntary migration because the big imperative was to populate the land. A population was needed to farm the land into productivity and to defend against Native Americans whose territory colonists were encroaching on. When providing incentives like 50 to 100 acres of free land for every arriving voluntary migrant was not enough from the standpoint of colonial leaders, colonial assemblies passed importation laws to import European indentured servants who willingly signed away a part of their time and labor for the price of passage, and African people who in no way consented to their being carried to the colonies and locked into a system of hereditary racial slavery. Of course the colonies didn’t just want any warm body. There were restrictionist laws banning odious convicts, and, at a time where government welfare programs were not in place, any visibly poor, sickly, or disabled person who might become a public charge, and other unwanted groups like Quakers and Catholics. (The public charge exclusion is still in US immigration law today.)

On paper, the British metropole was politically supreme to the North American mainland colonies. But an essential element of of colonial migration and citizenship was that colonies enjoyed de facto independence in each fashioning their own migration and citizenship laws while the Crown and Parliament were laissez faire about these laws from the colonies inception until around the 1680s. This long period, where custom and common practice had allowed local colonial control over their international and internal borders, created political conflict when the arrangement changed. When politics in London and international political economy led King George III and Parliament to crack down on colonial migration and citizenship laws by disallowing a number of them.

Naturalization

Naturalization, the legal procedure by which a non-English person became an Englishman or woman, was a popular and effective colonial recruitment for drawing voluntary migration. It was powerful migration incentive for non-English Europeans because putting on the same plane as an Englishman or women meant they could more easily own land, and bequeath land to their heirs. In the colonies, naturalization was quick and fast, sometimes with large mass naturalization ceremonies. Under British law, naturalization was far more complicated and entailed multiple years of residency and going to London for the procedure. Around 1680, the King and Parliament tightened the naturalization procedures and the colonists were very upset at losing their valuable migration recruitment tool.

Native American lands and enslaved insurrections

The imperial crackdown on naturalization came amidst imperial authorities disallowing a flurry of other colonial migration laws. Let’s take a look at another line in the Declaration of Independence.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

What is this section about? Slavery and colonists’ ability to migrate and settle on Native American land.

First, slavery. South Carolina was a colony in which sections of the colony had areas where enslaved Africans outnumbered European migrants by a large margin. South Carolina and other slave colonies tried to pass laws to slow the rate of enslaved importation. The colony did so not out of moral misgivings of the trade in human, but because they feared the possibility of enslaved insurrections. South Carolina passed a law placing a high tax on ship captains importing enslaved people also because the colony was trying to manipulate the price of tobacco through the supply of laborers picking the crop. Because the Britain had recently directly entered the lucrative slave trade, the metropole disallowed these colonial laws as an interference with international trade.

The colonists were livid, believing King George III was indifferent to their internal security and barging in on migration laws that the colonies had run by themselves for a very long time.

Now about Native American land. The many wars the British fought with powerful Native confederations were taxing the personnel and coffers of the far away central government in London. King George III, in a futile effort to stop the military conflict between colonial settlers and Native Americans, tried to pass the Proclamation Line of 1763 and similar laws. In passing a law creating the Proclamation Line, King George forbade colonists from going into and settling west of the Appalachian mountains. He intended to keep the settlers and Native Americans apart. The law was a dismal failure given the colonists’ land lust and the fact that they believed they had helped Britain win the Seven Years War against Native people and that land was their reward. The colonists were furious and believed that the Crown had taken the side of Native Americans over the interests and well-being of the colonists.

The history of colonial migration and citizenship is quite complex and I can’t cover it in this post. Plus, I promised my friend I’d bring donuts to her party today. I hope you’ll check out Migration and the Origins of American Citizenship or to get your public or academic library to order it. The colonial chapter of my book is where this material came from. Happy Fourth to you and yours. May our republic not only survive, but thrive.