Millions of men and women from around the world decide to immigrate to the United States every year. That the country’s fast development owes a lot to immigration is an undeniable and significant fact. Like many other settler societies, the United States, before gaining independence and afterwards, was heavily dependent on the newcomers from abroad to populate its open and unsettled lands. The USA shared the historical reality of other nations like South Africa, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Argentina.
The first, and longest, period stretched from the 17th through the early 19th century. Immigrants flooded the US territory from a range of geographical locations, including Germany, France and the Netherlands. Other nationalities also tried their luck in America. Among them were Jews and Poles but the majority over this period came from the British isles. Even though the USA had not yet been shaped up as a nation, various types of documents had to be translated so that the Europeans could to take advantage of the modernization of the newly forming economy. Those employers who were going to hire people under specific time and condition required from them to present Certified Translation of a number of documents. What they received in return were small strips of land which they were supposed to cultivate or simply sell at a profit.
There were not so many immigrants coming to the USA in the period up to the 19th century. Notably, a new era began after 1820 which marked the period of mass migration continuing to the 1880s. Throughout this period about 15 million immigrants entered the United States. Whereas some of them headed for New York, Boston and Philadelphia, other decided to settle in the agricultural Northeast and Midwest. As many of them brought their whole families with them they needed various certificates to be translated. The two most important ones were the Marriage License Translation and the Birth Certificate Translation. As the demand for immigrant labor increased the immigrant waves formed two movements: the industrial development was centered in New England and focused on the textile production while the American Midwest was populated with the building of the Erie Canal in 1825.
Immigrants clustered in particular neighborhoods, cities, and regions. In the middle of the 19th century the American Midwest was considered to be one of the most fertile agricultural areas so immigrant from Denmark, Norway, Germany and Sweden were quick to populate it. The Protestant USA witnessed the arrival and settlement of many Catholics throughout this period. Most of them were Irish and they inspired the nation’s first serious antipathy to immigrants in general with a fear of Catholicism.
In the years before the U.S. Civil War a political party called the Know Nothings sprang up and made anti-immigration and anti-Catholicism central to its political agenda. The American Civil War caused the death of many of these people. Thus they had to certify the dead of their relatives so they relied on the expertise of Death Certificate Translation service. But as many people died many new arrived too and a small portion of them were from China. As most Native-born Americans had negative feelings toward those Chinese they founded a political formation called Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 which passed a restrictive policy against the Chinese.