>>17782063
US immigration before the 1890's required literacy in english, qualifications in a trade or business and money to get you on your feet. Virtually nobody entering the US today would pass this.

It's very easy to disprove that say, jews and italians were legal, because they never bothered to learn english. The largest newspaper in the US in the 20's for example was a yiddish communist revolutionary paper that stayed in circulation because nobody knew what it said.