The historical trajectory of immigration law in the United States represents a complex intersection of economic necessity, racial ideology, and the progressive centralization of federal authority. Far from being a consistent narrative of welcoming the “huddled masses,” the legal framework governing entry into the American polity has functioned as a sophisticated mechanism of demographic and social engineering. Since the pre-colonial era, the movement of people—whether voluntary, coerced, or entirely forced—has been regulated to serve the shifting requirements of a burgeoning agrarian society, an industrializing power, and eventually a modern security state. This analysis explores the legal and enforcement mechanisms that defined American identity from the arrival of the first European settlers and enslaved Africans to the contemporary era of biometric surveillance and mass deportation operations, emphasizing the enduring link between labor exploitation and racial hierarchy.