If you are a descendant of an undocumented immigrants, post here.

[hedgehog]

Grandpa lied about his age at Ellis Island, Grandma snuck over the border at Niagara Falls.


They also harbored undocumented aliens into the 50's.....

Happy Thanksgiving.

[dgibby]

1. My maternal 3rd g. grandfather

was indentured to a ship's captain. He jumped ship in Philly around 1776 or so, never looked back! I haven't found his naturalization papers yet. He and his brother (also indentured to the same man) were orphans from Northern Ireland. They had been apprenticed to a sword maker, and when he killed another man in a sword fight, they ran away.

[roody]

2. One ancestor came to New Asterdam

without permission of the native peoples. My mom came from Ireland in 1926 and waited at Ellis Island.

[Cleita]

36. One of mine too, who gave our family our surname. n/t

[Orsino]

3. Most of us probably are.

America didn't have an immigration policy until the Twenties.

[RebelOne]

12. All ancestors on my mother's and father's side were from Ireland.

They came here in the late 1800's, so they were probably undocumented.

[csziggy]

33. My greatgrandfather who came from Wales in 1872 was naturalized

His wife, who came with her family from Canada, never was. When they traveled to Wales in 1910 she lied on her paperwork and claimed to have been born in Michigan. Actually, she may not have known she was born in Canada - she was only about 4 years old when her family moved to the Upper Peninsula - but she had siblings who stayed in Canada and never moved to the US, so she knew the family was from Canada.

[One_Life_To_Give]

34. Immigrants were heavily screened long before then

Boston Harbor Islands were used as a holding and screening area for immigrants long before Ellis Island. I think most of us can trace our roots to official ports of entry in either the US, English or French depending upon where/year. In the early years you would need some documentation for the King/Governor and presumably whoever was financially backing the colony, unless you didn't care about getting your 100 Acres.
On Edit

Quarantine Stations (pest-houses), Port of New York
1758: Bedloe’s (Liberty) Island
1796: Nutten (Governor’s) Island
1799: Staten Island – Tompkinsville
1847: Ward’s Island (State Emigrant Hospital) - 18??: Blackwell’s Island
1855-1890: Castle Garden (Immigrant landing center)
1857: Staten Island, Seguine Point
1859: Floating hospitals: steamship Falcon; 1873 steamer Illinois
1860/1873: Swinburne (= Dix, Hospital, West Bank) Island & Hoffman Island
1874: Staten Island, Clifton (Health Officer residences & boarding site for vessels with no sick passengers)
1892: Camp Low, Sandy Hook; steamer Stonington
1892-1954: Jan 1, 1892, Ellis Island

[Hekate]

48. Thanks for that bit of history. The poster may not have understood the question, or simply not know

Every nation throughout recorded history has had an interest in the comings and goings of people across its borders, and a definition of who was and who was not a citizen. The Roman Empire certainly did.

[bhikkhu]

4. Descendant of "iliterate" belgians, escaping war and poverty

with an admixture of course; scandinavian-canadian infiltrators across the open border, a bit of french and old english interlopers before anyone thought to erect a border, and some never-citizen american indians. Everyone came here for work and better life, except my indian ancestors who just wanted to survive in peace. Documentation never came up that I can recall in any of the family stories.

[gordianot]

5. Some crossed the land bridge on the Bering Sea several thousand years ago.

When and where they crossed is undocumented.

On my Father's side his Great Grandfather's father was hung in Germany for treason. That was about the time you needed papers.

[hedgehog]

70. I had forgotten that - some of my husband's ancestors

lied about their age in order to leave Germany and avoid conscription.

[bravenak]

6. My grandmother never knew who she was.

She was a foundling and the government refused to give her papers. (She lived under an assumed name and social security number until her death.)
Then they deported her husband back to Spain ( he kept beating her and kicking her down the stairs) , forcing her to raise her kids on foreign aid and scrubbing floors at the Beer Gardens in Pittsburg. She then met my actual grandfather, but we all have her first husbands name as my grand father already had a wife and many baby mamas, he was Irish/Cherokee. Once my uncle robbed the bank, my family was force by the FBI to relocate to Los Angeles. I feel bad sometimes because I would not be alive if the US government did not deport people. But it was necessary for her to survive to have my mother.

[freshwest]

24. Bravenak...

[bravenak]

27. I have realized that we are not normal.

I figured it out when my mom got married to my stepdad. Most people's great grandmothers did not run a Bordello, LOL! I feel like we are the secret people of America. Should write a book about it. It's the best and strangest and saddest story I know. Things have finally settled down in my generation. Most of us have spent at least a semester in college of some sort, first time in family history! I'm going back to finish next year, so I think things are good for us compared to how it was for them. We are lucky they did the hard work for us.

[Cleita]

37. You really should. It sounds like an interesting family history with

some memorable characters. You could fictionalize it, like Alex Haley did Roots, with different names but keeping the bones of the true stories there.

[bravenak]

40. I keep getting stories from my family.

I may just take your advice and fictionalize it. We have such long winters up here, I may just need a project. I loved roots, one of my favorites, along with the Color Purple.

[gordianot]

71. Fascinating story

I told my Mothers family story to some friends several years ago who encouraged me to write a book and actually started as fiction. Since then I chickened out. Yours may work as non fiction the problem with family stories fiction and nonfiction as told to me they are a law suit magnets. Anyway it is a good past time who knows it may work out.

[CBGLuthier]

7. Some of my ancestors came across a land bridge 10,000 or so years ago. Some of them

were kidnapped from their lands and brought here in chains but they kept very good records of those people and some of them came from Scotland and England before there ever was a United States.

[yeoman6987]

8. I wish I knew.

Both sides of the family came from Europe in the early 1800's and started farming in New York. My fathers side eventually bought a couple hundred acres in Western Pennsylvania in mid 1800's and my Moms family eventually ended up in Cortland New York in late 1800's.

[jehop61]

9. My Grandfather

Was on the run from the British Crown for his Irish rebellion activities. In 1914 the wrote him and promised amnesry if he'd go back and fight in WWI. He declined, having 9 kids and all........

[liberal N proud]

10. What kind of documentation did they have prior to the Revolutionary War to Civil War periods?

All my ancestors came before the Revolution.

[dumbcat]

15. I wonder the same thing

Both sides of my family were imported from Germany in 1710 as workers to work on the Robert Livingston Estate in the Hudson Valley. they were settled in what was then called B Camp, which is now know as Germantown, in Columbia County. I'm not sure what documentation was required then.

[ieoeja]

32. First of my paternal name was brought over as an indentured servant. He was certainly documented.n/t

[csziggy]

41. In the early colonies freemen, indentured servants and apprenticed were documented

Some of my earliest American ancestors are documented in the above ways, everything from indentured servants, apprentices and as freemen.

Once a man was made a freeman, and was no longer considered a common, he could, and usually would, become a member of the church, and he could own land. The amount of land he was able to own was sometimes determined by how many members there were in his family. As a freeman, he became a member of the governing body, which met in annual or semiannual meetings (town meetings) to make and enforce laws and pass judgment in civil and criminal matters. As the colonies grew these meetings became impractical and a representative bicameral system was developed. Freeman would choose deputy governors who made up the upper house of the General Court and assistant governors, the lower house, who chose the governor from among their ranks, and who passed judgments in civil and criminal matters. To hold one of these offices it was required, of course, for one to be a freeman. Thus, the enfranchised voters and office holders were landholding male church members. Women, Native Americans and other non-Puritans were not made freeman.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeman_%28Colonial%29

Between the Revolution and the Civil War, things were kind of nebulous for immigrants. During that period, I have only one family that came over from England and they don't seem to have had any documentation at all. The only records I have for when they came over are the passenger lists - and then they start showing up on census.

[Hekate]

52. Plenty. My late mother was a genealogist who traced several ines of her family and my father's....

...some back to the 1600s. I mentioned the Irish sisters fleeing the Famine in my earlier post, but the first list I got from my grandmother was compiled from family Bibles and began with "Solomon Leonard, born in Monmouth England, came to Massachusetts about 1620." My grandmother's maiden name was Leonard.

There are parish records of births, marriages, and deaths that go back centuries, and not just for Christians (I have a friend from Japan whose ancestral records go back many, many centuries at her family prefecture's Buddhist monastery). There are records of indentures. Passenger manifests for all sailing vessels. Tax rolls (remember that the myth says that Mary and Joseph were traveling to Bethlehem for a Roman census of the population). And of course the 10-year census of the US population was written into the Constitution itself.

[DFW]

11. Probably, but don't even know

My dad's family is pretty much documented, but my mom is descended (on her dad's side) from some shadowy Mississippi River Boat gamblers who fled to the New York area to escape debts they couldn't pay. They came over around 1840-1860, and I have no idea of what their names were, or exactly where they hailed from. All I know is that my ancestors came from wide stretch of land between Germany and Russia, and that the countries they left either no longer exist, or have changed borders so many times as not to be specified today. I just say I'm German, Russian, and Eastern European Jewish--i.e. a mongrel. But part of my mongrel ancestry made up some of the funniest ad slogans of the 20th century, won the Thomas L. Stokes award for journalism, and included a Deputy Mayor of New York City, so let's hear it for the mongrels!

[TBF]

13. I have 2 ancestors that

were pre-revolutionary puritan types so I don't know what you call them. Probably wankers because I don't think any of them were very nice to the indigenous folks on this continent. Other german/polish ancestors in various parts of the 1800s so they also likely pre-date immigration policies.

Can I please be deported back to England now? I'll happily go

[Brigid]

17. I would gladly go to Ireland or Scotland.

[RebelOne]

57. Me too. I have been to the British Isles twice,

but Scotland is my favorite. The people there are wonderfully friendly and the scenery is spectacular, especially around Loch Ness though I never did see Nessie.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

14. My mother came here in 1919 with her mother and 3 siblings.

I have no idea if they were "legal". My grandmother fled poverty and oppression in Ireland by moving to England. She married an Irishman there and had 6 kids. The emigrated to Canada. My grandfather was killed in an accident. She put out the 2 boys for adoption in Canada and moved to America with the four girls.

[HubertHeaver]

16. Illegal exit from Ireland

My great-grandmother left Ireland illegally around 1854. According to the family stories, she was waiting to board ship for the states when the emigration authorities refused to allow her to accompany the rest of her family on-board. It seems that 9 was old enough to work for some fine English household. (Think Downton Abbey. I hate that show with a white-hot passion.) They were able to find another family with a 3 year-old who she closely resembled. (All red-heads look alike) She joined with that family and boarded ship, passing as a twin of the younger girl.

[Brigid]

18. Did they even have documents back in the eighteenth century?

[Hekate]

54. Any genealogist can answer that. I can't believe you're serious.

[Brigid]

63. I am not a genealogist. I asked a simple question.

I was thinking of passports and visas. Of course there are going to be documents like ships' manifests and parish records. No need to be so snippy. Welcome to my ignore list.

[Hekate]

64. Didn't mean to be snippy. I should've just let you gather that info from the other posts.

Can't win'em all.

[Drahthaardogs]

19. Oh yeah, all sides

All from Italy. Some say the pejorative "WOP" was used to refer to Italians who came over With-out-papers, others say it is from guappo - spanish for a thug.

I suspect the first is more accurate. Regardless, second generation on one side, third on the other.

One great grandfather immigrated to Jalisco in 1897 and then came up through El Paso in 1920's. All illegal aliens.

[pampango]

20. Past immigrants (particularly mine) - GOOD; current and future immigrants - BAD.

That has been the prevalent attitude towards immigration since at least the 1820's when large numbers of Irish and German immigrants started arriving. Certainly by the 1840's with the rise of the Know Nothings, the belief that immigrants are bad was a common one, particularly among conservatives.

[Runningdawg]

21. My maternal grandfather

immigrated illegally from Ireland. He went to mkt on day to sell his crops. While he was gone the family farm burned down, along with all his family. He went back to town sold the team and rig and stowed away on a cattle ship bound for the US. He ended up on a ranch in OK where he met my grandmother around 1918.
The rest of my family is Cherokee, who came west before the forced resettlement.

[Drale]

22. My grandmothers mother on my dads side

entered the country under her sisters papers because her sister decided she did not want to leave Germany at the last minute and my great grandmother wanted to. So part of my family entered the country through Ellis Island under fraud.

[Xithras]

23. My great grandmother was.

My great grandfather was an architect at a firm that built churches, and he personally designed countless churches that still dot New England today. He went up to Montreal to work on a site there, and met my great grandmother. The two fell in love and ended up getting married.

Back in the 1920's, the border was still crossed by hundreds of small dirt roads without official border checkpoints. Legally, you only had to show an ID and birth certificate to cross the border, but if you were inclined to take a drive, you didn't even have to do that. My great grandfather drove his car up from Maine, found a quiet back road across the border, and brought her home. Once across, she adopted her married name and pulled a new U.S. license. As far as anyone knew, she was an American. It was originally supposed to be temporary, but the requirements back then were that the spouse had to be in their home country when applying for a spousal visa, and she got pregnant pretty quickly. With babies at home and a job that kept him travelling all over the eastern seaboard, there was no way they could send her back to Montreal for a few months to do it right. So she just kind of became "stuck". Here illegally, without any way to get legal. When the government sealed off the back roads in the 1930's in an effort to keep out the bootleggers, it also cut off her ability to easily return to Canada. After that, if she'd tried leaving at an official border checkpoint, the border patrol might have caught her, which at a minimum would have kept her out of the country for years, and might have kept her away from her children for life. She wouldn't risk that.

My great grandfather was killed in a construction accident about 10 years later, leaving her alone with six kids (yeah, six kids in 10 years...they were good Catholics!) She said later that she thought about going back to Montreal, but her kids were all Americans, so she stayed. She was in her 90's when the IRCA passed in 1986, and her kids put in the papers to get her legalized. She was granted her temporary visa, and was THRILLED when she later got her green card because it allowed her to visit Canada for the first time in more than half a century. She said for years that she really wanted to pursue citizenship, but her health started declining before she was able. She never remarried, and died in her sleep at 103 in the the same Maine home they bought together in the mid 1920's.

I still remember her telling the story about how she climbed under a blanket in the back seat of their old Ford as they drove across the border because she was afraid that someone would see her. My great grandfather was laughing his ass off, telling her that they had the road to themselves and that nobody was going to jump out of the trees to stop them. She was unconvinced, and was sure that the "Army would know" that a Canadian had crossed the border without permission, and that they were probably setting up checkpoints to stop them. It took her several years to accept that the government wasn't getting ready to chase her down.

[LiberalLoner]

25. My grandmother snuck over the border from Canada.

[treestar]

26. My great great grandfather supposedly stowed away

Which would have been illegal even then.

The others seem to have just come without restriction.

[linuxman]

28. I have no idea who my ancestors were.

Frankly, I really don't care.

[stone space]

29. Not sure, but...

...my wife was undocumented when we met.

We were nearly kicked out of the country and exiled for ten years a few years into our marriage.

If the government had been successful in kicking us out, that ten year ban would have expired by now, but there's no way in hell I would be returning after going through all the trouble of getting established elsewhere.

[RockaFowler]

30. My Maternal Great-Grandparents fled from the Ukraine

My mom doesn't have any idea how they even got here. But she does know it wasn't legally.

My Father on the other hand waited for 4 years to get a sponsor here in the US. Back in the 50's the US was making it easier for Jewish Immigrants to get asylum here if they were able to get a sponsor. There was a Synagogue in France that helped my Dad make safe passage to Connecticut and that's where he lived with his Sponsor's family.

[jwirr]

31. Many of my descendant came before Ellis Island. They applied for citizenship when they wanted it

but many did not apply for years. And if I am not mistaken many never had to apply. When did the requirement start?

[Hekate]

38. When the US became a country of its own, determining who was a citizen became important

That's why there's a definition in the Constitution of who is eligible to become President. The US and Canada are the only "developed" countries where one can claim citizenship by simple birthright. All others have to apply, pass certain tests, swear that they will be loyal to their new country, and so forth.

As I am sure you are aware, every nation on earth has it's own legal definitions for citizenship, requiring foreigners to register their offspring at their own embassy; just because you were born there doesn't make you a citizen.

One citation, from a source that wants to end birthright citizenship in the US:
https://www.numbersusa.com/content/learn/issues/birthright-citizenship/nations-granting-birthright-citizenship.html

[jwirr]

43. I suspect that organization may have trouble with Native Americans. I did see loyalty oaths from

my great grand parents but that was because we were German and we were at war with Germany. When some of my family came in by ship into Philadelphia I did not find anything like that. Ah, just figured out why. This was in the early 1700s in Philadelphia. I also saw in a paper indicating that my family (again German) applied for citizenship in 1918. This particular family came to Illinois via New Orleans in the 1860s. Could have been one of the young babies that came with them.

[Hekate]

65. Use of the citation wasn't an endorsement of their pov....

...I was just double-checking my birthright citizenship statement. I almost said the U.S. was the only one, but it turns out that Canada joins us in that distinction among the developed nations. Most nations tend to be chary of granting citizenship to random babies born to foreign nationals on their soil. We've always been different that way, but once again the isolationists are trying to close our borders in more ways than one.

[jwirr]

66. Yes.

[Hekate]

35. Two Irish sisters off a "coffin ship" that landed in Canada lied their way across the border to US

The members of their family that didn't die of the Potato Famine in Ireland died of "shipboard fever" (typhus) on the way over. The sisters were what was left -- one of them was my great-great-great-something-grandmother.

Happy Thanksgiving.

[HereSince1628]

39. My 11th great grandfather, and his children, had no permission to come here.

[virtualobserver]

42. my great grandfather was a french soldier in mexico

crossed over into Texas in the mid 1800's, instead of going back to France

[benld74]

44. My wife and I were talking about this yesterday,,,

we tried to give ourselves over to the authorities, but,,,,,,

[ohheckyeah]

45. Most of my ancestors

were here before the revolutionary war - the rest were Native to this land before it was a country.

[cali]

47. so why are you posting in this thread?

[Hekate]

55. Why not? Happy TG.

[ohheckyeah]

69. Did me posting disturb you or you just

felt a need to be rude? Do I need your permission to post this?

Basically my ancestors were undocumented since it wasn't even a country.

[Vogon_Glory]

46. My ancestor crossed from French Quebec in the 1700's

My ancestor crossed from French Quebec into His Britannic Majesty's Province of New York in the 1750's. I find it difficult to hate the folks crossing across the deserts into the US.

[Iggo]

49. We didn't cross the border. The border crossed us. (n/t)

[mercuryblues]

50. My great, great grandparents

Came to the US from Ireland via Canada and eventually into Maine. No papers. Most of my ancestors did. Some stayed in Nova Scotia others went to Maine, Ohio, Michigan.

My Great Grandmother was 100% American Indian. When she gave birth to my Grandmother, her name was omitted from the birth certificate. She officially was not my grandma's, mother.

[B Calm]

51. My grandparents, both came through Ellis Island in 1911,

so I guess they were documented.

[Quantess]

53. Nope. But I am a first generation American.

My parents lived here on Greencards.

[LWolf]

56. I don't know.

Were they documenting immigrants in the 1600s? I don't think so. I can trace one line back that far. I can trace some back to coming over in the mid 1800s. I can trace one back to a native tribe. The other is too brief; my maternal grandfather is "unknown."

[loyalsister]

58. A collection of them from

Ireland, England, Denmark.....

I have heard racists suggest that that one Native American family member in their heritage legitimizes their bigotry.

[Bigmack]

59. All four grandparents sneaked in... France and Ireland.. thru Canada. nt

[kdmorris]

60. Aren't we all descended from undocumented immigrants?

Unless you are American Indian...

[wellstone dem]

61. My undocumented Great Grandfather voted illegally for years

He was a farmer in North Dakota, and it was only when he retired and wanted to collect Social Security that he became a citizen. He came in from Canada.

My dad says "Unfortunately his illegal votes were all for republicans."

[longship]

62. Three of my four grandparents arrived at Ellis Island.

Two of them, and a great grandfather's, names are engraved on the Ellis Island wall. Thanks to my parents, who funded that. My mother's parents arrived from Suomi (Finland). My father's father arrived from Norge (Norway). His mother's father also arrived from Norway. I met him once, in my youth. We called him Grandpa Hansen. And he was a very cranky one.

Interestingly, my mother's sister was married to my father's uncle. So the Isojoki clan (Finn) were connected to the Hansen/Flones clan (Norway) twice. Family reunions were rather large. They still are. My mother was the youngest of twelve. My father, the second youngest of six.

[xmas74]

67. Family came over to Mass Bay Colonies around 1630 or so.

Something tells me they didn't exactly get permission from the native tribes to settle in the area.

[greatlaurel]

68. One of my ancestors came over on the Mayflower, so they were certainly undocumented.

It is embarrassing so many people in the US are so easily manipulated into treating other human beings so poorly.

Lyndon Johnson "I'll tell you what's at the bottom of it. If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." No truer words were ever spoken.