The Origins of U.S. Immigration Controls on the Canadian Border: The View from Detroit

On April 6 at 1 p.m., when the federal government assumed control over immigration policy and enforcement in the 1880s, the U.S.-Canada boundary was merely an “imaginary line.” By the Immigration Act of 1917, however, a dense network of ports of entry, with hundreds of immigration inspectors, operated along the border. Thomas Klug, Ph.D., professor of history at Marygrove College, discusses how this transformation came about, and what it meant for border crossers.