From the establishment of the first permanent English settlement at Jamestown, Virginia (see Virginia colony), in 1607, the area now known as the United States has attracted more immigrants than any other country in the world.
Between the 1860s and the 1930s, about 100,000 British children from urban slums were sent to Canada, where they were usually apprenticed as agricultural laborers or domestic servants until they came of age.
Sponsored by the United States, the Evian Conference brought 30 nations together in Evian, France, to discuss the plight of European refugees during summer 1938.
Following a series of rebellions in Canada in 1837 John George Lambton, Lord Durham, was commissioned by the British government to temporarily govern Canada, to investigate the causes of discontent, and to make recommendations regarding British governance of the region.
Between 1907 and 1910 the Dillingham Commission, established by the U.S. government, completed a study whose findings reflected the popular opinion of many native-born Americans that new immigrants from eastern and southern Europe were less desirable than earlier immigrants from western and northern Europe.
Canada has frequently been referred to as “a nation of immigrants,” though the percentage of immigrants has always been less than the term would suggest.