The First Laws gave Immigrants a Path to Citizenship

   Is this significant? The first laws on naturalization established no rules for those not yet in the United States. Instead, they established rules for what a person already living here had to do to gain status as a citizen.
   If that doesn't sound like a path to citizenship, I don't know what does.
   Others have different opinions. Mine is that when the Founding Fathers, in writing the Constitution, gave Congress authority to create rules for naturalization, they were not granting authority to say who could and could not immigrate to America.
  No, they were only giving Congress authority to grant a path to citizenship for those already here.
  And, that is the way it played out in the first such law Congress created. "An act to establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization," as it was titled, was enacted March 26, 1790. (Hey, does that mean that in another week, it will be National Constitutional-Right-to-a-Pathway-to-Citizenship Day?)
   That first law said any free white person having lived here two years could be admitted as a citizen, providing the court judged him to be of good character, and providing he took an oath to uphold the Constitution.
   Doesn't that amount to a path to citizenship?
 


Here's the text of that first law on naturalization:

United States Congress, “An act to establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization” (March 26, 1790). Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, That any Alien being a free white person, who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States for the term of two years, may be admitted to become a citizen thereof on application to any common law Court of record in any one of the States wherein he shall have resided for the term of one year at least, and making proof to the satisfaction of such Court  that he is a person of good character, and taking the oath or affirmation prescribed by law to support the Constitution of the United States, which Oath or Affirmation such Court shall administer, and the Clerk of such Court shall record such Application, and the proceedings thereon; and thereupon such person shall be considered as a Citizen of the United States.  And the children of such person so naturalized, dwelling within the United States, being under the age of twenty one years at the time of such naturalization, shall also be considered as citizens of the United States.  And the children of citizens of the United States that may be born beyond Sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born Citizens:  Provided, that the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers have never been resident in the United States:  Provided also, that no person heretofore proscribed by any States, shall be admitted a citizen as aforesaid, except by an Act of the Legislature of the State in which such person was proscribed.