The millions of us who had ancestors who arrived here via Canada are probably descended
from people who were trying to evade US immigration.
https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2000/fall/us-canada-immigration-records-1.html
As researchers increasingly discover the large number of immigrants who came to the United States via Canada, they more frequently turn their attention to U.S. immigration records of arrivals to Canada or from Canada into the United States. These records, held at the National Archives, are popularly known as the "St. Albans Lists." Although in many ways U.S.-Canadian border immigration records are easier to use than their passenger list counterparts for ports such as New York, Boston, or Philadelphia, they are a complicated and interrelated set of documents. To use them effectively, one must understand both who will and will not be found in those records as well as how each record may or may not relate to another document in the U.S. National Archives or the National Archives of Canada. This article discusses the records' origin and arrangement, then presents examples to illustrate their use.
A large number of immigrants came to the United States via Canada during the mid- and late nineteenth century, and for them there is no U.S. immigration record. They landed in Canada where no U.S. officer met them or recorded information about their arrival in the United States. The always-growing number of immigrants who chose this route in the late 1800s finally convinced the United States, in 1894, to build and operate the bureaucratic machinery necessary to document the many thousands who each year entered at points along its northern border.
In earlier years immigrants landing in Canada were largely from Britain, Scandinavia, northern Europe, or Russia. In the 1880s, as the United States began to impose more stringent immigration rules at its own ports of entry, even more immigrants from the same regions and elsewhere chose to travel via Canada to avoid the trouble and delay of U.S. immigrant inspection. By the 1890s, steamship companies began to advertise passage through Canada as a more desirable route for immigrants who wished to avoid U.S. inspectors. While much of this traffic remained Irish, Swedish, Norwegian, or Russian, the business of carrying Italians, Greeks, and others from Mediterranean ports to Canada grew.
SNIP
= new reply since forum marked as read
