Learn More About Public Immigration Records

The immigration records are also known as “ship passenger arrival records”. It gives information about a person’s arrival in the United States as well as foreign birthplace. The NARA or the National Archives and Records Administration maintain the immigration records.

Types of Immigration Records

Passenger Lists

The United States Congress enacted legislation in the year 1819 to regulate the transportation of passengers from the foreign ports to the United States. As per the provision of this act, the captains of the ships were required to submit a list of passengers to the customs collector in the respective district in which the ship has arrived. These lists include a majority of such immigration records. There has been a radical change in the passenger lists over the years and the information available on the earlier lists was limited.

The passenger lists includes the following details: name, occupation, age, place of origin, name and type of ship, destination in the U. S., name and type of the ship, port and date of departure and the Port and date of arrival.

Public Naturalization Records

The legal process by which an alien becomes a citizen of a state or country is known as Naturalization. As per the Basic Naturalization Act of 1906, forms for naturalization which became standardized and were sent to the Bureau of Immigration in U.S. for further examination. The formalized process requires that a prospective citizen file a declaration of intention through which an individual gave up allegiance to foreign sovereignty's. After the waiting period of five years, an immigrant could submit a petition to a federal court for citizenship.

The information contained in naturalization records are: name of the applicant, date of birth and place or origin, port and date of departure and arrival, last foreign address, court location and date of petition and physical description.

Immigration Records Availability

You can get immigration records from http://www.archives.gov/ which is the official website of the National Archives of United States. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services or the USCIS Genealogy program is a service for fee program providing researchers and family historians with timely access to naturalization and immigration records. To get a copy of the record regarding immigration and naturalization one will have to choose the right form or request type. The Genealogy program offers two types of services:

Index Search: This kind of search uses the biological information which is provided by the researcher to search the historical naturalization and immigration record indices for citations associated to a particular immigrant. The results which are the outcome of the search are returned to the researcher along with the guidelines on how to request the files from USCIS or from the national archives. The fee charged for the index search is $20.00.

Record Copy Request: Researchers with USCIS file numbers or with valid record citation can be obtained through the Genealogy program index search or independent search of the USCIS. The immigration and naturalization record copies can be requested with an additional fee from $20.00 or $35.00 depending on the type of the record.

The records which are available from the USCIS are C-files or Naturalization Certificates (September 27, 1906 to April 1, 1956), Alien Registration Forms (August 1, 1940 to March 31, 1944), Visa files (July 1, 1924 to March 31, 1944), Registry Files (March 2, 1929 to March 31, 1944) and Alien Files (prior May 1, 1951).

You can get information regarding immigration and naturalization from http://www.uscis.gov/.