Most scientists believe that human beings first came to America over the Bering Straits about 20,000 years ago. These were the ancestors of the many Native American cultures, which would people the landscape for thousands of years. Around the year 1000, a small number of Vikings would arrive. Five-hundred years later, the great European migration would begin. Crossing the Atlantic meant two to three months of seasickness, overcrowding, limited food rations, and disease, but the lure of available land and the hope for political and religious freedoms kept the Europeans coming. People from Europe and all around the World are still coming today in order to seek out the “Land of the Free.”

The United States of America has embraced and welcomed immigration since its beginning including Eberhard Anheuser, a German-born soap and candle maker. He and two of his brothers moved to the United States in 1842. He was a major creditor of the Bavarian Brewery Company, a struggling brewery founded in 1853.

When the company encountered financial difficulty in 1860, he purchased the minor creditors’ interests, took over the company, and became the President and CEO changing the company name to the Eberhard Anheuser and Company.

His daughter Lilly married Adophus Busch, a brewery supply salesman, in a double wedding with Anna Anheuser, Lilly’s older sister, and Ulrich Busch, Adolphus’ brother. The unions prepared the way for Adolphus Busch to found the Anheuser-Busch Company in 1879. The company’s North American corporate headquarters are still located in St. Louis, Missouri today, but InBev, a Brazilian-Belgian brewery bought out Anheuser-Busch in 2008 for $70 a share for a total of over $57 billion.

Between 1880 and 1930 over 27 million people entered the United States, but after the outbreak of World War I in 1914, American attitudes toward immigration began to shift. Nationalism and suspicion of foreigners were on the rise, and immigrants’ loyalties were often called into question. Through the early 1920s, a series of laws was passed to limit the flow of immigrants. Today, Ellis Island no longer processes people who want to immigrate to the United States, but the millions of immigrants who were processed through the Island still had their influence on America. Eberhard Anheuser has had a lasting influence in not only St. Louis, Missouri, but he has had a lasting influence on all of America.

Today’s immigration laws, like in the 1920s, are still designed to limit the flow of immigrants into the United States. They are much more complicated than they were in those early days of America, but there are still many ways a foreigner can immigrate to the United States, become a permanent resident, or become a citizen. Maybe you have had or know someone who has had a difficult time understanding our immigration laws. If so, you or they need legal counsel. Even if you already live here and just want to become a permanent resident or citizen, or have a relative that wants to become a permanent resident or citizen of the United States, contact us right now at www.immigrationlawstation.com, and we will help you find an immigration lawyer in your area who will answer any legal questions you may have about immigration law. Who knows, maybe you, your relative, or someone you know that wants to be a legal resident in the United States will make a lasting impression like Eberhard Anheuser.