The question of immigration, or rather of its restriction, was always of great interest to the Jews, not only because they are great wanderers and many of them are looking for a home, but also because to the many who came from countries where they were persecuted or from which they were exiled, exclusion meant a much more serious matter than to those who had a home to go back to. The immigrants of the second period, from 1815 to 1880, were more fortunate in this respect than those who came very early and were harrassed by frank discrimination against them as Jews, as was related in earlier parts of this work; and also more than the later arrivals, many of whom were excluded as undesirable, along with the defective and helpless of other races and nationalities. From the time of the establishment of the Government of the United States until about 1835, immigration was taken as a matter of course; the only legislation enacted, and practically all that was proposed, was the law of 1819 for the regulation of the carriage of steerage passengers at sea, which law also for the first time provided that statistics relative to immigration to the United States be recorded. The second period, from 1835 to 1860, is sharply defined by the so-called “Native American” and “Know Nothing” movements, which, as is well known, were largely based on the opposition to the immigration of Catholics.[49] The hostility early took the form of a political movement, and in 1835 there was a Nativist candidate for Congress in New York City, where that party nominated a candidate for mayor in the following year. It spread over various states, and in 1845, when it held its first national convention in Philadelphia, it had six Representatives in Congress from New York and two from Pennsylvania. The chief demands of this convention were a repeal of the naturalization laws and the appointments of native Americans only to office.