I have no idea if they had to get visas or work permits. That's not something that ever came up in conversation. I was a little girl at the time. However, I would imagine that was the case. You would know better than I.
It was certainly the case in the U.S. when it opened up the doors to immigration in the late 1800s and early 1900s, a time of mass expansion in the U.S, to get workers for the farms on empty land, and new mines and factories. All those people came to the U.S. legally, under the laws that pertained to immigration at the time. In many cases agents for the factories and mines went to southern Italy, for example, to recruit workers. Proper papers were provided and even money for the transportation in many cases. When immigrants arrived at places like Ellis Island, with all their proper documentation, they were put in quarantine and tested for TB, venereal disease and general health. If they turned up positive they were sent back on the next boat. A tour of the Ellis Island facility is a real eye opener.
Hordes of poor Southern Italians and Ashkenazi Jews and Poles didn't suddenly just appear on our shores and demand admittance.
Another difference with Switzerland and most European countries to my knowledge is that once all those people arrived in the U.S. they couldn't be deported. These weren't guest worker visas. Also, their children born in the U.S. were American citizens. That was the case with some of my father's brothers and sisters. Unfortunately the family then moved back to Italy, and the three youngest children were born in Italy. Only later was the law changed so that the children of naturalized U.S. citizens, like the children of native born U.S. citizens, got citizenship no matter where they were born.
That was definitely not the case when my parents went to Switzerland.
By the post war period America had no more need for all those unskilled workers and immigration laws changed. They became as I described. We followed the law and complied with all the regulations in effect at the time.
Today, with computerization and automated factories, and with a growing underclass of our own on welfare because they're unequipped for these more skilled jobs, there's even less need for unskilled workers, so all the more reason for strict guidelines to be in place.
I was told, but have to check for myself that Canada still imposes these kinds of restrictions about only people with needed skills or education being allowed to immigrate.
The problem with immigration in the U.S. now is that we have a wide open border with Mexico and therefore with all of Latin America. People cross the border illegally who are not checked for disease and who in almost all cases are completely unskilled except for physical labor. What does that mean? It means that working class people in America are competing for jobs with people who will take less pay. It's decimating our "native" working class and it's completely unacceptable.
It's not the responsibility of the U.S. or any other nation to take in so many poor, unskilled people that the cost of supporting them through welfare tanks our economy and does economic harm to our own people.
It's as simple as that.
Ed. In those sexist times only my father's work skills were considered pertinent. He had extensive management experience in construction, including estimating costs from blueprints, as well as on site supervision, and if necessary, munitions work, mostly in France and North Africa. In addition, if needs must, he was a master mason and also a worker in decorative marble carving. He had apprenticed in Carrara as a boy, and also picked up knowledge of munitions work there as they blast the mountains sometimes to get at the marble.