Traditionally, the United States, like Canada, has been considered a country of immigrants. From a European per spective, the very same men and women were emigrants. From Asia, again according to traditional notions, Chinese and others came as sojourners and would later return to their true homes. Men and women from Africa suffered through the Middle Passage and subsequently were bound as slaves. Mexicans came as braceros. Such views imply that Europeans made decisions and came as immigrants, Asians moved about and settled tempo rarily, Africans arrived under force, and Mexicans came with their arms (brazos) ready for labor?hearts and minds did not count. From all three continents and from South America, migrants came in multiple trajectories. Yet terminological inaccuracies belie these well-known assump tions. Europeans, slaves, and Orientals mix different frames of reference: geographic origin, legal and labor status after migration, and ascription of culture. The latter?viewed from the North American Pacific coast?is located not in the orient where the sun rises, but far to the west. More Europeans came as temporarily bound indentured servants during the colonial period than as free or self-paying migrants. And the first newcomers from Asia were self paying migrants who established communities; bound contract laborers, called coolies, came later. In a hemispheric perspective, before the 1830s more Africans than Europeans came to the Americas. From Halifax, Canada, via the U.S. South to the Caribbean and Brazil, they always included a free segment, if a very small one. Of the European immigrants in the decades after 1885, one-third were sojourning migrant laborers. In order to shift from Eurocentric immigration and ethnic history to new paradigms, scholars are beginning to study the complex trajectories of migrants and their patterns of mobility, or systems. This essay summarizes recent research trends by describing the various characteristics of migration systems, detail ing the specific systems that have contributed to North American immigration, and reviewing both contemporary historiography and primary sources for this topic.