WI European colonizers had no restrictions on emigration to the colonies

What if the European colonizers had no restrictions on emigrating to the colonies other than paying for the trip?

Or, if that's ASB for some of the colonizing countries (Spain with its multiple cultures and France with its Protestant minority), then what if at least one European colonizer had no restrictions.
 
Through most of the period, weren't the European powers trying to get as many of their people settling their colonies as they could? I seem to remember France offering land in the New World to gentry, if they brought X number of families with them, but that they could never get as many volunteers as they hoped for.
 
I thought Spain restricted non-Castilians and non-Catholics from going to the New World.

EDIT: Obviously this is excluding slaves, all of whom were not Castilian or Catholic.
 
I could be wrong, but I think it wasn't until the late 1800's before they started making restrictions on people entering the country.

Sorry, I misread it. You didn't just mean the United States authorities.

Spain, or at least Castile at first, forbade Jews, Muslims, (most) Converso's, and people who had been investigated for heresy by the Inquisition from entering the colonies.

Other countries, such as Britain, France and, I think, the United Netherlands, permitted other demographic groups to emigrate. England/Britain particularly would even send convicts or rebels from Ireland and the Scottish Highlands to the Americas.
 
Sorry, I misread it. You didn't just mean the United States authorities.

Spain, or at least Castile at first, forbade Jews, Muslims, (most) Converso's, and people who had been investigated for heresy by the Inquisition from entering the colonies.

Other countries, such as Britain, France and, I think, the United Netherlands, permitted other demographic groups to emigrate. England/Britain particularly would even send convicts or rebels from Ireland and the Scottish Highlands to the Americas.

IIRC didn't France bar Protestants from emigrating to New France?
 
IIRC didn't France bar Protestants from emigrating to New France?

Oh, right, you're right. All of the European powers usually wanted as many new colonists in their colonies as they could get, but they wanted them to be the right sort of colonists. No restrictions on the settlement of Protestants would definitely have resulted in a major Protestant exodus to New France. A lot of French Protestants emigrated to American colonies in OTL anyway, they just went to the English ones. In fact from a little genealogical research I was doing recently, I'm fairly certain that's what one of my ancestors in the early 1700s was.
 
IIRC didn't France bar Protestants from emigrating to New France?

From memory, the first colonizers of French Americas were both protestants and catholics.
Cap-Rouge was founded by a french protestant, by exemple.

After the siege of La Rochelle, you had technically an interdiction of emigration for french protestants in New France. It wasn't that respected, as the local authorities didn't made real control of that.

That said, for many reasons, the protestant coming in New France were catholicised after the 1st generation, both by real conversion or by interest.

For Spain, you had restriction, but they were relativly avoidable as we have indentified crypto-Jews groups in Latin America (and I doubt they were indigenous) as well protestants.

The restriction never really prevented these groups to emigrate.
 
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