Please add Immigration and Naturalization as separate search fields under life events.

LegacyUser

Daniel Tueller said: Please add Immigration and Naturalization as separate search fields under life events. Right now, we can only search for one or the other non-specifically under the "Any" event category.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: Welcome to the community support forum for FamilySearch. FamilySearch personnel read every discussion thread and may or may not respond as their time permits. We all share an active interest in using the resources of this site and as users, we have various levels of knowledge and experience and do our best to help each other with concerns, issues, and/or questions.

I suspect you are talking about searching historical events. Rather than specify an and/or situation, I suggest that if you utilize filtering by collection, specifically, those collections that concern immigration and naturalization, you may find exactly what you are looking for.

Because of priorities in development and limited resources, it may be a number of years before the ability to search on those two fields simultaneously is an added feature.

Or, the developers may surprise us and the next iteration of the search engine may contain exactly what you are looking for.

LegacyUser

Phil Jeffrey said: We can add any field but the problem is you have to have indexed that field to make it searchable for it to be of value. Otherwise what happens is you add something in a field not indexed and it will throw off the potential hits. Kinda of a catch 22 really. Typically what FS has been trying to do is if the collection has an extra indexed field we will add to to the search function for that collection only.

LegacyUser

Daniel Tueller said: Thank you Tom for your reply. My issue is that even when I filter by collection as you suggest, I cannot conduct a search with specific immigration and naturalization information simultaneously. For example, if I want to find records of a person who immigrated around 1890 and was naturalized around 1896, I can only search for one or the other in the "Any" event category, and the search field is not specific to those events. You are correct that I am new so I apologize if there is a way around this that I have not realized.

LegacyUser

Juli said: Searching in one go for a record of someone who immigrated in XX and was naturalized in YY presupposes that the later (naturalization) record not only included the earlier (immigration) date, but also had both dates indexed. I am not aware of any collections on FS of which this is true.

The pre-search Type filters combine immigration and naturalization, which can be somewhat annoying if you're specifically looking for one and not the other, but you can work around this by using the post-search Collections filters. You can choose up to 25 collections, which in my experience is about twenty more than you ever need.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: So true, Juli. That's why I suggested working with the collections after a search is complete. The filtering system is great and does not demand that the record contain both immigration and naturalization. I think one of the U.S. Census Enumerations had both, but I do not remember which one it was.

LegacyUser

Daniel Tueller said: Good point. I thought that the years of immigration/naturalization would be indexed on those particular records, but I see I may have been presumptuous.

LegacyUser

Daniel Tueller said: Thank you Juli and Tom for your comments. I'll try to make better use of post-search filters.

And you are correct Tom, the 1920 census has both. That is kind of what spurred my suggestion- I have some ancestors with immigration and naturalization dates listed on that census but I have not been able to find the records of either event.

Now I understand that perhaps those years have not been indexed on those particular records.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: Yeah, not all catalog entries are clear in what is contained in a set of images. I stumbled across my Grandfather's Naturalization record quite by accident while vacationing where my wife's family came from. When I got home, I tried to find that film and could not, so the next time we were in the area (several years later), I again grabbed the film and noted the film number so I could look it up when I got back home.

Naturalization record sets are not easy to find and I'm not sure how I would find it, aside from knowing the film number.

LegacyUser

MADonnelly said: Immigration has now been added as a search field, but it is not functioning as I believe it was designed.
Any information entered into "Immigration Place" or "Immigration Year (from/to)" is wiped clean when "Update" is pressed. And the results do not narrow to the place or dates.
The field only appears once a specific Immigration-related database has been selected.

Any hope for a fix?

Thanks.

LegacyUser

MADonnelly said: 24 days and no comment. I guess there is no hope for a fix in this lifetime.