The colonists came to America for many reasons. Name one.

Why this is the answer

Each of the five official answers names a reason that pushed ordinary people onto ships bound for North America in the 1600s and 1700s. England founded its first permanent settlement, Jamestown, in 1607, and many of the people who went there were after economic opportunity. Some expected land for farming to be easier to buy than at home, and others hoped to find gold and silver. The first years were brutal. Many settlers died of hunger, disease or the cold winters. Thirteen years later a different kind of colonist arrived. The Pilgrims founded the colony of Massachusetts in 1620, and USCIS describes them as the first group to come to America looking for religious freedom. In many European countries, rulers told their subjects which church to attend and how to worship, and people who believed differently wanted churches of their own. Religious freedom mattered enough to the Framers that it later went into the Bill of Rights. The remaining answers grow out of those two stories. Escaping persecution is the other side of religious freedom, since many left Europe to avoid restrictions on their faith. Political liberty, or simply freedom, describes what the colonies offered people who lacked those freedoms in the countries they left behind. The USCIS lessons draw the line to the present day: many people move to the United States now for the same reasons, and the list may well describe your own family's story. That connection is the easiest way to remember the answers. Ask yourself why you or your parents came, and the word you land on is probably on the list. "Freedom" by itself counts, so if the longer phrases slip away under pressure, one word is enough. Where applicants go wrong is reaching for reasons from much later history. Working in factories, voting for a President and escaping the Civil War are not on the list, and none of them fits a settler stepping off a ship at Jamestown. If your answer would make sense for someone sailing from England in the 1600s, you are on safe ground.