Chaplin developed the storyline for The Immigrant as filming progressed rather than starting from a finished script, as revealed in the 1983 documentary Unknown Chaplin.

The film originally began as a comedy set in an artists' café with Edna Purviance playing a brightly dressed patron, but this plot was abandoned almost immediately before Chaplin's character was even introduced.

The first scenes actually written and filmed were those that became the movie's second half, showing the penniless Tramp finding a coin and going for a meal without realizing it had fallen out of his pocket; only later did Chaplin decide the Tramp was penniless because he had just arrived from Europe, which became the basis for the film's first half.

Chaplin only developed the idea of the Tramp and Purviance's character being immigrants after realizing he needed more plot to justify the restaurant scenes, later reshooting parts of that scene and adding the marriage epilogue to fit the new storyline.

Henry Bergman originally played the bullying head waiter role before Chaplin replaced him with Eric Campbell, and Bergman was instead brought back in a new role as the artist who resolves the dinner-payment subplot.

Edna Purviance reportedly had to eat so many plates of beans during the numerous takes needed to complete the restaurant sequence that she became physically ill.

The scene where Chaplin's character kicks an immigration officer was later cited as evidence of his supposed anti-Americanism when he was forced to leave the United States in 1952.

The film was subjected to censorship cuts by city and state boards, including the Chicago Board of Censors, which required removal of a close-up showing a stolen money bag and a scene involving nose-thumbing as an insult.

In 1932, Amedee Van Beuren of Van Beuren Studios purchased Chaplin's Mutual comedies for $10,000 each, added music by Gene Rodemich and Winston Sharples along with sound effects, and re-released them through RKO Radio Pictures, with Chaplin having no legal recourse to stop it.

In 1998, The Immigrant was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.