According to Kevin Brownlow's and David Gill's documentary series Unknown Chaplin (1983) (TV), the first scenes to be written and filmed take place in what became the movie's second half, in which the penniless Tramp finds a coin and goes for a meal in a restaurant, not realizing that the coin has fallen out of his pocket. It was not until later that Charles Chaplin decided the reason the Tramp was penniless was that he had just arrived on a boat from Europe, and used this notion as the basis for the first half. Edna Purviance reportedly was required to eat so many plates of beans during the many takes to complete the restaurant sequence (in character as another immigrant who falls in love with Charlie) that she became physically ill.

The scene in which Charles Chaplin''s character kicks an immigration officer was cited later as "evidence" of his anti-Americanism when he was forced to leave the United States during the McCarthy "Red Scare" period in the 1950s.