During the late 19th century and early 20th century, immigration to the United States was wrought with challenges. The newly arriving aliens were met with racist native-borns who feared that they would threaten their way of life. This tension between these new groups facilitated the U.S. government’s anti-immigration laws, which also caused political outbursts from those who supported immigrants.…
According to the textbook it was "The promise of cheap land and good wages drew millions of immigrants to America." Most immigrants were poor and wanted the American dream of settling and getting an income. There were some Irish immigrants who at that time suffered from had a potato famine that happened leading them to poverty and economic damage. There were also some German immigrants that were mostly skilled craftsmen and have an educated profession such as doctors, lawyers, teachers, and engineers. Also, the American employers wanted to recruit foreigners since most of them were willing to work for lower wages than people who were born as Americans. However, when…
How did the racialization of Chinese as excludable aliens contribute to and intersect with the racialization of other Asian, southern and eastern European, and Mexican immigrants? What precedents did the Chinese Exclusion Act set for the admission, documentation, surveillance, and deportation of both new arrivals and immigrant communities within the United States? When the Page Law and the Chinese Exclusion Act serve as the beginning rather than the end of the narrative, we are forced to focus more fully on the enormous significance of Chinese exclusion. It becomes clear that its importance as a "watershed" goes beyond its status as one of the first immigration policies to be passed in the United States. Certainly, the Page Law and the Chinese Exclusion Act provided the legal architecture for twentieth-century American immigration policy.7 Chinese exclusion, however, also introduced gatekeeping ideology, politics, law, and culture that transformed the ways in which Americans viewed and thought about race, immigration, and the United States' identity as a nation of immigrants.…
Prompt: For the years 1880 to 1925, analyze both the tensions surrounding the issue of immigration and the United States government’s response to these tensions.…
Throughout the years 1880 through 1925 the United States witnessed a rise in immigration. Industrialization provided greater opportunities for Americans. America’s gilded age gave off the illusion of a utopian society. The visions of such society attracted many foreigners from parts of Europe and Asia. Though these foreigners helped with the expansion of the U.S, economic, political, and social tensions arose. These tensions included scarcity of jobs for natural-born citizens, American suspicion of European communism, and the immigrant resistance to Americanization. In response the government implemented different measures such as the immigration act of 1924, the emergency quota act and…
America was considered at this time “The Great Melting Pot” due to immigrants from everywhere mixing into this one country, however, this immigration did not form a “melting pot” of cultures because each ethnic group had their own area in a town or even its own town. For immigrants, America was seen as a place for achieving the dream of improving and having a better life, there they had freedoms and liberty, this is why immigration was not only from Europe but from other parts of the world. The other form of immigration was formed called migration. There was a lot of migration from African-Americans from poorer South to the more prosperous North; however, the migrating African-Americans were not welcomed, they suffered much the same way as they had in the South. The changes in American society that immigration brought about were friction between newly arrived and older established groups, religion being the main one, with older groups (Protestants) and the newer ones(catholic). The changes in American politics that immigration brought about were very little; power was kept by the WASPs (White Anglo Saxon Protestants). Irish Americans began sticking together for collective political clout which brought about the significance of Tammany Hall. Tammany Hall was notorious for the corruption in city and state politics that it fostered; it was built by local politics to support the Democratic Party and it provided immigrants with a social “safety net”. It also controlled businesses, influenced police, certain labour unions and voting.…
Immigrants had many obstacles that they had to overcome that would bring them to reality, and let them recognize what American had in store for them. One of the obstacles that immigrants faced was discrimination in all sorts. The Irish were discriminated against because they had come in great numbers during the periods of immigration (in this case 1820’s until 1890’s). So, when they came they needed jobs, and nativists complained that they were taking all of the jobs that Americans should have. Nativists were a group of people that wanted immigrants out of America for many reasons. Also, the Irish flooded cities when they came, which caused an abundance of fighting between the Protestant whites (Americans) and the majority of the Irish people were Catholic. The Irish would live in cities and go about their religious ways (go to church, celebrate holidays, and etc.), and the Protestants didn’t like this because they wanted to keep the nation mainly Protestant (as it had been before). The Chinese were discriminated against for many reasons also. They were discriminated against because they…
Many policies were enforced during the end of the 1800’s and the beginning 1900’s. During the second immigration wave, there were very few policies in place over immigration restriction. It was not until 1921 that a temporary restriction was placed on immigrants moving from Europe (Foner, 793). As time went on, the laws became more strict and permanent. When the immigrants from Lithuania in the book came to Chicago, it was all too easy for them to move compared to the immigration policies put in place later on (Sinclair, 28).…
Immigration was a tedious problem that rose during the period from 1880-1925 and created a lot of tensions. Immigration caused an increase in the population, but took many American jobs in the workforce. The U.S. government did not know exactly how to tackle the issue of immigration, making the situation worse. Negroes, Italians, Jews, and many more were all taking America by storm, leaving the government dumbfounded. The government response to immigration created more problems while immigration was leading to political. social, and economical tensions .…
The society in the North increased do to immigration between 1800 and 1860. The population in the North started at 5 million and went up to about 31 million do with massive immigration. The immigration affects the economy do to all the jobs open. The economy has big cities from the immigration witch is good for the trade and manufacturing. Water from rivers and streams are used to make water power. Water power was used to run the factories . To the economy going up in the North the harbors and streets, improved, sanitation systems, and education is going up. Cities also provided printed newspapers, books, and also theater for the people. For trading and to get places the North used trains, ships, horse and wagon or just walked. The North had…
It was causing social tension. During the 1920s, the United States sharply restricted foreign immigration for the first time in its history. Large inflows of foreigners long had created a certain amount of social tension, but most had been of Northern European stock and, if not quickly assimilated, at least possessed a certain commonality with most Americans. By the end of the 19th century, however, the flow was predominantly from southern and Eastern Europe. According to the census of 1900, the population of the United States was just over 76 million. Over the next 15 years, more than 15 million immigrants entered the country. Around two-thirds of the inflow consisted of “newer” nationalities and ethnic groups'' Russian Jews, Poles, Slavic peoples, Greeks, southern Italians. They were non-Protestant, non-“Nordic,” and, many Americans feared, nonassimilable. They did hard, often dangerous, low-pay work '' but were accused of driving down the wages of native-born Americans. Settling in squalid urban ethnic enclaves, the new immigrants were seen as maintaining Old World customs, getting along with very little English, and supporting unsavory political machines that catered to their needs. Nativists wanted to send them back to Europe; social workers…
This Immigration Act of 1882 had already established categories of foreigners with the immigration enforcement. With the first century of American’s having their independence, many of these immigration became widely open, with some minor restriction from states (Sadowski-Smith). But with the first step of creating a “tax head” was the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and then the Immigration Act of 1882, which was passed on August 3rd of the same year that levied a tax on all immigrants coming to the US at the ports for government immigration funds (Immigration Act of 1882). With targeting only certain groups of ethnicity, immigrating to the US became a harder task, plus with racism growing within the…
The United States has always been a country of immigrants. It was founded by immigrants from Europe who were escaping religious oppression to start a new life on a distant continent, far away from the old world and its problems. This country continued to be a destination for many immigrants. They have traveled here for reasons similar to those of the first settlers. The U.S. had imposed immigration restrictions before, but in the early to mid 1900s, some changes were made that drastically altered the amount of immigrants allowed into the country.…
The primary immigration law today is the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (the INA). The INA was the start of a new era for immigrates. The Act established a “new immigration policy based on reuniting immigrant families and attracting skilled labor to the United States (Gallagher, 2008).” This new law made it possible for immigrates to enter the United States for countries such as Asia, Africa, and Latin America. It was a huge impact on immigration because it ends the Quota Act that restricts immigrates from entering the United States.…
This time is known as "New Immigration" and differs in many ways from that of the early 1800s. This movement of settlers saw mainly people from southern and eastern Europe; Italy, Russia, Greece, and Poland. It also included people from China and Japan. Unlike the freedom people were seeking earlier in the century, these new immigrants were mainly seeking better economic opportunies. With the end of the Civil War, the United States began to see a substantial increase in industrial growth. With this growth came the opportunies and more importantly the need for people to work. This new opportunity left many people hoping to earn money and go from "rags to…