Immigrant Neighborhoods

In order to understand the immigrant neighborhoods, one will first have to look at what was happening in the nation, beginning in the early 1900’s to the early 1950’s. Arguably, the events leading up to and after the Great Depression has what reshaped the future of the immigrant story. Leading up the Great Depression, the push to create and shape immigrants into true American molds was rapidly increasing. The idea of Americanization, stemming from young radicals, was to encompass and provide a new way of life for certain immigrants. These neighborhoods that were then formed by certain immigrant groups encompassed their ideas and identify. New immigrants moved to communities with like-minded similar people, creating a series of chain migrations
While ethnic culture was still prevalent in neighborhoods, the idea for young generational immigrants to write their own future was there. Furthermore, with stories about the harmful immigrant work conditions it became a priority to change how immigrants were viewed and finally accept them into American culture. The first way, to make this possible, was by the neighborhoods that these immigrants lived in. As the immigrant neighborhoods became the prime location to infiltrate true American ideas into. This process was called Americanization and was completed by creating a system of education, and with programs called settlement houses. Houses that were set up in the middle of immigrant neighborhoods, college educated radical women provided classes for women. It was in the hopes that the women would bring back the education to their families. By teaching these women traditions, ideals and delicacies of America it was hoped that their ethnic past would “melt away”. Thus, the idea of the melting pot was created. This was the idea that if immigrants were handled the correct way, their ethnic pasts would “melt” or disappear creating protestant, Anglo-Saxon molds of true Americans. As more and more of these radical movements took place, the more people that paid attention and the more it became accepted that Immigrants could become true
As it was no longer the ways of social reformers to change how immigrants were viewed, but the American government. Due to the lack of job thought to be crippling the American economy, the New Deal offered Public Works in order to put its’ citizens to work. This program, among others, was government mandated and had to be inclusive of all the people, including immigrants. These programs allowed for the majority of the workforce that had lost their jobs to begin to regain their financial standings and work side by side with others from varying backgrounds. By creating programs that were inclusive to mostly all, it allowed immigrants to feel excepted in their own skin. However, not all immigrants were treated with such open arms, especially the minorities as the low paying work that they once depended on was given to the mass of unemployed. One specific example is the Mexican - American immigrants and migrant workers. It was thought that the reasoning behind the depression was a lack of jobs, and in order to fix this issue, getting rid of those who had their jobs was the answer. In order to fix the issue at hand, jobs had to be taken back, especially from the Mexicans. This was called repatriation, and it was forcibly taking all Mexican migrant workers and transporting them back to Mexico. Law enforcement would come through Mexican neighborhoods and conduct large sweeps of these people, the