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Immigration in the 19th and 20th century
Immigration in the 19th and 20th century
Immigration in the Late 1800s
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During the time between 1890 and 1914 immigration to the United States rose sharply, especially from southern and eastern Europe. These new immigrants typically spoke little English and were already lower class citizens in their original home countries, making it very difficult for them to thrive as they set up new roots in America. This caused many Americans to place the blame on them when troubles arose regarding the quality of their current life styles. Eventually in 1917, in response to these feelings of resentment towards foreigners, the United States passed the new Immigration Act, a stricter set of laws and restrictions dictating who would be allowed passage into the country. The Immigration Act was met with plenty of outrage, especially
The “discovery” by the United States that Europe had inferior and superior races was a result of the large amount of immigration from southern and eastern Europe in the late nineteenth century (Brodkin, 1994). Before this wave of immigration took place, European immigrants had been accepted into the white population. However, the European immigrants who came to the United States to work after 1880 were too numerous and too concentrated to scatter and blend in. Rather, they built working-class ethnic communities in the United States’ urban areas. Because of this, urban American began to take on a noticeably immigrant feel (Brodkin,
Lex Gilded Age Immigrants During the Gilded Age “New” Immigrants came and were worse at integrating than the Old Immigrants. New Immigrants which hailed places like Greece, Mexico, and China. New Immigrants that didn’t speak English and didn’t share the same customs. How racist was the gilded age?
Hailing from southern and eastern Europe, the Americans were unused to seeing people with such unfamiliar looks and customs, which spawned dislike and disgust. The Old Immigration involved immigrants leaving English speaking countries like the British Isles or countries that had Protestantism dominating their religion, like Germany. Old Immigrants tended to have the familiar Anglo-Saxon appearance and
The mid-19th century saw an unprecedented wave of immigrants coming into the country. At its peak, Ellis Island, the main processing station for immigrants, handled an astounding 5,000 people every day. Because of the language and culture barriers faced by each group of people, they often settled amongst themselves. Very quickly, country-specific neighborhoods began popping up throughout New York and the surrounding area. This helped to alleviate the stresses with moving to a new country; however, most immigrants came to the United States penniless and lived in low-income housing as their jobs rarely supported themselves let alone their families.
During the 1840s-1850s Americans saw a huge increase in the number of immigrants arriving in America, and this only lead to white American citizens fearing them during that period. There was fear for many reasons, the main reason being Americans feared that immigrants would steal their jobs. Namely these jobs were in New York city and other large coastal
Most immigrants who came to the U.S had high expectations that they would find wealth but once they arrived they realized their expectations weren’t what they expected. Although, they were disappointed in not finding wealth the conditions in which the U.S was in by the late 1800s were still a lot better than the places they all had left behind to come. The majority of the immigration population anticipation was to find profitable jobs and opportunities. When the large numbers of immigration were migrating to the U.S, it was during the “Gilded Age”, which was the prime time for the country’s expansion of industrialization. This rapid expansion of new industries led to the need of workers which motivated people from other countries to come to
Ireland was one of the European Countries that will harbor resentment because they felt that Britain was to blame for the potato famine. During the 1820s-1840s
In the early 19th century, millions of immigrants from Europe had traveled to the United States to escape difficulties faced in their native lands such as poverty and religious persecution. Italian, German, Irish, and many other eastern European immigrants sought the prosperous and wealthy lifestyle advertised in the land of opportunity, the United States. However, after settling down they often faced the difficulties they had fled from as well as sentiments of prejudice and mistrust from the American people. Most immigrants were discriminated against due to their religious beliefs as well as their language barriers which fostered the beliefs that they were intellectually inferior to Americans.
Also the New Immigrants arrived a little later mostly traveling from Europe. Most immigrants shifted to escape problems in their native countries and in search of new opponents in America. Many Americans welcomed immigrants as an asset to other Americans. Old immigrants had affected the new immigrants so they could things harder with each other.
America’s Diverse Population In the nineteenth century, rates of immigration across the world increased. Within thirty years, over eleven million immigrants came to the United States. There were new types of people migrating than what the United States were used to seeing as well. Which made people from different backgrounds and of different race work and live in tight spaces together; causing them to be unified.
It 's useful to note a couple of things here. First, because immigrants are perceived to pose multiple kinds of threats, they are likely to be on the receiving end of especially pernicious prejudices and acts of discrimination. Second, such reactions to immigrants are nothing new - and we can look not only to current EU anti-immigrant sentiments, but also to U.S. history. Whether it was Italians or Irish, Poles, Jews, Germans, Chinese or whomever, each of these groups were initially perceived to pose a wide range of threats and consequently evoked powerful prejudices. It was only once people came to see these groups as nonthreatening, usually as they were seen to adopt "American" norms, that they were perceived as
The migration of immigrants back then, were mainly because they wanted to find a better work experience. Some would even move to seek a new and improved religion. In the 1800-1880s, one of the main reasons immigrants moved, was because of the rising of taxes in their area which made them want to escape from that. Today, in modern day America, we still move in search for better jobs. Because the world has changed in so many ways, we constantly move, however, one of the main reasons is because of natural disasters that may have occurred in a particular area, which causes groups of families to move out of their old homes into a new location.
The Irish wanted to escape from English rule, so what better way to escape from English tyranny and landlords by coming to America where America won against Britain by gaining their own independence. This gave the Irish a chance to be independent and on their own to be successful. Once the Potato Famine occurred in Ireland, millions of Irish immigrants finally migrated to America, overwhelming nativists with the competition of labor increasing. Factory owners knew Irish immigrants would do anything for work so they reduced the pay compared to a nativist and would give them more rigorous tasks. With this, nativist would envy these workers and would create stereotypes by their appearance and behavior.
The number of immigrant to America reached 1.25 million and had a big tendency to increase. Americans began to doubt the government’s open door policy. Under pressure of the public, Immigration Act was passed on February 1917. Why American started feeling “angry” toward those new immigrants? The answers are: they were often poor; many of them were illiterate and had a big different cultural and religious background.
