➊ Summary: The First Immigrant
As a result Summary: The First Immigrant the turmoil in the s, immigration figures dropped dramatically from where they had been in previous decades. While the right to private property is defended in Are snakes cold-blooded social teaching, Nursing Care Delivery: A Case Study do not have the right to use private property without regard for the common good. Changes to Steerage Conditions on Steamships - Immigrants and the Steamship Steerage Rate Wars - After all, African Ethnic Conflict Summary: The First Immigrant no place like home. America was "the golden door," a metaphor for a prosperous society that welcomed immigrants. The Fellowship of the Steerage -
Eighth online math class of Abolfazli professor The summary of the first semester
Categories : Visa policy of the United States. Namespaces Article Talk. Views Read Edit View history. Help Learn to edit Community portal Recent changes Upload file. Download as PDF Printable version. It authorizes the issuance of 1, visas to principal applicants by December 31, It also extended the date by which applicants must apply for Chief of Mission approval from September 30, to December 31, The United States of America was a new nation.
The new government conducted a census, or count, of everyone living in the United States. At the time of the first census in , nearly ,00 Africans and 3 million Europeans lived in the new United States. In the decades after the Revolutionary War, the 13 original colonies grew to include states stretching from Maine in the north to Louisiana in the south; from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to Illinois in the west.
As a new nation, the United States of America thrived. By , the population had grown to nearly 10 million people. The quality of life for ordinary people was improving. People were moving west, creating towns along the route of the Transcontinental Railroad, which connected the entire country by rail, east to west, for the first time. The prosperous young country lured Europeans who were struggling with population growth, land redistribution, and industrialization, which had changed the traditional way of life for peasants. These people wanted to escape poverty and hardship in their home countries. More than 8 million would come to the United States from to At the turn of the 19th century, more than 1 million African Americans lived in the United States.
As slaves, they were not considered citizens. Large farms and plantations depended on the free labor they provided in fields and homes. It was difficult, backbreaking work. In , the United States government banned the importation of enslaved people into the country, although the practice did continue illegally. Slavery, however, was not abolished for nearly 60 more years.
In the early and midth century, nearly all of the immigrants coming to the United States arrived from northern and western Europe. In , seven out of 10 foreign-born people in the United States were Irish or German. Most of the Irish were coming from poor circumstances. With little money to travel any further, they stayed in the cities where they arrived, such as Boston and New York City. More than 2,, Irish arrived between and The Germans who came during the time period were often better off than the Irish were. They had enough money to journey to the Midwestern cities, such as Chicago, Cincinnati, and St. Louis, or to claim farmland.
More than 2,, Germans arrived between and In , a famine began in Ireland. A potato fungus, also called blight, ruined the potato crop for several years in a row. Potatoes were a central part of the Irish diet, so hundreds of thousands of people now didn't have enough to eat. At the same time of the famine, diseases, such as cholera, were spreading. Starvation and disease killed more than a million people. These extreme conditions caused mass immigration of Irish people to the United States. Between and , more than a million Irish are estimated to have arrived in America.
The men found jobs building railroads, digging canals, and working in factories; they also became policemen and firemen. Irish women often worked as domestic servants. Even after the famine ended, Irish people continued to come to America in search of a better life. More than 3. In the early s, the United States was in crisis. The Northern states and Southern states could not agree on the issue of slavery. Most people in the Northern states thought slavery was wrong. People in South, where the plantations depended on slavery, wanted to continue the practice. In , the Civil War began between the North and South.
It would be an extremely bloody war; over , people would die in the fighting. Many immigrants fought in the war. Since immigrants had settled mostly in the North, where factories provided jobs and small farms were available, hundreds of thousands of foreign-born men fought for the Union. In , President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared that all the slaves in the rebelling Southern states were free. It was the beginning of the end of slavery. To ensure that the abolishment of slavery was permanent, Congress passed the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which outlawed slavery throughout the United States.
The 14th Amendment, adopted in , declared that African Americans were citizens of the United States. In , African Americans numbered almost 5 million and made up In the late 19th century, America was looking west. People began moving away from the now crowded Eastern cities. Some were motivated by the Homestead Act of , which offered free land from the government. The government offered to give acres of land—considered a good size for a single family to farm—in areas including Minnesota, Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska. Homesteaders were required to stay on the land, build a home, and farm the land for five years.
The offer attracted migrants from inside the country—and waves of more immigrants from Europe. For example, many people from Sweden, where land was extremely scarce, were drawn to come to the United States. These brave settlers worked hard to start a new life on the frontier. Though life was difficult, many succeeded. The Transcontinental Railroad was a massive construction project that linked the country by rail from east to west. The railway was built entirely by hand during a six-year period, with construction often continuing around the clock. Chinese and Irish immigrants were vital to the project.
In , Chinese immigrants made up about 80 percent of the workforce of the Central Pacific Railroad, one of the companies building the railway. The workers of the Union Pacific Railroad, another company that built the railroad, were mostly Irish immigrants. These railroad workers labored under dangerous conditions, often risking their lives. After the Transatlantic Railroad was completed, cities and towns sprung up all along its path, and immigrants moved to these new communities. The Transcontinental Railroad was a radical improvement in travel in the United States; after its completion, the trip from East Coast to West Coast, which once took months, could be made in five days.
By , America was booming. The image of America as a land of promise attracted people from all over the world. America was "the golden door," a metaphor for a prosperous society that welcomed immigrants. Asian immigrants, however, didn't have the same experience as European immigrants. They were the focus of one of the first major pieces of legislation on immigration. The Chinese Exclusion Act of severely restricted immigration from China. And the "Gentlemen's Agreement" between Japan and the United States was an informal agreement that limited immigration from Japan.
Despite those limitations, nearly 30 million immigrants arrived from around the world during this great wave of immigration, more than at any time before. At the time, people traveled across the Atlantic Ocean by steamship to the bustling port of New York City. The trip took one to two weeks, much faster than in the past when sailing ships were the mode of transportation , a fact that helped fuel the major wave of immigration. For many immigrants, one of their first sights in America was the welcoming beacon of the Statue of Liberty, which was dedicated in Immigrants were taken from their ships to be processed at Ellis Island before they could enter the country.
About 12 million immigrants would pass through Ellis Island during the time of its operation, from to Many of them were from Southern and Eastern Europe. Explore the Ellis Island Interactive Tour. New immigrants flooded into cities. In places like New York and Chicago, groups of immigrants chose to live and work near others from their home countries. Whole neighborhoods or blocks could be populated with people from the same country. Small pockets of America would be nicknamed "Little Italy" or "Chinatown. In New York, for example, whole families crowded into tiny apartments in tenement buildings on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
Many organizations were formed to try to help the new immigrants adjust to life in America. Settlement houses, such as Hull House in Chicago, and religious-based organizations worked to help the immigrants learn English and life skills, such as cooking and sewing. Although the Chinese Exclusion Act of restricted immigration, , Chinese came through Angel Island over a period of three decades.
They were overwhelmingly the main group processed here: In fact, 97 percent of the immigrants who passed through Angel Island were from China. Explore the Angel Island Activity. Many of the immigrants who arrived in the early 20th century were poor and hardworking. They took jobs paving streets, laying gas lines, digging subway tunnels, and building bridges and skyscrapers. They also got jobs in America's new factories, where conditions could be dangerous, making shoes, clothing, and glass products.
Immigrants fueled the lumber industry in the Pacific Northwest, the mining industry in the West, and steel manufacturing in the Midwest. They went to the territory of Hawaii to work on sugar cane plantations. Eventually, they bargained for better wages and improved worker safety. They were on the road to becoming America's middle class.
By the s, America had absorbed millions of new immigrants. People became suspicious of foreigners' motivations. Immigrants fueled the lumber industry in the Pacific Northwest, the mining industry in the West, and steel manufacturing in the Midwest. They went to the territory of Hawaii to work on sugar cane plantations. Eventually, they bargained for better wages and improved worker safety. They were on the road to becoming America's middle class. By the s, America had absorbed millions of new immigrants. People became suspicious of foreigners' motivations.
Some native-born Americans started to express their dislike of foreign-born people. They were fearful that immigrants would take the available jobs. Some Americans weren't used to interacting with people who spoke different languages, practiced a different religion, or were a different race. Racism, anti-Semitism, and xenophobia fear and hatred of foreigners were the unfortunate result.
In , Congress passed the National Origins Act. It placed restrictions and quotas on who could enter the country. The annual quotas limited immigration from any country to 3 percent of the number of people from that country who were living in the United States in The effect was to exclude Asians, Jews, blacks, and non-English speakers. In the s, the country was going through the Great Depression, a terrible period of economic hardship. People were out of work, hungry, and extremely poor.
Few immigrants came during this period; in fact, many people returned to their home countries. Half a million Mexicans left, for example, in what was known as the Mexican Repatriation. Unfortunately, many of those Mexicans were forced to leave by the U. It still exists today. America was again concerned about protecting itself. Fears about foreign-born people continued to grow. As a result of the turmoil in the s, immigration figures dropped dramatically from where they had been in previous decades. In the s, approximately 4,, immigrants came to the United States; in the s, fewer than , arrived. During the war, immigration decreased. There was fighting in Europe, transportation was interrupted, and the American consulates weren't open.
Fewer than 10 percent of the immigration quotas from Europe were used from to In many ways, the country was still fearful of the influence of foreign-born people. Resident aliens are people who are living permanently in the United States but are not citizens. Oftentimes, there was no reason for these people to be detained, other than fear and racism. Beginning in , the government even detained American citizens who were ethnically Japanese. The government did this despite the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, which says "nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty or property without the due process of law. Also because of the war, the Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed in China had quickly become an important ally of the United States against Japan; therefore, the U.
Chinese immigrants could once again legally enter the country, although they did so only in small numbers for the next couple of decades. Many people wanted to leave war-torn Europe and come to America. President Harry S. Truman urged the government to help the "appalling dislocation" of hundreds of thousands of Europeans. In , Truman said, "everything possible should be done at once to facilitate the entrance of some of these displaced persons and refugees into the United States.
I believe that the admission of these persons will add to the strength and energy of the Nation. It allowed for refugees to come to the United States who otherwise wouldn't have been allowed to enter under existing immigration law. The Act marked the beginning of a period of refugee immigration. It also allowed non-Europeans to come to the United States as refugees. The Refugee Relief Act also reflected the U. The Soviet Union was also controlling the governments of other countries.
The Act allowed people fleeing from those countries to enter the United States. When he signed the Act, President Dwight D. Eisenhower said, "This action demonstrates again America's traditional concern for the homeless, the persecuted, and the less fortunate of other lands. It is a dramatic contrast to the tragic events taking place in East Germany and in other captive nations. In , there was a revolution in Hungary in which the people protested the Soviet-controlled government.
Many people fled the country during the short revolution. They were known as "fifty-sixers". About 36, Hungarians came to the United States during this time. Some of their countrymen also moved to Canada. In , Cuba experienced a revolution, and Fidel Castro took over the government. His dictatorship aligned itself with the Soviet Union. More than , Cubans left their country in the years after the revolution; many of them settled in Florida. In , President Lyndon B. This act repealed the quota system based on national origins that had been in place since This was the most significant change to immigration policy in decades.
Instead of quotas, immigration policy was now based on a preference for reuniting families and bringing highly skilled workers to the United States. This was a change because in the past, many immigrants were less skilled and less educated than the average American worker. In the modern period, many immigrants would be doctors, scientists, and high-tech workers. Because Europe was recovering from the war, fewer Europeans were deciding to move to America. But people from the rest of world were eager to move here. Asians and Latin Americans, in particular, were significant groups in the new wave of immigration.
Within five years after the act was signed, for example, Asian immigration had doubled. During the s and s, America was involved in a war in Vietnam. Vietnam is located in Southeast Asia, on the Indochina peninsula. From the s into the s there was a great deal of conflict in the area. After the war, Vietnamese refugees started coming to the United States. During the s, about , Vietnamese came, and hundreds of thousands more continued to arrive during the next two decades. In , the government passed the Refugee Act, a law that was meant specifically to help refugees who needed to come to the country.
Refugees come because they fear persecution due to their race, religion, political beliefs, or other reasons. The United States and other countries signed treaties, or legal agreements, that said they should help refugees. The Refugee Act protected this type of immigrant's right to come to America. During the s, waves of immigrants arrived from Central America, the Caribbean, and South America. Hundreds of thousands of people came just from Cuba, fleeing the oppressive dictatorship of Fidel Castro. This was a significant new wave of immigrants: During the s, 8 million immigrants came from Latin America, a number nearly equal to the total figure of European immigrants who came to the United States from to , when European immigration was at a high point.
The new immigrants changed the makeup of America: By , Latinos in the United States were about Since , immigration has been increasing. It is at its highest point in America's history. In both the s and s, around 10 million new immigrants came to the United States. The previous record was from to , when around 8 million immigrants arrived. In , the foreign-born population of the United States was Also in that year, California became the first state in which no one ethnic group made up a majority. By comparison, as recently as the s, two-thirds of all immigrants to the United States came from Europe or Canada.
The main countries of origin for immigrants today are Mexico, the Philippines, China, Cuba, and India. About 1 in 10 residents of the United States is foreign-born. Today, the United States is a truly multicultural society. Most of the immigrants who came to America through Ellis Island were from eastern and southern Europe. In many cases, they came to escape the poverty and religious intolerance that existed in small towns in countries such as Italy, Poland, and Russia. They began their journey to America on foot, horseback, or train. Many trekked hundreds of miles across Europe to get to a seaport.
When they arrived at the coast, they boarded a steamship. The trip across the Atlantic Ocean lasted one to two weeks. The ships divided passengers by wealth and class. First- and second-class passengers stayed in staterooms and cabins. But most people were in third class, called "steerage. As many as 3, people crowded the ships. They often came from different countries, spoke different languages, and belonged to different religions. Traveling in Europe was often difficult. People sometimes had to walk far distances, carrying their possessions with them.
A Place of Refuge Total U. Mayflower in They were overwhelmingly the main group processed here: In fact, 97 percent of the immigrants who passed through Angel Island were from China. Meanwhile, Nina, a childhood friend of Usnavi's, has returned to the neighborhood from her first year at college with Summary: The First Immigrant news for Summary: The First Immigrant parents, who have spent their life savings on building Quotes From The Story My Thought Summary better life for their daughter.