Lady Liberty: Immigrants In The Nineteenth Century

American officials realized by that time that processing the 8 million immigrants which passed through New York during the 35 years prior was challenging enough, and that they couldn’t hope to process the ever increasing stream of arrivals. Thus the Immigrant Inspection Station was constructed. It is staggering to comprehend the sheer number of people who passed through this tiny, mostly artificial island. Genealogical studies indicate that over 100 million Americans can trace their roots to one of the 12 million who entered the island between 1900 and 1924 (that’s one in three Americans!). In fact, the island could process up to 11,000 immigrants a

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.

In 1808, the United States banned the importation of slaves. In 1853, the US Customs and Border Patrol Agency was established In 1855, an immigration landing depot opened at Castle Garden. Before it's close in 1890, 34 million people entered the United States through Castle Garden.

The immigrants that migrated to the United States

The Roaring Twenties are recognized for the increase in opportunities for different ethnic groups throughout California. Mexican immigrants are a particular ethnic group who have historically been marginalized by legislation and political rhetoric. Mexicans immigrants migrated to California with the intent of gaining economic opportunities. While the United States allowed for more economic opportunities to be attained, the treatment of Mexicans during the 1920s unveil inequity in labor policies and structures. The experiences of Mexican immigrants during the 1920s illustrate an increase in economic opportunity and the simultaneous susceptibility to exploitative systems of labor and discriminatory ideologies.

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,

This topic is important as is debunks the notion that all immigrants loved coming to America and wanted to stay here when in reality immigrants faced a harsh life in America, some like the Irish, Italians and Jews faced racism as they were typically poor, noticeable and kept to themselves due to their lack of the English language and American culture. Wyman’s account of reverse migration is informative and enriching as he clearly lays out statistics, primary sources, and pictures to bring forth the journey millions of immigrants went through between 1880 and 1930. The significance of Wyman’s book is not only the knowledge it brings people, but the paradigm shift is allows people to see. Round Trip to America gets its readers out of their seat and makes them feel like they are in the shoes of an immigrant going through their journey in

According the U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian, “…as with most immigrant communities, many Chinese settled in their own neighborhoods, and tales spread of Chinatowns as places where large numbers of Chinese men congregated to visit prostitutes, smoke opium, or gamble.” (Chinese Immigration and the Chinese Exclusion Acts) Many people found the purported behavior to be objectionable and harmful to the moral fiber of America. Many of the Chinese immigrants who worked to complete the railroad system ended up in San Francisco. Where the Chinese community was steadily growing.

People were drawn to the West because it was scene as the last resort to make a living when all else failed in the East. Communication with friends and family who had moved west led these pioneers to believe the journey would be easy and the reward for getting west would be best. And the greatly available land was the strongest pulling factor to people interested in adventuring west. Migration was a personal choice that depended on several key factors, “Age of the head of household; economic status; personal attitudes; and projected costs and benefits of the resettlement.” Most historians agree that the majority of the people who migrated west were middle class and mostly immigrants to the US.

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

I believe the difficult journey for immigrants and all they had to do to start over in a new country was worth the hardships they faced. This is because after all their hard work, things slowly but surely, started to get better. The hardest part was getting started. Although many immigrants were leaving for a better life or trying to escape political injustice, these men, women, and children were leaving their old life forever. In “Shutting Out the Sky”, Leonard Covello remembered before leaving Italy, “The gold you find in America will not be in the streets…

From 1880 to 1925, an era deemed New immigration, vast numbers of foreigners sought better lives as Americans. However, rather than a welcoming embrace, the expanding populations of immigrants were confronted with growing disdain of immigration. Many Americans assumed immigrants came to America as the poorest and most vagrant people of their country. Thus, many worried that immigrants would pollute America’s genetic stock and become financial burdens to the country. In response to growing anti-immigrant sentiment, Nativists demanded that America belong to “natives” and advocated restrictions on immigration to keep jobs for real Americans.

The early 1900s came with an abundance of changes. There were multiple waves of immigration causing increased social separation. There was also increased industrialization. The increase in industrialization provided many jobs for the incoming immigrants. However, these immigrants took on a lot more than just a new job when they came to America.

Americans had rarely accepted outsiders as equals, and that was the case with immigrants coming to the U.S in the 1840s to the 1920s. A time in America where immigrants were not considered inferior to native white Americans did not exist. The hatred of anything non-American, especially with the coming of World War I in 1914, would only cause more Americans to despise immigrants. Part of this was rooted simply in racism, which existed towards groups other than African Americans, but much of it was simply that Americans considered themselves the chosen people while everyone else was below them. Thus, despite immigrants being accepted into America, those immigrants were still treated far worse than white citizens between the 1840s and 1920s, for the prejudice against them was obvious even in the laws created.

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.