IMMIGRATION HISTORY IN USA
The United States of America has remained to be regarded as an immigrant’s country. The older immigrants’ attitudes to the new ones have wavered between exclusionary and welcoming as the year’s pass. European countries started crossing the Atlantic Ocean for thousands of years using ship then settled in North America, which later came to be named the United States. The immigrants were Native ancestors of Americans; they passed the land that joins North America and Asia. During the 1600s, immigrants of European communities speckled seaboard, who include Great Britain in Virginia and New England, Swedes in Delaware, Spanish in Florida, and Dutch in New York.
Others immigrated for religious independence, such as Puritans and Pilgrims. Most of them searched for larger economic opportunities, even thousands of slaves from Africa to North America, a decision against what they wanted. Early top slavery in America involved Africans who were forced into slavery in Jamestown, Virginia, 1992. Furthermore, Europe’s cost of passage to America was high half of the European immigrants decided to be indentured servants. Even though some of them voluntarily decided to be servants, others were kidnapped from Europe’s cities and then forced to enslave America. Moreover, a huge number of convicts from England got shipped through the Atlantic Ocean to be servants.
The civil war in the United States of America between (1861-1865) led to the liberation of enslaved people, roughly 4 million. Even if a particular number of people will never be discovered, it is thought that between 500,000 to 600,000 slaves from African were taken to America from the 17th and 19th century. [1]
Immigration in the Mid-19th Century
One of the huge waves of immigration in North America happened in between 1815 and 1865. Most of these new immigrants from both North and West Europe. The United States got five million immigrants from Germany. Most of these German newcomers traveled to purchase farms and assembled in various cities such as Cincinnati and Milwaukee. German ancestry was found to be more than group United States after the Census in 2000. “Every immigrant who comes here should be required within five years to learn English or leave the country.” Theodore Roosevelt, 1919.
The effects the immigration events had on the group or groups involved.
Facilitated to Industrial Revolution
The industrialization era is also referred to as a great wave of immigration. A massive immigration change led to around 23 million European, Asians, and African immigrants settled in North America. Most of these immigrants came from Eastern and Southern Europe, also including Scandinavia. These immigrants, who most of them were young and in pursuit of labor or work, assisted in facilitating the industrial revolution in North America. The introduction of mechanization resulted in manufacturers replacing their skilled workers with inexpensive laborers doing basic tasks. In 1880 New York passed Chicago as a top manufacturing center and valued two-thirds of the workforces that were immigrants who were employed in the Windy City’s factories. Some cultural groups turn out to be associated with particular industries.
The emergence of Ethnic Diversity[2]
The immigrants spread the various cultural mix in the United States of America. In the 1870s and 1880s came from Germany, Britain, and Ireland, similar to the situation before the Civil War’s emergence. However, the growing number of eastern and southern Europeans, Asians, and Scandinavians combined the ethnics. Different traditions and languages from the immigrants had a great impact on America’s huge ethnic mix. The areas where countrymen were located; these were the main places the immigrants wanted to settle down. The reason being these parts were predominantly visible in big cities, including New York, a city where neighborhoods turn to be associated with specific ethnic groups or countries from European nations or Asians.
Lead to Conflict
Conflict in societies in America resulted from immigration. Native Americans related the low wages they had and joblessness issues with the immigrants accusing the foreigners being the main cause of poverty, misconduct, and civil conflict. The United States government prevented a specific type of new immigrants from entering the country. These were directed by several laws such as Asian immigration, and the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act prevented them from becoming citizens of America. Immigration Restriction League, started in 1894, was one of the organizations operated to decrease the number of immigrants and enforce learning measures on the new arrivals in the United States of America.
The Building United States of America[3]
Some immigrants virtuously main aim was economic reasons and went back to their home nations after making enough money to sustain themselves. Almost half of the Italian immigrants returned to Italy after just five years in North America during the late 19th century. Nevertheless, the enormous majority became joined the American society, and American to date can find the[4]Lineage to a certain group of immigrants. A survey conducted in 2010 by American Community Survey found that German ancestry in America is 47.9 million, 34.6 million have Irish lineage, 25.7 million have English lineage, and 17.2 million are recognized with Italian lineage.
Immigrants age
Immigrants from Europe were found to be older than the native population and all the foreigners. The median age in the USA for the European immigrants was 53 years in 2016, different from the previous one, 44 for all immigrants in the USA, and the American born immigrants were 36. Immigrants from European countries were almost triple the seniors aged over 65 years to that of the USA-born and foreign population.
Significance of events during the immigration period
Gold Rush Discrimination
In North America, the Chinese first immigration wave between 1840and 1850 continued in the 1850s for Gold Rush in California. China first ship arrived in 1848 in San Francisco, but real immigration was very slow. In 1852 around twenty thousand Chinese immigrated to San Francisco after a famine in southern China caused by crop failure. Most of the new arrivals started working the nearby gold mines, a place they experienced discrimination. The Chinese immigrants were regularly robbed in the mines and had an imposed tax that affected them of $3 Foreign Miners Tax, which was particularly intended for the Chinese despite their population in San Francisco being 20 percent of the whole population.
1870s Chinese Discrimination[5]
Most of the Chinese immigrants were located in many regions of California in the 1870s. However, adversities and discrimination got worse. The was a many economic depression and a high unemployment rate who participated greatly in hatred among different races. The whites started to see the Chinese immigrants as criminals due to the increased numerous Chinese Prostitutes. These events resulted in many immigration restriction laws, including a1875 Page Law that prohibited Asian immigration due to immoral reasons.
Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965
Everything changed in 1965 when the Nationality Immigration Act was passed, resulting from a civil rights program and President Lyndon Johnson’s programs to American societies. The measure was not aimed to arouse immigration from countries from the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and anywhere else in the developing world.
Immigration Responsibility Act of 1996
The law was approved in 1996 September; the Act was a complete immigration modification aimed at restructuring the eradicating and acknowledging immigrants who are not permitted.
Chinese Exclusion Act
During the 1880s, Page Law, a restriction law, was termed insufficient, and Chinese immigration was to be banned what most Americans wanted. Burlingame-Seward Treaty signed in 1868 between China and the United States of America prevented Chinese immigrants from being banned by the United States. The treaty was later reversed in 1880 due to the signing of the Angel Treaty in 1880. Diplomatic restrictions were raised, which led to the passing of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 by congress, which barred ten-year immigration from all Chinese. After that, there was an increase in more restrictions, including the Scott Act, which prevented legal Chinese-American citizens from re-entering America when they visited China.
Transcontinental Railroad
Transcontinental Railroad was constructed and completed in the 1860s, largely due to the immigrant labor who were mostly Chinese. Most of them were working in Central Pacific, and the role they had was substantial. Chines immigrants were 80 percent of the Central Pacific workers during the railroad height of construction. They experienced discrimination, such as been banned from having citizenship in the State of California.
The main reason why Chinse immigrants wanted to move to the United States of America was to earn money. They wanted to send it back to their low-income families back in China; they experienced economic problems in China[6][7]
Bibliography
Bauer, Thomas K., Regina Flake, and Mathias G. Sinning. “Labor market effects of immigration: evidence from neighborhood data.” Review of International Economics 21, no. 2 (2013): 370-385.
Beniflah, Jacob D., Wendalyn K. Little, Harold K. Simon, and Jesse Sturm. “Effects of immigration enforcement legislation on Hispanic pediatric patient visits to the pediatric emergency department.” Clinical Pediatrics 52, no. 12 (2013): 1122-1126.
Spickard, Paul. Almost all aliens: Immigration, race, and colonialism in American history and identity. Routledge, 2009.
[1]. Peck, Gunther. Reinventing Free Labor: Padrones and Immigrant Workers in the North American West, 1880-1930. Cambridge University Press, 2000.
[2]. Co, Catherine Y., Patricia Euzent, and Thomas Martin. “The export effect of immigration into the USA.” Applied Economics 36, no. 6 (2004): 573-583.
[3]. Powell, John. Encyclopedia of North American immigration. Infobase Publishing, 2009.
[4]. Sailer, Reece I. “Our immigrant insect fauna.” Bulletin of the ESA 24, no. 1 (1978): 3-11.
[5]. Lembeck, John. “The California gold rush: a study of emerging property rights.” Explorations in Economic History 14, no. 3 (1977): 197-226.
[6]. Ambrose, Stephen E. Nothing like it in the world: The men who built the Transcontinental Railroad 1863-1869. Simon and Schuster, 2000.
[7]. Boswell, Terry E. “A split labor market analysis of discrimination against Chinese immigrants, 1850-1882.” American Sociological Review (1986): 352-371.