3. Why Europeans Immigrated
• “Give me your tired, your poor, / Your
huddled masses yearning to breathe
free…”
• Where did immigrants come from?
-They usually came from Europe due to poverty,
economics, etc. (Also known as push
and pull factors.)
4.
5. Push / Pull Factors
• What is a push / pull factor?
• PUSH: population growth, hunger and
religious persecution
• Pogroms – organized, anti-Jewish attacks
• PULL: opportunity, jobs, land and the
sometimes misleading America letters
• “land of milk and honey…streets paved with
gold…”
6. Push Factor: Conditions that
encourages people to move away
from their homeland
Pull Factors: Conditions that attract
people to settle into a new area
7. The Trip
• Two- three months now took two weeks
due to steamships
• Seasickness, spoiled food, spread in disease
and filthy toilets
• Separation on the ship by class
• What did third class passengers face?
• They faced disease, some naked, hunger, people
Stealing food and other things.
8. Ellis Island
• “Six second exam”
– Marked clothing with chalk (L,H,X and E)
– Faced possible deportation
• 29 Question Exam
– “Do you have work waiting for you?” / Foran
Act of 1885
• About 2% of immigrants were denied entry
– Ride on ferry to NYC
9. Urban Populations Explode
• Most immigrants settled in places like New
York, Chicago, Boston, Cleveland, etc.
– Lived in areas with those who spoke the same
language
– Riis’s imagined map of the city (p. 192)
– Also lived in areas were there was works such
as farms and factories. (usually factories
because of unskilled workers)
10. American Response
• New immigrants had to “find their own
way” financially
• Who could they rely on?
– “pass the hat”
– Settlement Houses – established as a
community center to help guide immigrants
• Political Bosses –
• Assimilation / Americanization
• Happened with children at school, needing to fit in
11.
12. American Response
• Cultural differences created backlash
– Anarchy / Socialism
• Nativism spreads like wildfire
– Religious and cultural differences and economic
downturn fueled the fire
• By the 1920’s Congress had passed legislation
to slow immigration
– Became based on quota
QUOTA: System that limited immigration by allowing
only a certain number of people from each country to
13. Immigration from Asia
• Immigrants, mainly from China, came to
strike it rich on Gold Mountain (California)
– Majority were men, most ended up staying in
the US
– Friction between white men and Chinese
immigrants grew over labor
– Chinese worked for less
14. Immigration from Asia
• “…utter heathens, treacherous, sensual,
cowardly, cruel…” - Henry George
• Chinese “could never be Americanized”
– Mob violence towards Chinese
– Economic woes blamed on Chinese
– Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) – no
immigration of Chinese for 10 years
15. Angel Island
• “Ellis Island of the West”
• Detained for questioning
– Asked extremely specific questions to prevent
Chinese from forging their way into the
country
– Could be detained for weeks, months, even years
• Angel Island = miserable place
16. Other Asian Immigrant Groups
• Immigrants came as farm laborers and
service industry workers from:
– Korea, Philippines, and Japan
• Anti-Asian feelings caused segregation –
led to a Gentleman’s Agreement between
TR and Japan
• Japanese allowed emigrants, with certain family
demands
17. Immigrants From North and South
• As immigration slowed from Asia, farmers
found new laborers from Mexico
– Higher wages and plentiful opportunity –
Mexican Revolution was also a push factor
– Faced similar segregation and racist attitudes from white
people
• Canadians immigrated without many
problems – hard to tell them apart
