Each immigrant group came to America for different reasons and all had different experiences. Looking at both older and more modern immigrant groups, we can compare how they all faired. Which group prospered the most in this country and which one faired more poorly than others? Judging by their living conditions, discrimination, and low working wages, immigrants in the 19th and early 20th century didn’t have the idealized ‘American Dream.’ European immigrants of this time period didn’t seem to have the best economic and prosperous lifestyle. Based on their wage labor and job opportunity with the building of the railroad, Chinese immigrants were better off than European immigrants. They earned more money than the average European immigrant on the …show more content…
In terms of economic factors, the Chinese have succeeded the most, compared to European immigrants. Cubans were very prosperous in America economically. The majority of immigrants owned their own homes, were self-employed/owned their own businesses, and their households made an average salary of around $20,000 (during the earlier years of immigration). They had little discrimination against them compared to other immigrant groups. Scapegoating immigrant groups and minorities has been going on for centuries. With the post 9/11 attacks Muslims communities have been deported from their homes and detained, with high levels of discrimination. All the immigrant groups had hardships whether it was economic or discrimination based, whoever did better or worse is a matter of opinion. With regard to economic status, the Muslim community has done the best of the more modern immigrant groups such as Cubans. They have the higher education level and higher paying jobs. However, the discrimination has become much worse than the Cubans have ever faced, and reminds us of the same laws we put against Chinese workers in the 19th
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, a new wave of immigration hit the United States. These new immigrants typically came from different cultural backgrounds than the “original” immigrants to the United States (the English, Dutch, French, etc). American nativist groups vehemently opposed free, unrestricted immigration because they viewed new immigrants as an inferior race, a threat to American culture, and the root of most of society’s problems. New immigrants were viewed as inferior because the majority of them hailed from non-anglo-saxon countries, and many were of a different denomination or different religion altogether. Nativists also viewed these new immigrants as a threat to American culture because of their lack of English-speaking skills and different cultural practices brought from their homelands. Another
After civil war had settled down, many immigrants came to America to live from many countries such as Germany, Ireland, and England. There are as many as 12 million immigrants at this time. Regarding Chinese immigration, they immigrated to the United States from 1849 to 1882. Between this period, America had California Gold Rush, which is one of the reasons Chinese people immigrated. Because the Chinese Exclusion Act was taken into practice, no more Chinese people could immigrate to the United States after 1882. Chinese immigration is the divergent point for Chinese’ lives who lived in America.
The United State of America has been a place of opportunities where one can easily achieve his or her dreams. Critiques have shown that even a few who are brought up from a poor family have to turn out becoming great people on earth. It is a country that was built by immigrants. It is well known that “America's first European settlers were America's first immigrants. These first citizens were welcome by Native Americans, and they were seen as a threat. By the 19th century, the pattern had been repeated many times, with each new wave of immigrants encountering mixed reactions from already established Americans.” Turner, Laura Leddy. "Challenges Faced by Immigrants in the 19th Century." Synonym. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 June 2017. After the British took over the land from the Native American and started to develop the land, there were other European countries who also migrated to seek greener pastures. They were not accepted easily but had to be screened in order for them to be welcome into the system. The early settlers were so threatened after they were able to get rid of the natives of the land “The German, Irish and Italian immigrants who arrived in America during the 1800s often faced prejudice and mistrust. Many had to overcome language barriers. Others discovered that the challenges they had fled from, such as poverty or religious persecution, were to be encountered in America as well. A mass migration of Germans began in the mid-1830s and continued into the 1880s when
Dating from the early 1900’s, till this day, people are still risking their lives to pursue the “American Dream”,in the pursuit of happiness and wealth. There are some obvious differences, but one underlying reason. They all come from a different country. According to Boustan, Platt, About 30 million immigrants arrived in the United States during this time. By 1910, 22 percent of the U.S. labor force was foreign born. It is much harder making it across the border legally. The greatest similarity of the 1900’s immigrants and today is that they both come for economic improvement.
In the early 1880’s immigrants started to come over to the United States. Immigrants came into the United States for job opportunities, and a better life for there families. Immigrants come from all over the world, such as chinese, Italian, and Russian immigrants. The experiences of Chinese immigrants differed from immigrants from Italy, and Russia. Their experiences differed, because of how they came over to America, where they lived, and jobs.
“The immigrants who arrived in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries were very different from the predominantly Protestant, northern European immigrants who came to America in the early to mid-1800s” (Laura Leddy Turner “Were Immigrants Discrimination in the late 1800s and Early 1900s?”). A cause for the immigrants to move to the U.S is “...either because of a crisis or forced removal by an outside force” (What are causes and effects of immigration, Reference). Some countries that people immigrated from are farther away than just Mexico that isn’t too far. “Between 1880 and 1924, about 25 million new immigrants came to the United States. Many came from countries in southern or eastern Europe such as Italy, Russia, Hungary, Greece, and Poland.” (Immigrants in America). Those individuals that immigrated from those countries are mainly who are being disrespected to. What also doesn’t help is the diseases people are being judged by, not just where they lived or what they have
Yes, Late Nineteenth-Century Immigrants were “Uprooted”. They were uprooted physically and culturally. The immigrants came to America for a better life, since they had a rough time economically and politically in their own homeland. When they got here they had to get used to a whole new place with a different language, religion, culture and even different government. There were a lot of industries here, but all paid very small wage and a lot of the American citizens didn’t want them, they wanted a higher wage instead. The immigrants came in and took all jobs, even the ones that paid little wage. All these immigrants came from different backgrounds, therefore, getting used to American traditions was very hard for them. Some could not even continue
The 1840s and 50s experienced a massive escalation in the number of immigrants from Europe especially from Ireland, and Germany, arriving on U.S shores in densely populated urban areas (Arenson, 2011). Most of them afterward became vigorous in domestic politics, much to the aggravation of old-stock, authentic Americans. The consequence was a renaissance in the formation of “nativistic” societies (small, indistinct, anti-foreign and anti-catholic organizations), some which banded together in the early 1850s to form the American Party (Arenson, 2011). Commonly referred to as the “Know-Nothing,” the party rode a wave of racial intolerance as well as racism into the mid-1850s.
In the United States, the cliché of a nation of immigrants is often invoked. Indeed, very few Americans can trace their ancestry to what is now the United States, and the origins of its immigrants have changed many times in American history. Despite the identity of an immigrant nation, changes in the origins of immigrants have often been met with resistance. What began with white, western European settlers fleeing religious persecution morphed into a multicultural nation as immigrants from countries across the globe came to the U.S. in increasing numbers. Like the colonial immigrants before them, these new immigrants sailed to the Americas to gain freedom, flee poverty and
Migration took on many forms in the US in the late 1800s. Not only did immigrants come from Europe and China, there was also migration within the US. Farmers had to migrate east because of their failing farms, and some blacks had to migrate within their own wards because parts of them had become such horrid slums. The cause of all this migration can be boiled down into one word. Industrialization caused the influx of immigrants because of the need for labor in America, this influx led to the formation of slums due to the high numbers of immigrants coming over.
Throughout the Gilded Age, the US acquired approximately between 10 and 15 million immigrants. (Roediger 10) Known as the “New Immigrants,” majority of the immigrants swarm in from southern and eastern European countries such as Italy, Poland, Greece, Russia, and Croatia, and Czechoslovakia, in desperate needs of a new opportunity. Most of the new immigrants ended up obtaining jobs that involved unskilled labor, like in mills, mines, and factories, generally because they were poor and illiterate peasants. (Roediger 10) Henceforth, causing nativists to claim that the descendants of the new immigrants might prove to be racially unfit to assimilate into American society.
When most people think about immigration to the United States, they think of the U.S. as being the “land of opportunity,” where they will be able to make all of their dreams come true. For some people, immigration made their lives richer and more fulfilled. This however, was not always the case. A place that is supposed to be a “Golden Land” (Marcus 116) did not always welcome people with open arms. Even after people became legal citizens of the United States, often times the natural born Americans did not treat the immigrants as equals but rather as outsiders who were beneath them in some way. In some situations, people’s lives were made worse by coming to the “land of opportunity.” Often times people were living no better than they
Along with its economic classes, American is known for its freedom, its liberty, and the melting pot of ethnicity. This ethnic diversity comes form the immigrant population in the country. However this perfect country is a major falsehood. These untrue ideals of harmony, freedom, success, and equality are deceptive and do not show the struggles that immigrants face when coming to this class dominated country. The immigrants of today do not come from just Europe, but overwhelmingly from Asia and Latin America. “They are driving a demographic shift so rapid that within the lifetimes of today 's teenagers, no one ethnic group – including whites of European descent – will comprise a majority of the nation 's population’ (Colombo, Cullen, Lisle). These immigrants challenge the social myth that everyone has an equal chance in life. They
Immigration has always and will always play an important role in America’s history, along with the United States having the most open immigration policy in the world to this date. American history began with flocks of immigrants competing for lands to start a life, bringing over their vast traditions and values. Some brought nothing but determination. It’s disgusting to see our congress and lawmakers make these higher-end laws to keep foreigners out, yet our country is built off immigrants. Since the 19th century, America has been the leading destination unlike no other for immigrants to reside. No other country has such a wide range of races and population like America. Diversity is indeed, what makes this country so unique. America has always
During the 1920’s the United States really became a country of immigrants, even though not everyone was on board. In this time we saw immigration numbers that would far exceed the decades that would come after it and only to be surpasses by the decade that came before in a 40 year span. Almost 4.3 million people came to the US in the 1920’s and they spanned from far and wide to come to the US. Numbers would dip in the coming decades and would not surpass the million mark for at least two decades. These numbers saw drops that would relate to immigrant life and US immigration tactics.