Immigration to the US

Around the mid-19th to the 20th century, myriads of immigrants flocked to the U.S. seeking better job opportunities,or searching for religious freedom. U.S. citizens were fearful, envious, and willing to exclude immigrants who came to the US as they were viewed as an economic threat to the society. They believed that these immigrants were racially, morally and intellectually inferior to them and as such did not see or treat as their equals. These dysfunctions lead to severe and harsh treatment of immigrants. Historically, the three major immigrant groups that faced the most discrimination during this era were the Asians, German, and the Irish. American citizen’s fear of job secureness led to the resentment and discriminatory treatment towards Asian Immigrants. They believed that the majority of the Asian American immigrants were taking too many of their jobs. As such, the U.S. government decided that it would be necessary to restrict the amount of Asian Americans, in order to keep the U.S. citizens from being unemployed. The U.S. government passed numerous laws, banning Asian American immigrants from the United States. One distinct law that they passed was the 1922 Cable Act, this law “stripped a female citizen of citizenship, if she married an alien unable to become a citizen.”(Lutz 7).The law was basically passed to prevent Asian immigrants from obtaining citizenship by marrying a female U.S citizen.In fact, the government believed that female citizens that engaged in this

After reading Lisa Lowe’s article, “Immigration, Citizenship, Racialization: Asian American Critique,” it was clear that her thesis and main idea was about the Asian immigrants cultural politics. She tries to situate the legal, political, and economic meaning as a formation of the Asian American emergence within a “United States national and international comprehension.” Lowe also looks at how the asian citizen is defined against the Asian immigrant, “legally, economically, and culturally.” Throughout my essay, I will discuss the political restrictions against Asian immigrants through the help of Lowe’s text and the class presentations.

 The United States was founded on the principle that all men are created equal, but during an immigration boom in the late 1890s and early 1900s, Asians and Europeans faced discrimination and violence because of their difference in language, appearance, and religion. People came to America from all over the world to experience the wealth and prosperity that was associated with this great country, but certain ethnicities were excluded from the hope and freedom they were promised by the forefathers. When coming through California, Asians faced with hardships and trials that caused them to return to their country and sometimes to end

The U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, also known as Hart-Cellar Act, represents the most significant period in the history of Asian Americans. Decades of continuous exclusion and racist immigration policies, came to an end with the adoption of the Act, which resulted in unprecedented flows of immigrants from Asia, Mexico, Latin America, and other countries immigrating to U.S. Most influential proved to be the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, which brought national and international attention to the pervasive problem of racism and economic inequality in American society, including discriminatory immigration laws. New arrivals, especially from Asia, have transformed the demographic and diversity characteristics of Asian American community, and American society in general. The immigration Act of 1965 was the most important immigration reform legislation for Asian Americans and other racial minorities because it finally challenged the American race relations and dramatically improved the lives of Asian Americans.

The government targeted the Asian Americans as a threat. As Takaki asserted, “Unlike European immigrants, Asians were also victimized by the institutionalized racial discrimination of public policies.” These policies include the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the National Origins Act of 1924. The social image of America can clearly be seen as only “whites” when the government institute policies to encourage European women to arrive to America so the immigrants can form families, while Asian women were barred the entry to prevent families to form

During the beginning of the time period between 1882 and 2000, the United States policies towards immigration and naturalization became more and more restrictive due to American’s fear of competition with immigrants for jobs and their buildup of racism towards those immigrants. Chinese immigrants were the first

Chapter one of the The Contemporary Asian American Experience: Beyond the Model Minority, provides a great overview of the Asian American immigration history to U.S. and the aspects leading to the arrival of refugees from Asian countries. Since the early 1800s, hundreds of thousands of Asians have been migrating to America. As with many other immigrants, they were viewed as low class workers. Asian immigrants had very dangerous and low paid jobs that the majority of whites did not want to do. As a result, many white employers took advantage and exploited them. What strikes me the most is that Asian Americans participated in very important jobs but they were not recognized for their crucial contribution to the prosperity of the United States.

However, once people like Bhagat Singh Thind come to the US in 1913, to make a better life for his self, he needed to do the ultimate thing in the US and that was to be classified as “white”. But before Thind come over to the US many others had already been there of his same ethnicity and had been classified as white because of the act of 1790. But Theodore Roosevelt quietly revised a new naturalization act of 1906, declaring that immigrants go before a federal judge before being classified as “white” and enjoying the full rights to being “white” (Biewen 03:30-04:00).

The first significant law restricting immigration was the Chinese exclusion act of 1882. The Chinese exclusion act was enacted to lower the wages of immigrants that would come over and take American jobs on the west coast. The exclusion act was aimed entirely at a race, that as a whole compromised only a small percentage of America at the time. Chinese culture and presence was stemmed due to an overwhelming sense of xenophobia in the sense that it was the Chinese’s fault for the lack of jobs and decrease of pay. Laws passed to strengthen the 1882 act made reentry of laborers illegal and required laborers living in the United States to prove that their residence was legal.

Immigration, it started off in America and it was a very common thing that was talked about in that very time period. Immigrants are individuals that move from their country to other ones and this case it was America. There was a lot that arrived in America, there were lots of Irish, also Germans, as well as Asians, also Chinese, or Japanese, Greek, Polish, Slovak, Russians and Croatians too. There were a lot of different cultures, religions and ethnicity that came from all over the world that it made America pretty diverse. They all had their own reason to come to America whether it would be to get a job and send to their families back home or to escape a very horrible event that was taking place in their country and they possibly needed to

Asian immigrants in the history of United States had a hard time gaining legal citizenship. For instance, the Naturalization Act of 1790 excluded both free blacks and Asian Americans from U.S. citizenship, while the 1870 revision expanded the white racial qualification to include “aliens of African nativity and to persons of African descent,” keeping aliens of Asian origin excluded. Even under harsh conditions, Asian immigrants did not give up attempting to be naturalized after 1870. However, it is remarkable that no Asian immigrants sought naturalized citizenship by claiming that they were Blacks. Instead, they learned the strategy to cast themselves as Whites while applying for U.S. citizenship. This noteworthy historical phenomena

Employment continues to be one of the fastest growing industries. Employment can be found about in any occupations. Jobs vary from a business setting, to Production Company, to small organizations and more. Above all, employment comes with requirements and knowledge’s that employers seek to satisfy their needs. If one does not meet the requirement nor have the qualifications it is a competitive industry that continues to impact many job seekers and had impacted my parents. My mother who migrated to America over thirty years ago had experienced several of employment opportunities. An American born, I understand that my work experience may be different to my mother. To compare and contrast it will allow me to evaluate the different work experiences

When I was seventeen years old and in my last year of high school, I came to the United States with my mother and left my father and siblings. When my mom immigrated in 2008, she left her business and decided to start a new adventure that might provide her more financial stability. Ever since I was a child, my family owned a furniture factory and a store. After my parent 's divorce, my mother kept the house and my father the company. Similarly, my mother opened her store for a few years and then a preschool, which was more related to her bachelor in psychology. However, my mother financial stability decreases after acquiring debts. My mother struggled with covering the preschool costs and providing for the

An immigration policy in the United States assessed to be one of the boiling issues of political debates for more than two decades which drives to its foreign policy through consideration on national and societal security in its soil, particularly in a global arena. Some might express that auspicious immigration policy can be a threat to national security of the United States, in contrast, others may argue that it does not pose such a threat to its soil. Since end of 1800s the United States is considered to be one of the preeminent immigrant subsidiary nations till end of 20th centuries. As a result of auspicious policies on immigrants, on the contrary, lack of appropriate mechanisms in order to control over the flow of immigrants into its soil, “more than eleven million undocumented immigrants out of forty-one million have been well nested in its soil”, according to the credible source. Thus, a former policy on immigration must have been brought both positive and negative consequences to the United States, particularly for its social, economic, political, and security environments. Nonetheless, there is not clear and specific information on how many of immigrants are considered to be immigrants with assimilation or without assimilation. What are their pros and cons for the sovereignty of United States? Therefore, which option or combination of options best address national and societal security in the United States?

Populations previously were prohibited to enter the country and become US citizens and the immigrants’ plans once they entered the country seemed to differ. Chinese immigrants mostly came to the United States in search of wealth during the Gold Rush; however, because of the Chinese exclusion act, Chinese immigration was completely prohibited and was the first group designated for exclusion based on nationality and class (History 2750 Lecture, February 15, 2016). Document 6 in chapter 6 is a poem about a Chinese immigrant’s journey and how he was unsure of his status and whether he would be allowed to enter the country because of the strict quota after the Chinese prohibition period was over. He was also unsure whether or not his family would be allowed into the country. Today however, Chinese populations are not prohibited from entering the United States, displaying that immigration restrictions have changed. George Sanchez, in his article “Race, Nation and Culture in Recent Immigration Studies,” writes about the law established against Asian groups and how they could not become US citizens and were called “foreign.” For example, the Takao Ozawa and the Bhaghat Singh Thind cases show how even though they were American or Caucasian, they were not allowed to become citizens. The court ruled against Ozawa because even though he was “eminently