The Chinese Immigration Into Hawaii

and U.S. controlled lands. “The turn of the century saw the beginning of a great twenty-five-year surge of immigration, in which more than 100,000 Japanese nationals arrived in the U.S., and during which many of the foundational institutions of the Japanese American community were established.” These newcomers at first found much of their employment in migratory labor, working the farms, mines, canneries, and railroads of the American West, sometimes becoming active in the labor agitation of the period.

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.

Most plantation workers faced backbreaking work and discrimination because of their Asian heritage, but things were different for the largest group of European immigrants. The Portuguese were the largest group of European immigrants to ever move to Hawaii. They played a major role in developing Hawaii into what it is today. Many Portuguese farmers and families came to Hawaii due to a fungus blight that was plaguing the crops and creating an economic depression for farmers in Portugal. The Portuguese had many push factor that brought them to Hawaii, they were also treated differently from all the other immigrant groups that worked the plantation as well, and they had many cultural impacts on Hawaii that still influence it today.

Since its founding, the United States has attracted immigrants from all over the world and consists of a variety of different cultures. Immigration has had an enormous impact on American society and economy and shaped the country remarkably.

While Asian immigrants were first generation migrants, female Mexican-American teens in the early 1920s differed in that they were first generation Americans. Still, these teens faced similar pressures of formative gender identity set by both American culture and by the ancestral customs of the Mexican familial oligarchy. The familial oligarchy of Mexican culture refers to the system by which familial elders “attempted to dictate the activities of youth for the sake of family honor,” as the family’s communal standing depended on the “purity,” or virginity of their daughter with little mention of the son. Due to the sudden rise of the flapper culture, American temptations were a constant threat to traditional Mexican values. These temptations were controlled through the use of a gender medium, usually a mother or grandmother, known as a dueña or a

Immigrants that were from China lived in towns called ghettos. Sometimes they even lived in neighborhoods with white americans and immigrants from Europe. Also near big cities there were restrictive covenants.

The opportunities of racial minorities such as the Chinese or African Americans different from those of European immigrants because diversity played a big role in the quality of urban setting. When the industrial revolution happen a lot of immigrant were in search for better economic opportunity, so as Chinese left their home countries due to poverty and famine, cities were the first place they settle down in, making their way to the US they had great opportunity, from owning their own business, opportunity to socialize, opportunity of establishing rotating lending pools, and one of the thing was that they were able to support one another. Moreover, like the Chinese immigrant, European immigrant were also in such for better economic opportunity and religious freedom. Compared to Chinese and African American immigrants, European immigrant had better opportunities for example, European immigrants were considerably older, had higher household incomes, and they were more educated though they were less likely to participate in the labor force. If they did participate in the labor force, they participate at a lower rate than the overall immigrants. A big difference in opportunities that European immigrant had from other immigrants was that you would see them take employment in management, business, science, and arts occupations and they would less likely be employed in occupation such as natural resources, construction, maintenance occupations, production, transportation, and

In the early 1800’s industrialization of the northeast and other national endeavors such as railroads and road building required much manual labor. This vast manual labor job market opened the flood gates into the United States for immigrants seeking prosperity and a better life for themselves and their families. By the mid 1800’s many Chinese immigrants had made the voyage to the U.S. and sought work mainly in the factories of the prosperous northeast as well as the California gold mines. Culturally the Chinese people’s actions are motivated by the concept of bringing honor and respect to the family as a whole, and less concerned about individual successes or prestige, which resulted in Chinese immigrant’s willingness to do high quality work for long hours for very little pay. This was beneficial to the employer and company, but displaced many other immigrant workers which caused racial tensions. Chinese immigrants were accustomed to living in tight quarters, working together as families or community units and making do with what was available. These qualities assisted in the development of China Towns, housing and cultural centers for the Chinese immigrant population, near or in the large cities where their populations were greatest such as New York and San Francisco as. Many Americans viewed these China Towns as unsanitary and unhealthy brothels where prostitution and smoking opium was commonplace.

A large number of Japanese initially migrated to Hawaii in the late 18th and early 19th century as a result of enormous boom in Hawaiian sugar industry. They also entered

Not only did the Chinese bring over their labor, they also brought with them a whole new culture and way of life. With the vast amount of railroad land that the Chinese built for the Americans, they helped develop and create resources for much of the population. The Chinese created the empty new western land into vast miles of new farmland. The knowledge the Chinese had about farming, cultivating, planting, and harvesting became very useful for the people out west. Many farms heard of their skills and learned the ways of the Chinese, and the west became no longer dependent on the east for products and

After the first wave of Chinese immigrants arrived in the United States in the early 1840s during the California Gold Rush, many Chinese people continued to travel across the Pacific, escaping poor conditions in China with hopes and ambitions for a better life in America. Many more Chinese immigrants began arriving into the 1860s on the Pacific coast for work in other areas such as the railroad industry. The immigrants noticed an increasing demand for their labor because of their readiness to work for low wages. Many of those who arrived did not plan to stay long, and therefore there was no push for their naturalization. The immigrants left a country with thousands of years of a “decaying feudal system,” corruption, a growing

Japanese immigration into California followed quite a different pattern. Needing cheap labor in order to maximize their profits, Hawaiian sugar plantation owners sent agents abroad to recruit workers. Consequently, some 39,000 Japanese went to work in sugar plantations on three-year contracts only to later discover the strains and hazards of working in what historians of Hawaii have labeled “industrial plantations” — an efficient, large-scale system that enabled the yield per acre to increase from just under 6,600 pounds in 1895 to almost 8,700 pounds in 1900 (Cole 1973). But in 1900, the Organic Law made Hawaii a formal U.S. territory, ending the entry of contract laborers while declaring all contracts null and void in Hawaii. As a result, labor recruiters from the mainland descended on Hawaii to lure the Japanese workers away with the prospect

Hawaii’s annexation in 1898 had much to do with the power of American plantation owners on the islands and the protection of their financial interests—both in gaining exemption from import taxes for the sugar they shipped to the U.S. and in protecting their

In 1850, Chinese immigrants in San Francisco established a Chinatown, others soon followed. Boston’s Chinatown was established by 1875. Chinatown was then, as it still is now, a place of support and security where one could find a bed, job, and social services; a place of cultural familiarity where one could share common food, language, and customs. Excluded from the larger society, Chinatown was home.

Migration of Japanese people to America began in mid-1800s as they searched for peace and a mode of payment to improve their family conditions, and escape from unstable home conditions in Japan. Migration resulted in a life of great hard work and severities of hostility in the workplace. In addition, Japanese immigrants had to face multiple legislative attacks from Americans and endure poor working conditions because of their presence in a foreign land.